7 common challenges with channel partner management + 3 tools to solve them

You already have partners, but are they driving results – or just taking up time? Many businesses struggle with tracking partners’ performance, unclear deal credit and channel conflict.

A solid channel partner management strategy helps you fix these issues, boost partner revenue and minimize energy invested in low-performing partners.

In this article, you’ll discover solutions to seven common problems businesses face when managing partnerships. You’ll also learn about partnership relationship management tools that will save you time as you scale your partnerships.

Key takeaways for channel partner management

• Common challenges when managing partners include disengagement, conflict about deal ownership and confusion over co-marketing policies.

• Solve problems with partners by creating standardized procedures, communicating expectations upfront and staying in connection with partners across the partner lifecycle.

• A partnership management tool collates all your information about partners, creating a single location for collaboration, training and measuring sales performance.

• Pipedrive’s intuitive UI, flexible custom fields and powerful partner segmentation features help you manage your partnerships more effectively – sign up for a 14-day free trial.

7 channel partner management challenges (and how to solve them)

Whether you’re working with resellers, affiliates or distributors, collaborating with partners can be tough.

Goals don’t always line up, communication breaks down and it’s hard to track the results of your marketing efforts.

Here are seven challenges that mature businesses typically face with partner relationship management and tips for overcoming them.

1. Partners who have disengaged from the selling process

Disengaged partners are those who have joined your program but aren’t actively promoting your product or communicating with you.

If they make any sales at all, the revenue is likely much lower than what your other partners generate.

Demotivated partners are at their most damaging when they have a direct line to your customers.

If a partner appears checked out or cynical, your users will notice and it’s bound to negatively impact customer satisfaction.

If you don’t improve partner engagement:

• Customers who interact with demotivated partners will have a negative perception of your brand

• Your partnership managers will find interacting with partners stressful and draining, which might lead them to quit

• Your internal team could lose confidence in your partner strategy altogether

The solution: To fix this problem, create a partner onboarding program that addresses the issue pre-emptively.

Clearly outline for your partners what you need from them and how you’ll support them in achieving shared goals.

Pay particular attention to what’s in it for the partner. That could be money, social proof, referrals, networking, training or all of the above. Meaningful incentive programs will keep them engaged.

Instead of leaving them to their own devices after onboarding, check in with your partners on a regular basis, perhaps once a month. Make sure they know you’re there for them and listen carefully to any concerns they raise.

2. Partners who feel confused over co-marketing requirements

If co-marketing partners don’t know what you expect of them, they usually do nothing, rather than risk getting it wrong.

The opposite can also happen. Some partners launch campaigns without checking in first. Without guidelines, these campaigns can create brand inconsistency and it can be awkward if you need a partner to retract a statement.

Partners may misunderstand how much effort is required on their side in terms of creating sales collateral, running ads or talking to customers. Some under-commit and never get off the ground. Others over-commit and expect more support than you ever agreed to provide.

If you don’t clarify co-marketing requirements:

• Partners who show initiative will feel resentful if you ask them to undo the work they’ve put in because it doesn’t align with marketing requirements

• Your partnership managers will spend more time cleaning up messes than scaling what works

• You’ll lack a fair way to compare the actions of one partner to another, so you’ll struggle to tell which partners are worth investing in

The solution: To fix this problem, create a simple co-marketing playbook. Explain what partners can do on their own, what requires approval and what kind of support they can expect from you.

Use a tier-based system to set different expectations for different partners. Lower tiers might only get access to basic templates and guidelines. Higher tiers might commit to joint webinars, case studies or events.

Make your co-marketing workflow obvious. Give partners an easy way to propose an idea, get approval and launch. When the next step is clear, partners are more likely to follow through.

3. Compensation models that lead to channel conflict

If your compensation model pits partners against each other or against your internal sales team, conflict is inevitable.

For example, if you don’t assign deals and offer a flat commission, partners will race to claim the same accounts. Your sales reps will often undercut partners to meet their quotas, even if it damages long-term channel partner relationships.

Over time, partners will stop trusting your system and start questioning whether it’s worth bringing you deals at all.

If you don’t create a more equitable compensation model:

• You’ll spend a lot of time arbitrating stressful disputes between frustrated partners

• Your partnership database will be full of partners who look active, but are really engaged in scheming against each other

• Your top partners will be those who are best at outmaneuvering the competition, not those who serve your customers the best

The solution: To address this problem, develop a compensation model that reflects different roles in the deal. For example, sourcing and closing a deal aren’t the same thing, so don’t reward them identically. Separating them stops partners from getting in each other’s way.

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You also need to align internal sales objectives with partner success. Some companies count a rep’s deal toward their quota when it’s sourced by a partner, even if the rep’s role is limited to closing. The rep still hits their number, so there’s no incentive to cut the partner out.

Make sure you create a simple arbitration framework. Conflicts will still happen, but partners need to know there is a fair, predictable way to resolve them. Clear rules about deal ownership and a transparent escalation process will remove emotion from the process and restore trust.

4. Loss of influence when a partner gets acquired

When a partner gets acquired by a larger business, the consolidated company usually focuses on promoting its largest partners – often your competitors.

If your company isn’t a preferred partner, you risk being cut from their list altogether.

Alternatively, the economies of scale achieved by a large partner might force you to lower prices, just to stay competitive.

If your relationship isn’t strong enough when your partners get bought out:

• Partners may demand discounts or extra support to keep promoting you, eroding margins

• You might see a drop in partners getting certified in how to use your product, due to them disengaging from your relationship

• You’ll lose out on previously reliable revenue from partners you thought you could depend on

The solution: To prevent the above from happening, ask your partners what they need from you to become a preferred partner. Listen carefully to their requirements and do your best to hold up your end of the bargain.

Deepen your integrations so your product becomes indispensable to your partner’s workflow. For example, instead of a basic file‑sharing integration, you could allow partners to sync data automatically between systems.

Track the revenue and efficiency gains your partners are getting from working with you and share those numbers with them monthly. When partners can see tangible ROI, it’s easier for them to justify working with you than with your competitors.

5. Unclear process for accessing marketing development funds

When your process for accessing market development funds (MDF) is unclear, partners won’t know when to ask for financial support.

If smaller partners are unsure what MDF can be used for, when they’re eligible or how long approvals take, they’ll either avoid asking altogether or submit speculative requests just to test your system.

Your MDF might end up flowing to the partners who need them the least, just because they have the resources to employ an MDF specialist whose job is to obtain MDF from other companies.

If your MDF process remains opaque:

• MDF will be claimed on a first-come basis, rather than allocated to the highest-impact opportunities

• Partners will delay or cancel campaigns because they won’t know when to expect reimbursement for marketing expenses

• MDF discussions will become negotiable on a case-by-case basis, creating a system you can’t scale

The solution: To fix this issue, create an MDF policy document that spells out who can apply, what activities are eligible and how you make approval decisions. Keep it simple so partners don’t need to ask for clarification before every request.

Define clear service-level agreements (SLAs) for approvals and reimbursements. When partners know how long payment decisions will take, they can plan campaigns properly and trust that your system is fair.

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Standardize your MDF request process by creating a single intake form that captures goals, budget and expected outcomes. An organized form makes requests easier to compare and gives partners a clear, repeatable way to apply.

6. Limited training given to partners

When you give partners insufficient training, they don’t understand your product well enough to sell it confidently.

As a result, they rely on surface-level knowledge, outdated materials or their own assumptions.

At best, this leads to inconsistent product messaging. At worst, partners end up in sales conversations where they can’t answer prospects’ questions, which is frustrating for both parties.

Without training:

• Customers will hear different stories depending on which partner they talk to

• Deals will take longer to close because partners won’t be able to articulate the value of your product

• Partners will lose confidence in sales interactions and eventually disengage from working with you

The solution: To increase your partners’ understanding of your product, create a partner portal that puts all your training resources, sales materials and product updates in one place. Consider building it into your knowledge base.

Include a certification program to validate your partners’ knowledge level. Partners will get a boost of confidence from positioning themselves as certified and your customers will feel like they’re talking to an expert.

It’s smart to offer training in multiple formats so partners can learn in a way that suits them. Formats might include short videos, written guides or live sessions with a product manager.

Make sure you keep training resources updated, especially when launching a new product or introducing new functionality.

7. Not measuring partner performance

When you can’t see how partners are performing, it’s difficult to know which partners to invest more in.

Without clear performance data, partnership managers rely on anecdotes, sporadic check-ins or gut feelings to decide where to focus resources.

The partners who are rewarded under this system are those who are most vocal, not the ones who are delivering the best results for your business.

If you don’t track how partners perform:

• High-performing partners won’t get recognition, which may cause them to disengage

• You won’t be able to identify underperformers

• It will be harder to have fair conversations with partners about what financial expectations you have and whether they’ve met them

The solution: To fix this problem, identify KPIs for your partners and share them openly. KPIs might include revenue, profitability, average deal size, number of leads submitted and number of product demos delivered.

Track your partners’ progress toward their KPIs on a partner performance dashboard. Make it accessible to your leadership team so everyone can see where partners stand in real time.

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Check in with your partners on a regular basis to review their performance. If in doubt, quarterly is a good starting point. Consistent check-ins make it easier to spot issues early or reward high-performing partners before they disengage

3 channel partnership management tools to overcome common challenges

If you’re a marketing manager who wants to grow your business using partnerships, many of the challenges described above will be easier to solve if you use partnership relationship management (PRM) software.

For example, instead of creating a partner training program on an external platform, create it in your PRM and use your PRM to track which partners have completed the program. You could then segment your partners by which training programs they’ve completed.

Here are three tools you can use to streamline your partner marketing.

1. Pipedrive

Best known as a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, Pipedrive doubles as channel partner management software for teams that want to scale up their partnerships.

You can use Pipedrive to build a pipeline for your partnerships, just as you would for your leads and customers. Pipedrive presents pipelines visually in an intuitive, Kanban style:

Pipedrive lets you customize the names of the stages of your pipeline so you can track where a particular partner is in the partner lifecycle. Commonly used stages include:

• Outreach

• Negotiating

• Contract signed

• Campaign running

• Needs attention

Each card in a particular stage represents an individual partner.

Using Pipedrive’s custom fields, you can store tons of helpful data about that partner on their card, such as:

• Multiple contact people

• Estimated annual revenue

• Notes from meetings

• Date last contacted

• Completed certifications and trainings

You can create multiple different pipelines for different partner segments or you can add segmentation data at an individual partner level using a custom field.

Segmentation allows you to check in on your highest-priority partners, such as those on your gold or platinum partner tiers, at a glance.

Pipedrive’s PRM software also comes with built-in task management, so you can see what the next step is for any given partner and who on your team is responsible for that step.

If you need to provide reports about partnership activity to senior leadership, Pipedrive lets you add important metrics to your dashboard, such as total revenue generated. From there, it’s a matter of a couple of clicks to generate a report and send it to management.

2. Channelyze

Channelyze is a partnership management solution that comes with a partner locator, letting you find partners in your local region.

Channelyze also integrates with Pipedrive.

After identifying suitable partners, you can drive them to a custom sign-up page that you can also create with Channelyze.

Channelyze sorts the data of partners who sign up and automatically puts them into your PRM.

Once they’re part of your partner network, you can use Channelyze to send communication blasts to all your partners at once. Partners receive these in the form of a feed, similar to social media.

To prevent friction between partners over who should take credit for a deal, Channelyze allows partners to register deals. If a partner tries to claim a deal that has already been taken, Channelyze will automatically notify the deal owner.

You can pre-empt conflict over pricing by giving partners a set price list. Channelyze automatically builds in the partner’s margin and sets up a billing schedule.

To make marketing easier for partners who lack resources, you can use Channelyze to distribute marketing materials.

For teams that want to invest in partner education, Channelyze will also let you curate partner training programs and make them available to your partners. On the card for each partner, you can track which training programs they’ve taken.

3. Journeybee

Journeybee is a portal for managing partnerships.

Journeybee also integrates with Pipedrive. It lets you create an onboarding path for each new partner. When new partners join your network, they get a checklist that tells them how to get set up as a partner, as well as a resource library tailored to their needs.

Once partners are part of your network, you can use Journeybee to support co-marketing and co-selling. For example:

• You can create a campaign room where you and your partners can upload logos, brand guidelines and presentations

• You can view a shared timeline so that both you and your partners know what co-marketing deadlines you’re working toward

• If you create a joint webinar, you can share the list of attendees in the campaign room, giving both teams a list for future outreach

• You can set up a digital sales room to store RFPs for clients, proposals, sales strategy decks, pricing sheets and demo notes

Journeybee comes with several automations that simplify co-selling, including automated deal registration and automated commission payouts to partners.

For teams that want to invest in training and enablement, Journeybee also offers an LMS module that allows you to create in-house courses and certifications.

Channel partner management FAQs

Final thoughts

Managing channel partners can be a challenging process, even for mature companies with sophisticated marketing systems.

All of this is easier to deal with if you have a PRM tool in place to help manage your partner relationships.

Pipedrive stands out with its intuitive Kanban interface, flexible custom fields, built-in task management and automated reporting.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to start organizing your partner ecosystem today.