Practical Customer Relationship Management - Developing and Implementing an Industry Partner Program

Certification organizations typically identify their primary customers as the individuals seeking or holding their certifications. While these customers represent occupations in an organization’s target industry, they are not the sole beneficiaries of their mission. A certification organization’s value is ultimately decided by the corporations, government agencies, and industry representatives that employee and support their certificate holders.

I encourage you to expand your customer base to include all those that benefit from and your organization? It is time to galvanize the support of potential industry partners to increase industry buy in and generate additional resources to support and expand your programs.

Potential partners for a certification organization are corporations that hire your certificate holders, associations whose members hire or hold your certificates, foundations with a focus on your niche, and government agencies that oversee workforce development. Each corporation, association, foundation, and government agency in the pool of potential partners has a mission that drives them, objectives that surround accomplishing this mission, and money that is spent to achieve the objectives followed by revenue indicating success.

It is critical for your organization’s mission and objectives to overlap and complement the mission and objectives of a potential partner. The strongest sponsors, with the largest contributions, will be found at these intersections.

Industry Partnerships are about relationships—the right relationships. Industry Partnerships are about connections—connections that result in partnership. Find the right relationships to build strong connections that result in partnership. Partnerships can provide the financial resources and industry points of view needed to update and validate existing programs. 

Partners can provide the financial resources to develop new certification programs and the industry support to drive these new programs. Partners can place value on certification programs that will result in increased applicants and certificate holders, and industry-wide recognition of an organization.

-Anna

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