How to be a Successful White Label Partner 

In order to be a successful White Label Partner, it is important to understand the steps you can take for a smooth partnership. In our White Board Wednesday series, we have covered the definition of White Label Services and who they work best for. If you missed that post, you can check that out here. 

Success With WLP

At NETRIO, we have seen the most success with White Label Partners when they have the resources internally that are capable of doing project management. It is important to evaluate your organization holistically when you’re considering white label management and ask yourself if you have the resources available and the right people in position to be successful in those areas. If project management is not something that you do for your clients, then an agent model may be a better fit for your long-term success. If project management is a part of your business model and you are comfortable working with those teams, then White Label is probably a good option for you.

It is important to keep in mind that a white label partner is very involved in the onboarding process, as well as the daily communication, while an agent model is more hands-off. In this blog post, we take a deep dive into white labeling vs. agent partners to help you decide which is a better fit for your organization.

The Journey to WLP

When it comes to creating a successful white label business model, communication and education are key. If you are in a trusted advisor position today and you’re providing mostly agent type services to your customer base, it’s advantageous to pursue a white label engagement with your clients. The more education that you do around managed services, how they work and what makes them a success, the more easily you will find success with this model.

Communication is what makes a successful white label partner. It’s about educating yourself on the process and making sure you understand what’s going to happen at each cycle. Additionally, when you are adding value from a project management perspective, you know the client’s environment and you are playing that trusted advisor role between your client and the managed service provider to make sure that everybody has the right expectation and understands who the right points of contact are.

The key is educating yourself within both organizations. Find out who the important people are that will be involved in the process during the course of the engagement, as well as on the customer side. Continually educating yourself about how the engagement is going to work long term and then staying engaged to make sure it’s a success is the journey to a successful white label model.

Negotiation Strength with the WLP Model

The further that you can get in advancing the relationship with the client and demonstrating what your value is, the more that relationship will grow. As your current clients are looking to you to provide to deliver those types of services, they will continue to come to you when new opportunities arise. This will result in higher budgets and more money invested into your organization by the client.

Once you become that trusted advisor that’s now delivering multiple products for them, you put yourself in a position where you have more control over your margins. This will result in the ability to grow your business. It is not necessary to increase your spend. You just increase your top line revenue and you get the margin to go with it. You pair some professional services on the back side of it to do the project management, the other aspects of client relationship management and consequently you secure a strong spot in the marketplace.

This blog post is part of NETRIO’s weekly White Board Wednesday series. Follow along on Linkedin and YouTube each week as Brian and Mike discuss use cases, new technology, and trends. The goal is to provide insights for enterprise customers and channel partners, trying to solve complex problems using technology.