(Practice Makes Perfect)

Over on my sister channel, Channel Surfing, you recently read about how to make your collateral work better for your partners (and thereby working harder for you and your products), in the post called “Is your customer collateral inappropriate for your partners?”

Kris (the Channel Surfing author) makes some awesome points here that I have seen to be true, because I often provide the design work for partners’ co-funded collateral.  Pieces are most effective when they discuss what the all-encompassing solution will do for the business of the potential client.

But don’t just let the piece stop working for you there!  It can do one other vital piece of work for you – it can be a testimonial to entice other partners to utilize the same templated collateral pieces for their upcoming marketing campaign.  By asking partners for a copy of their finished collateral, some simple ROI stats (what’s coming down their pipeline now, versus before they used the templated pieces), and a quote from them, you can show other partners how effective your materials can really be.  You get better involvement in your partner community, and the partner doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel for every set of products and services they want to combine.  It’s a WW (win, win).