Case Study: Business Development

Company: $50 million e-commerce provider seeking rapid growth

Situation: Metiom had been negotiating with Alliance Partners for several months, however, there were few partners under contract and no formal partner program that differentiated them. More structure was needed for Metiom’s alliance program and prospective and current partners needed to be prioritized based on their value.

Solution: Working closely with the Business Development and Sales Teams, we established a partnership map that categorized partners into four categories: Technology Partners, Content Partners, Distribution Partners and Strategic Partners. Each partner category was defined and given criteria and program benefits. A tiered co-marketing program was established for partners based on their category. Marketing communications materials were developed as well as a password-protected partner extranet used to communicate new product information, training and sales tips. A partner seminar series was created in each region to help drive partner recruitment, which was part of a holistic partner recruitment process. Based on this formal partner program, Metiom was able to ramp up its partner recruitment and nearly double the number of alliance partners.

• Hewlett-Packard was signed on as a strategic partner. I facilitated the co-marketing aspects of the contract negotiations which led to HP contributing $1 million in co-marketing funds to Metiom. Metiom Alliance Partner Kits were sent to all HP sales reps, followed up by a webcast to the HP sales force to kick-start the lead generation program. A customized HP extranet site was established to facilitate future communications and training.
• Motorola was signed on as a strategic partner to act as a global reseller of Metiom solutions. My team implemented a co-marketing program that supplied Motorola with the templates and sales tools to educate their consortium partners around the globe. A customized extranet was established to communicate to Motorola and its global partners.
• Manugistics was signed on as a strategic partner. Co-marketing was incorporated into the contract as well, which led to $300,000 in additional funds from Manugistics to help support C-level seminars and briefings. A formal lead generation process was established to track and close leads produced by the joint sales force.