BullsEye Department Spotlight: Partner Support
Recently, we spoke with Lea Seaton Director – Support Services, about Partner Support’s goals, functions, and recent accomplishments.
Q: What are the Partner Support department’s goals?
All of our goals support our Strategic Partner Managers (SPMs) and their partners as well as facilitating complete and accurate orders we send to our team in Operations. This translates into measuring how long it takes to get quote requests turned around, how long it takes to get MSA’s redlined, and how quickly we react to orders that get returned to sales due to missing information.
Q: Tell us about some of the functions of the Partner Support Team.
We wear many hats in Partner Support! We facilitate all RFP responses, MSA redline requests and ICB requests, we create quotes for SMB and Enterprise customers, we answer commissions inquiries, we assist with training our SPM’s and our partners, we maintain our Contract Management system, and we function as the first quality assurance gate as orders pass from Sales to Operations. We also assist with training our new SPM’s and new partners who want to sell our products.
Q: Does the Partner Support team interface with other departments?
Oh yes – we interface with every department within the company as we assist our SPM’s with their open opportunities that eventually evolve into sales. A few examples are the following: we work with Product Marketing to get ICB’s approved, we work with Service Delivery and Provisioning to alert them of Enterprise Sales that are about to close, we work with our Client Services and Client Relationship Managers to assist with any orders that are generated from our embedded customer base, and we work with our Software Development team as we continue to enhance our quoting system.
Q: What is ONE word that best describes a “day in the life” of the Partner Support department?
REACTIVE. We react to all requests from our partner channel and our SPM’s in an effort to make selling Bullseye products easy and efficient.
Q: What are some challenges the Partner Support team faces?
It’s not going to come as a surprise that our largest challenge is that we serve many masters. We certainly work on behalf of our SPM’s to get orders closed, but we also work on behalf of our Operations’ counterparts to ensure that the orders we are releasing to Operations are complete and accurate. The other consistent challenge we face is getting our quotes and paperwork completed quickly, despite the volume of the requests that we receive.
Q: How does the Partner Support department promote morale and collaboration within the team?
The camaraderie present within the team is impressive. The folks on the Partner Support team have been with each other for several years (with the exception of our new Commissions Analyst), and they are very much invested in each other’s success. We meet regularly in team meetings and have a specific time set aside in those meetings to share lessons learned and/or best practices they’ve learned that week. The team keeps a running time off calendar that is visible to everyone to ensure we have proper coverage for all of our functions without heavily burdening any one person on the team.
Q: What are some of the ways the Partner Support department has displayed BullsEye’s core values?
I think organically in the role the team is in, we are constantly displaying the ‘we take the extra time to do things right the first time,’ ‘we do what’s best for the client,’ ‘we promote continuous improvement in everything we do,’ and ‘we pay attention to details’ values. It’s imperative that the quotes and paperwork we send out are accurate. As we see obstacles to revenue achievement, we call those out with options for corrective action. We must ensure our quotes are accurate so that we don’t frustrate our partners and our end-users. We take the time to proof what we are presenting so that even the smallest detail is considered and checked for quality.
Q: What are some of the Partner Support department’s recent accomplishments?
Really our accomplishments are around creating more refined processes. This has allowed us to respond in a timelier manner both internally and externally, to our partners. We’ve also achieved some major milestones when it comes to the number of quotes we turn around in a specific amount of time. We’re pretty proud of that.