Highlights:
- Building and nurturing relationships are key to creating valued partners that promote RingCentral solutions.
- With in-person meetings halted during COVID-19, the Partner Team needed a new way to meet face to face with partners in the field.
- Here’s how RingCentral Video’s browser-based video meetings remove the barrier to entry for RingCentral Partners and allow collaboration to flourish.
At RingCentral, we see relationships as the glue that holds everything together. And while that’s true for all of our departments and job functions, there’s no better example of using connections to drive success than our Partner Team.
These relationship superheroes are the ones who recruit, train, and support resellers to help their clients find the best cloud communications solutions for their companies’ needs. They’re bridge-builders between RingCentral and all our channel partners in the field, nurturing those relationships as they grow from initial meet-and-greets to productive business partnerships. And they’re responsible for a lot of our company’s success: RingCentral Partners account for 75% of our worldwide field sales.
If you’re looking for the lowdown on growing rapport—both internally and externally—they’re undoubtedly the ones to talk to.
Obviously, attributes like trust, communication, and collaboration play a big role in their relationship building. But while those are vital, the success of our RingCentral Partners is also due to one of our most fundamental traits: simplicity. That is, how simple using the RingCentral app really is.
Here’s how they do it:
The power of video
Our Partner Team is more than just a channel for sales, marketing, and technical support. They’re the go-to for all of our external partners. And they know better than anyone the power of face-to-face interactions in building trust.
These team members work from the field on a permanent remote basis so they can regularly meet with our valued partners. As anyone in sales will tell you, those in-person meetings are crucial at all stages of their relationships. According to a Harvard Business Review study, 95% of people say meeting in person is a key factor in being able to build and maintain long-term business relationships.
Now, COVID-19 has obviously limited our Partner Team with respect to in-person meetings, but it hasn’t dented their ability to keep growing and supporting their most important work relationships. In fact, with RingCentral Video, the team has shown that productive and collaborative relationships can be successful even when you can’t meet partners in person.
No downloads required
While the enormous popularity of video meetings over the last year will attest to the effectiveness, the experience often leaves much to be desired.
Take the simple act of getting together on video—something that should be simple but often is not. At the earliest stages of the relationship, many of our partners aren’t yet familiar with RingCentral and are using other video tools. In setting up those meetings, it became clear to our Partner Team pretty quickly that there was a better way.
Ever been late to a call because you didn’t realize in advance that the meeting link would require you to download, install, and configure a whole platform? Our Partner Team feels your pain.
The RingCentral solution is instantly accessible via Chrome and Safari browsers, and it’s become the team’s ace in the hole. With RingCentral, you don’t need to use a special app to join a meeting—all participants need to do is click a link.
Not only does not having to download a new service eliminate a sizable barrier to connecting, it also demonstrates the ease of using RingCentral better than words or demos ever could. Our Partner Team members can schedule meetings and send invites directly from Outlook via the RingCentral Scheduler integration, and then partners can choose to download the platform or join the meeting from their browsers.
Taking relationships to the next level
Easier video meetings are just one way our Partner Team takes “it’s complicated” out of their relationships. Just like friendships grow every bit as much over group text as they do via face-to-face hangouts, business relationships build and grow over multiple channels. We support those ongoing partner relationships with messaging teams.
Messaging teams offer a single place to keep track of conversations and all of the information and assets that go along with them.
Also available on Chrome and Safari, as well as the RingCentral app, partners simply have to register and be added to a messaging team to join in. Once signed up, they can access a team’s chat history, ask and respond to questions, and view pinned messages, documents, photos, and everything else that’s been discussed and shared. It helps our partners get up to speed—and keeps both sides of the relationship in the loop.
Good relationships start by making it easy
In business and in life, the best relationships are the ones that are supported by open, easy communication. That’s why our Partner Team builds their connections with RingCentral.
We believe our simple and easy user experience is one of our greatest competitive advantages. When it comes to building great relationships with partners, that begins with “no downloads required” video meetings that eliminate the complexity of meeting face-to-face.
Building new relationships isn’t about forcing people out of their comfort zones—it’s about creating easy, seamless communications channels that create bridges and remove barriers to collaboration. It’s what makes our Partner Team a success—and it’s what we’re really all about here at RingCentral.
Originally published Apr 13, 2021, updated Jan 18, 2023