Our Zift Zone Strategic Alliance Program has some standout channel leaders in its roster. AchieveUnite is no exception, with its commitment to maximizing results and promoting channel best practices in its clients’ channel programs.
Recently we spoke with AchieveUnite’s founder and CEO Theresa Caragol about how our alliance benefits vendors and their partners, what they’re excited for in the rest of 2019, and thought leadership that’s changing the channel.
Q: Why is AchieveUnite partnering with Zift Solutions?
A: Founder & CEO Theresa Caragol for AchieveUnite: Fifty percent of the sales cycle is done before a person ever talks to another person. So, the notion of marketing self-to-self is incredibly important in the channel right now — Arguably, more important than ever. Zift has a very good marketing automation platform and capabilities for vendors to pivot from, and we want to help bridge that gap with vendors and channel partners.
Another reason we’re partnering with Zift is the real thought leadership talent present in folks like Laz Gonzalez, who are bringing concepts and strong thought leadership to the channel. At AchieveUnite, we really resonate with that!
Q: What can AchieveUnite and Zift do for channel organizations and their partners?
A: On our end, we help companies in three areas: channel marketing, strategy, and planning expertise. We ask what results they need to drive and how they plan to get those results, then we help execute those goals.
The second area that we help with is channel marketing automation. We drive companies towards best practices in how they scale their SaaS, their incentives, and rewards. How do they scale so that they can offer the best solution at the most optimal cost for their partners and ultimately end-customers? We help them answer that question.
And then, the third area is in specific marketing and enablement initiatives to help drive adoption of the plan and automation. That could be a custom enablement program around business planning or marketing planning, or it could be digital forensics for partners to make sure that they are doing their best sales in the marketplace.
Q: What is AchieveUnite’s primary focus area of expertise?
A: We have a few areas of focus. We focus on consulting and we have a practice that focuses on channel strategy, channel analytics, and channel programs. There’s also our automation market, which is our integration services. It comes from an automation perspective and covers the whole suite of channel program automation that companies need to adopt. We consult and we educate.
Our practices include complete partner program assessments around partner recruiting and engagement, deal and opportunity management, onboarding, content management, concierge services as well as automation readiness and tool implementations. We also consult on modern marketing strategies which include best-of-breed digital executions and social media insights.
Our Channel Acceleration Bootcamp launches in October, which is great for companies or individuals who need to learn the channel from a strategic perspective. We’ll be focusing on topics like what go-to-market model you should have if you’re trying to build a channel program and all the different aspects of channel strategy.
We also have ACE: Leadership by Influence. This teaches all the hard and soft skills required to be a channel leader in the industry. For instance, if a company needs to drive partners to improve their digital presence, we’ll show them exactly what a best-in-class digital presence looks like. Then we accredit them at the end of that program once they’ve adopted those recommendations. Essentially, we coach around all different aspects of the channel through our ACE program.
Q: Do you integrate with or provide specific services around ZiftONE?
A: We’re a Zift Zone Service partner, which means we provide strategy and services as a complement to ZiftONE. Additionally, we help clients integrate and connect with ZiftONE, making sure that all the programs and services are built accordingly to make our clients successful.
Q: What are the broader business challenges that Zift and AchieveUnite can help tackle together?
A: I would say there are two answers in this one. We’ve recently completed research with the University of Glasgow around the lifetime value of partners. You can think about customer lifetime value like this: If one customer goes and buys a car, and they’re all the same value, and they buy ten cars, that’s a 10X value, but a partner can do that a hundred times or a thousand times. So, you can basically quantify partner lifetime value. What are the six predictors that you have to have for your partner program in order to be successful to retain your partners for life? The research in our eBook: The Key to Long-Time Partner Success answers that.
We are also going to be coming out with our 2020 channel marketing predictions soon, so be on the lookout for that.
Want to learn more about AchieveUnite? Head over to their blog and subscribe for more great channel thought leadership. They’re at CompTIA ChannelCon this week as well. Be sure to stop in on August 6 at 10:45am or 1pm to hear Theresa Caragol speak more on channel strategy and partner value props. We’ll be at ChannelCon, too. Looking forward to seeing you there!
