When it comes to SaaS Renewals through Partners, there are six key measures for partner performance and Success. In our whitepaper series discussing challenges and best practices of selling SaaS renewals through partners, we identified five areas of risk. These range from partner “fit” with the vendor’s target market for SaaS offerings to the risk we’ll address in this blog – incomplete, untimely information. Although much has been written about SaaS sales and renewal metrics, it turns out that very little has been written about how these metrics need to address partner recruiting and ongoing performance management.
The third and final whitepaper – Managing Channel SaaS Renewal Performance and Success Metrics/KPI’s – was written to help fill this void. This blog captures the highlights of that paper by identifying the six key measures of partner performance vendors need to consider when working with partners. However, more details can be found by downloading the whitepaper in it’s entirety.
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SaaS Renewals through Partners
Six Key Measures of Partner Performance and Success
1. Opportunity
Why it’s important for partner performance management:
- A sales opportunity is a major component of the value proposition to partners – used for recruiting and strengthening a vendor’s competitive position within partners’ businesses.
Key Metric:
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
2. Financial Performance
Why these metrics are important for partner performance management:
- Help to position the importance of renewals to the total business and, therefore, the importance of “getting it right” with partners
- Help to identify strengths and weaknesses of the channel system – by key end-user segment, by partner segment, by region, by individual partner, etc.
- Informs the renewal team’s change management and channel management roles
Key Metrics:
- Renewals revenue as a % of total revenue
- Annual recurring revenue (ARR)
- Renewals rate
- Renewals rate growth
- Service attach rate
- Influenced renewal revenue
- Cost of customer acquisition (COA)
- Cost to serve
3. Churn
Why it’s important for partner performance management:
- Analysis of variance helps identify partner strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities for education, coaching and support
- Facilitates early flagging of competitive programs designed to displace your offer
- Informs and helps prioritize efforts to retain key segments
Key Metrics:
- % “natural” vs. “preventable” churn
- Primary causes of each type of churn
4. Customer Experience
Why these metrics are important for partner performance management:
- Help to identify both product and channel issues early on – before renewals revenue is impacted
- Provide input into partner training and support
- Often identify untapped opportunity within key segments and/or key accounts
Key Metrics:
- Customer satisfaction
- With offer
- With partner/channel
- Usage
5. Cross Channel Effectiveness
Why these metrics are important for partner performance management:
- SaaS renewals through partners require a high level of cross-functional and cross-channel cooperation, communication and coordination
- Improve revenue capture, retention and growth
- Improve customer, partner and direct team satisfaction
- Capture inefficiencies in use of vendor high cost resources
Key Metrics:
- Partner participation
- Partner growth and self-sufficiency
- Cross-channel cooperation
- Timeliness and financial success of follow-up on leads transferred from partner to vendor and vice versa
- Timeliness and financial success of renewal closure when partner requests vendor support for a renewal more complex than the partner can handle
- Team win rates in competitive bid situations
- % of AE time spent on renewals vs. new business
6. Operational Efficiency
Why these metrics are important for partner performance management:
- SaaS renewals require accurate, timely information in order to assure the “gold standard” close rate required for a successful renewals business.
- They can mean the difference between business loss, break-even or profit.
- Great potential for vendors to add value to the partner relationship by taking on important, and costly, management functions on behalf of the channel.
Key Metrics:
- Installed base accuracy
- Subscription contracts by customer
- Subscription expiration dates and values
- Timeliness of notices to customers
The final whitepaper in our series on How to Engage the Channel for Successful SaaS Renewals, defines and discusses these metrics in greater depth. While all of these metrics are important, it’s up to the renewals team to prioritize them and develop ways to capture and communicate them clearly and consistently.
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