In business, the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule states that generally, 80% of your sales come from the top 20% of your customers. In fact, in the modern channel world, the spread is closer to 90/10, that is, 90% of vendors’ sales are constituted by 10% of their partners.

There’s an abundance of partners in the marketplace, and vendors don’t always have the time or resources to seek out the right ones to proactively invest in. So it’s not surprising that vendors take the path of least resistance, favouring the 10-20% when deciding where to spend their channel marketing investments.

In this environment, partners can no longer afford to be faceless entities. To survive, they need to connect with vendors, attract their attention (and trust), and engage with them on a much deeper level than seen before.

Luckily vendors are looking to reach net new business and understand the reality is that they may need to look beyond their traditional partnerships in order to achieve this.

Opportunity is knocking for those up-and-comers who are savvy and nimble enough to anticipate where the market is going and proactive enough to seek out vendors help.

So what are vendors looking for in order to invest?

Before making any investment vendors want to clearly see that a partner has an appealing brand identity that differentiates them from their competition and that they have a strong story to take to market.

Unfortunately, I think we can all accept that traditionally, partners are considered to be terrible marketers (don’t shoot the messenger), and from a marketing point of view may need professional help in order to effectively communicate their value proposition.

Over the past two years, Hachiko has helped over 100 partners successfully market themselves and we believe the secret sauce to marketing success lies in the campaign “Discovery”. This is a process whereby we define a partner’s DNA so they can go further, faster, for great business returns for you both. Sounds so simple right? But a brand is not how you see yourself – but how others perceive you – so the messaging can be a lot trickier to craft than just knowing your own business inside out.

For vendors and distributors who ‘find the right’ partners, making this initial investment may seem like something the partner should be solely investing in themselves. But our results clearly show that starting off and helping a partner to find the right message from the beginning can cause a snowball effect of growth – so it makes sense you want to accelerate that process.

The future is bright

Once a partner has gone through the Discovery process not only will they have a kick-ass campaign in hand but they also have a Brand Story that can be used across their organisation and into the future. There is nothing more inspiring than having a sales team who knows how to consistently and concisely talk about their brand in a way that differentiates them from the crowd.

“Working with Hachiko was an absolute pleasure. From the initial Discovery Workshop, right through to Go Live and thereafter. Hachiko supported and understood Exigo Tech’s business outcomes and brought our Mission, Vision, and Values to life with their creative marketing touch. They have a great team of professional, creative people, making things easy for us in every step of the creative journey.” 

Vivek Trivedi
Managing Director |  Exigo Tech

The upside for vendors participating in this process, is that it also ensures current and future marketing funding is also in line to their connected message.
Brand storytelling is no longer a nice to have. It is a need to have, and what will ultimately maximise a partner’s visibility, profit, and impact. Consider this as the launching pad to a true channel partnership.

Reach out to Hachiko and find your perfect recipe to partner marketing.