Your partners are the face of your brand. They sell your product, service, refer, and market it. They also drive revenue, with 50% of the respondents to a Hubspot study attributing a quarter of their revenue to partners.

It’s no surprise that strategic partnerships are increasingly popular; 75% of the world is trading indirectly, using partnerships, channels and alliances to bring in revenue.

With partners playing such an important role in your business, it stands to reason that you should be training them. Partner training ought to be a win-win — online partner training means they learn all about your product and your brand, and sales increase for both of your organizations. Despite this fact, only about 36% of organizations with partner programs provide training.

This may be because partner enablement can be difficult to enforce. Channel partners aren’t always interested in taking training. They may consider training unnecessary, a drain on their time, or even unhelpful. All of these attitudes pose a problem. Partners without proper training can lead to lost sales and poor customer experience.

Can you make your partners take training?

First the bad news: you probably can’t force your partners to take the training you’ve created for them. They’re not your employees, so you can’t require them to log into a learning management system (LMS) or take a module.

There is good news, however. You can overcome their resistance by making training more attractive to them. Below are some strategies that will help you do just that.

1. Understand why your partners avoid your training
   The first step in overcoming your partners’ resistance to training is understanding it. There are a number of reasons your partners might not be engaging.
   • They don’t think it’s broken, so don’t want to fix it: Your partners might feel that they can sell your product well on their own, without training from you. Taking a training module on your newest product may not seem like a good investment of their time.
   • You’re one of many: You may not be the only vendor your partners work with; some partners work with several companies. If that’s the case with your partners, they may not feel they have enough time to keep up with all their suppliers’ training programs.
   • Your training doesn’t answer their questions: If your training doesn’t answer your partners’ questions, they may not bother engaging with your modules in the future.
   • Your training is difficult to access: Is your training only accessible via a partner portal, or a complicated LMS? If getting to your training is a hassle, your partners are unlikely to bother with it.

   Once you know why your partners aren’t taking advantage of your training, it’s time to review your training program itself to see if that’s the problem. If your partners aren’t accessing — or completing – your training, there are two things that might be wrong with your existing program: your delivery and your content.

2. Evaluate your learning platform
   How are partners accessing your learning? Do they have to log in to a partner portal or LMS? Do they have to be at a computer? How many logins are required, exactly? How long is each module?

   If getting to your training is a hassle for your partners, chances are they’re not going to take it. Your partners are likely strapped for time, and if they need to know something about your company or product, they’re going to want to get to that information quickly.

   Make sure links to your training are prominently displayed in your partner portal and make your modules easily accessible on every device. Because channel partner training isn’t mandatory, you need to make it as easy as possible for your partners to log in and find the learning they need.

3. Take stock of your training content
   You might be offering the learning you think your partners should have, but what do they actually need?

   For example, you might offer a product training module whenever you release a new offering, but your partner may feel that module is redundant — it might repeat information they can get from other channels, like documentation or your partner portal. What they may need is sales coaching, so sales reps can overcome specific objections when they’re talking to potential customers.

   It’s important that your training serves your company’s needs, you’re more likely to get your partners to take courses if that learning addresses their specific problems and concerns. Listen to the questions your partners are asking you. Reach out to them; ask them what they need to know in order to do their job more effectively. Then you can build your course content around their answers.

   It’s possible that in trying to cover your partner training bases, your content is too basic. You can use your LMS metrics to determine if this is the case: compare your partners’ sales with the training they’ve consumed. If they’re selling well, but not taking training, your training isn’t helping them.

   In this case, consider updating your training to provide higher-level learning. You may want to offer training tiers, offering more basic information at the lowest tier and working up to more advanced modules for partners with more experience, an approach taken by Extreme Network with their global partners.

4. Keep it short
   Time is money and training takes time. Understand that your partners have other obligations, and don’t make training that takes a lot of time. Consider microlearning, an approach to training that delivers small, intensely-focused chunks of learning to your partners. This is an effective way to boost their retention and get new information into their hands quickly, without taking up too much of their time.
5. Offer some incentive
   Sometimes partners just need a little push to start training. If you haven’t incentivized your partner program or your training, now is the time to start. Partner training incentives differ from company to company, but here are some common incentive ideas:
   • Credentials: Some companies offer certifications for completing training. This is often positioned as a way for a partner to market themselves to their own prospects — if you’ve completed a certain number of courses in a certain subject area, you might receive a gold or silver rating, and a badge you can display on your site to attract clients.
   • Offer prizes: You can encourage your partners to train more by offering a competition among partners –whichever channel partner completes the most training receives a prize. (And public recognition on your portal, of course.)
   • Gamification: Add points and leaderboards to make your training a game. This can be done in conjunction with offering prizes, or by itself. Done well, gamification can motivate your partners.

Why partner training is critical

When you work with partners, they become a critical piece of your business. For example, 57% of businesses rely on their partners to bring in new customers.

Training is an important way to make sure those partners have all the tools they need to sell and service your product effectively.