Drive Your Channel Productivity Globally

Organizations selling via networks of channel partners (resellers, VARs, distributors, wholesales, agents, or other third party arrangement need to have a systematic approach towards partner relationship management (PRM) if they are to achieve long term success. This starts with the three primary stages of partner recruitment, partner enablement and partner management, all of which require a set of internal processes, structure and tools. Today, almost all organizations selling through the channel have deployed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) automation platforms for both direct and indirect sales teams. If you are in an organization that hasn’t yet deployed a purpose-built PRM software platform, and do not have a budget to do so in the near term, then you may want to consider configuring your existing CRM platform to support your PRM efforts in the following way. Partner Recruitment – The first step in deploying PRM is to employ a step-by-step approach to partner recruitment and onboarding. Partne

A significant portion of both B2B and B2C sales are made through a network of partners and resellers. Even today, however, most companies have antiquated channel management tools that do not live up to the full promise of their partner network. Only a very few organizations adequately invest in upgrading their channel management infrastructure, due to certain channel management misconceptions. In this article we will explore some of the common myths that impact not only the operational efficiency but also undermine the real truth about all channel networks. Partners are my indirect sales team - Nothing could be further away from the truth. While partners do have sales capability and most organizations tend to treat their partners as if they are an extension of their sales force, the reality is that partners are customers. While partners are certainly vocal and their feedback is critical because they run their own businesses, they do not regard a vendor as their equal. Maybe this is not the case if you are

Lead management is one of the top marketing keywords that is searched on Google every day, which is a clear indication of the huge and growing amount of interest in the topic. Are we clear on what lead management means? Basically, lead management is an organized way of generating, distributing and managing contacts with potential prospects, and engaging with those prospects to identify or generate an opportunity for a sales team to pursue. Lead management is one of the most important business functions, bridging both marketing and sales, through a combination of people, process and automation. Just like a fish out of water, a lead has a specific and limited lifetime. Once a lead has appeared, it needs to be nurtured, managed and closed systematically. A typical lead management system will allow an organization to manage five critical phases of the lead life cycle, as follows: Lead Generation - Content marketing has displaced the old model of telemarketing to generate leads. Today’s marketers know that buy

Every organization selling through a network of partners; be they resellers, system integrators, agents or franchise holders, struggles with partner engagement. And, one of the main areas of challenge for them is to make a partner log into the partner portal for content consumption and program awareness. There are multiple reasons why partners don’t use a vendor’s partner portal (please see our earlier article on How to Make Your Partner Portal More Partner-Friendly); however, there are simple techniques that you can use to increase partner portal access by multiple folds. One of the main techniques that is underused, or not used consistently - is social media marketing. While most organizations selling via a channel tend to use social media, our conclusions after observing multiple deployments are that social media is more often treated as a mechanism for publishing snippets of information rather than a holistic medium for partner engagement and marketing. The use of social media in the B2B space is fundamen

Many vendor organizations today are considering the implementation of end-to-end partner marketing automation tools. What’s more, many have already put in place a set of point-tools that are trying to make them all work together. The key for both of these scenarios is to make sure that partner marketing automation doesn’t take a life on its own and serve as a means to an end. The primary purpose of a partner marketing automation platform is to drive profitable growth, so yes, it must increase your partner-led demand generation activities, but it also must reduce costs by introducing more streamlined processes and greater efficiency. However, the success of a partner marketing automation platform depends directly on organizations’ following specific, sequential steps in order to deploy such capabilities globally. The following is a brief overview of the five critical choices a vendor organization must make before an integrated partner marketing automation platform can be deployed worldwide. Plutocracy vs. Dem

The process of selling has changed, because the process of buying has changed. No longer do we wait for our phone to ring and to be interrupted by a pushy telesales or telemarketing person, or expect to find out about a product through advertising; today we proactively search for what want to buy. This change in the selling process has given social syndication a key role in helping organizations to get the word out through a network of followers rather than randomly hoping to gain results from interrupting someone. This is the new age of social selling, which requires a new and differentiated approach using social syndication capabilities. It’s worth spending a few minutes defining what social syndication is before discussing how you can deploy it across your organization to drive more sales. When social media erupted onto our desktops about a decade ago, most of us thought of it at most as a way to share family photos and amusing videos of cats. However, organizations like LinkedIn, SlideShare and a few othe

Over the past few years, we have gained some fascinating insights into shifts in channel dynamics using our Unified Channel Partner Management Software and Concierge Services to run a number of partner profiling programs for our technology clients. And as we compare this data with the information we’ve gleaned from the dozens of worldwide studies that we have done, we have uncovered an amazing set of characteristics that distinguish the partners who tend to sell the most (and most profitably) and why they do so. These statistics are referenced from a different perspective in our previous articles, including 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business and 7 Risks Your IT Channel Partner Must Manage To Stay In Business, but in today’s article we want to focus on the successful channel partner. In every case, what we see is a true commitment to: 1. Relentless focus on customer value - In the technology solutions space, we consistently see that the most predominant success characteristic f

At ZINFI, we work for major global brands and every day help thousands of their channel partners improve productivity. This is not as straightforward as it might be. One of the main complaints we hear constantly from channel partners is how hard it is to use most vendors’ partner portals. Yes, a few are great, but most partner portals are complex to understand. When we ask partners what they would like to see in an ideal partner portal, the five things we consistently hear are not surprising, but somehow only rarely delivered: Ease of navigation - Far too frequently, vendors use cool marketing lingo that is utterly confusing. Why use non-specific terms like “engage” or “excite” about your channel process steps when you can use simple, unmistakable words like “welcome”, “join”, “on-board” or “train”. Calling a spade a spade is the first step in simplifying navigation in your partner portal. Also, categorizing your partner portal by straightforward functional areas like sales, marketing, technical or incenti

Vendor organizations that sell through a network of channel partners (resellers, VARS, affiliates and agents) know that most of their partners do not have dedicated marketing resources to keep their respective websites updated with fresh content from their vendors. This is where content syndication can play a significant role, allowing vendors and their channel partners to significantly enhance brand presence, control and engagement with end prospects. To make this work, an organization will need to focus on seven core areas: Deciding what to syndicate- The objective of content syndication is not to replicate a vendor’s website. On the contrary, the goal is to do two just things right: provide a set of core content that is relevant to a specific partner’s customer base, and make sure the content stays fresh and up to date. This is not the easiest of tasks, since many vendors have hundreds or even thousands of pages of content that can potentially be syndicated. Prioritizing is key. Setting up showcases-

As the world gets more and more digitized, and technology touches every aspect of our lives, one evolution that is consistent across all segments of lives is software driven automation of work steps. Whether it’s in the connected home or connected work place or intelligent manufacturing processes or financial management, business automation is here to stay, and will only increase with time. Within this fundamental change the most recent evolution has been in the area of automated channel marketing software. So why is the category of channel marketing software growing and why is it needed? And, who should consider deploying it? Before we answer these questions in detail, let’s look at the underlying factors that are driving the evolution of this new category. Over the past two decades, the Internet has become not only a medium for content distribution, but also a utility that - just like electricity, water, air conditioning or heating - keeps an organization running. Today the Internet is a utility that allows

Over my three decades’ experience in channel sales management, I have watched some people rise to the top, while others just don't know why they are not getting promoted. Based on from-the-trenches observations, I have some suggestions about how to break the deadlock if you feel you haven’t achieved the recognition you deserve. I have identified nine typical behavior patterns that our organization has consistently observed to be drivers of individual growth and promotion by effectively developing core channel sales management skills. Integrity Comes First - We are all under pressure to perform, but it is absolutely vital to avoid the temptation to take shortcuts. We have all heard hair-raising stories of attempts to trick the system: fake invoices sent to fake email addresses to book fake revenue; asking a partner to buy product and side-sell to another to make profit and share commissions; having a partner buy at the end of the quarter and then return via another service provider. In the end, whatever the p

If an Information Technology (IT) solution provider doesn’t manage a few key technology trends effectively (please read our previous article "3 Macro Trends That Could Put Your IT Channel Partners Out of Business"), the significant opportunities they create may be dwarfed by the seven major risks associated with these changes, and could result in the partner’s going out of business. These seven risks barriers remain pretty much the same as they were during previous business cycle changes in the channel in reference to Channel Marketing Automation. This time round, the big difference, is that it’s getting much harder for a solution provider to fight this current wave of changes because complexity and specialization in the channel is driving a more permanent and far-reaching alteration in business models. Loss of Existing Clients - Let’s start with a simple example of Office365. If you are a 150-person organization - like ZINFI - you’ll be familiar with the scenario. We needed IT support to make sure our Mi

Whether you are selling through the channel to end businesses or consumers, chances are you may be grappling with one or more of the following challenges: too much churn in your partner base, lack of partner marketing and sales competencies; poor marketing ROI from co-marketing activities; loss of sales velocity due to increasing channel management costs. While the success of a channel program depends on a multiplicity of factors like end user value proposition (product and solutions), partner business proposition (predictable profitable growth) and overall market growth opportunity, it takes an integrated partner relationship management (PRM) framework to successfully realize the true revenue potential of any organization selling through the channel. In this overview, we will address multiple aspects of the partner relationship management framework, starting with partner recruitment and also covering partner training, partner engagement, multi-partner demand generation and performance management. Needless to

The Information Technology channel has gone through three profound changes over the four decades or so of its existence. The first was the channel’s transition from being largely white box resellers to a more organized computer retail model. During this first phase, anyone with some cash and a lot of enthusiasm could build a personal computer. Remember the days of Computer Shopper? The next wave arrived with the advent of networking and the Internet in the late Eighties/early Nineties. This change drove several white box resellers out of business, propelled by the emergence of worldwide vendors like Dell, Compaq, HP, Toshiba, etc. The third and the last wave primarily started in the mid 2000s when a set of network management and monitoring tools burst out onto the market, allowing resellers to evolve into service providers and ultimately created a new breed, managed service providers. The recession of 2008 sparked further change for many channel partners. Large numbers of service providers closed their doors

“What you measure is what you get” is a great business mantra. And when it comes to sales, it becomes much more than that: it’s a practice that drives the future sustainability and growth of a company. To make an impact, metrics need to be applied across multiple business areas by deploying channel marketing automation, of course. For example, if you are managing sales operations through a channel partner network, you need to look beyond simple sales out. Failing to track critical channel sales metrics listed below could lead you down a blind alley where you end up not knowing what’s going to hit you next. Channel success comes as a result of setting up realistic, if ambitious expectations with your channel sales force and partner network, but these mean nothing without the ability to monitor a core set of performance metrics. Output metrics are driven by a set of processes, programs and people directly linked to their related input metrics. These will provide you with essential insights into what is actually

Whether you are at an early stage of building your channel partner network or already have a mature network, the one question that you should never stop asking is - do I really matter to my channel partner? This is probably the most important question for a channel organization seeking to be and remain truly relevant to their partners. It is certainly implied (so we won't discuss here further) that you have a competitive product or solution for your partner base to resell and make margins on and potentially attach services on top of your products and solutions, but that's only the foundation of your relationship with your channel partners. The question is how do you stay in the game and build your relationship forward? In any relationship, you can’t bask in the status quo forever. You need to keep bringing more to the table to stay relevant and interesting, and this applies particularly to the IT channel. If your organization doesn’t constantly update the ways it helps channel partners stay competitive, agile

When new opportunities beckon, many companies are tempted to jump in too early, and try to boost new product sales by building a massive channel partner network rather than examining whether the channel is equipped to deliver on expectations. Very often, in fact, a more discriminating approach yields better results. In a previous post, we discussed the necessity for channel-driven companies to balance their hopes for new products with an understanding of the economic and margin goals, the growth opportunity, the partner value proposition and their ability to ensure partner differentiation as the product matures. In the next stage of launch preparation, the focus needs to be on how to equip the channel for long-term success. There are five key checkpoints for this phase. How will you help partners to develop? - Developing a channel partner network takes time, and few organizations are equipped or ready to wait out the time for their network to mature. More frequently, we see major changes rather than incremen

The primary challenge for any reasonably large technology company with global presence, marketing in a business-to-business (B2B) channel environment, is making sure that marketing assets that are created centrally for global use can actually be deployed locally. Most companies would also like to see substantial content development and deployment at a country level to boost the local sales efforts. So, how do you do that in today's resource-constrained environment? This is where a global channel marketing automation platform and concierge services come in. In today's resource constrained environment the constant focus is on greater accountability and ROI tracking from marketing investments. Traditionally, an army of marketing resources is needed not only to develop campaigns, but also to execute them and track results. Surprisingly, very few organizations take a structured approach to marketing and few apply marketing automation or, indeed, sufficient resources to their campaigns. As a result, they resort to

Customer relationship management (CRM) has evolved into a multi-billion dollar segment, with good reason. However, the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) category is relatively new, even though channel programs have been around for many decades. Why is that? Well, phone systems for tracking and taking better care of customers were essentially started by the airline industry back in the late Sixties and early Seventies as the volume of ticketing requests and changes began to grow. Next, in the Eighties and Nineties, as computers took over the business environment, contact management software evolved as the better version of a Rolodex. Starting in the mid-Nineties, contact management software started to evolve into the precursor to what we now know as a customer relationship management. This development was driven by companies like SAP and the like, who were focused also on processes like inventory management and financial controls as features of their enterprise resource management software. Salesforce.com

One of the realities of channel marketing, of which vendor organizations are all too painfully aware, is that the majority of channel partners do not have dedicated marketing resources. So, when a vendor wants their channel partners to run marketing campaigns, it is not only essential to provide a channel marketing automation platform, but also to give the partners the means to make it happen by providing partner marketing concierge services. Now the key question is, once this preliminary phase of deployment has happened, how can a vendor optimize ROI from their programs by learning locally and then scaling globally? This article looks at the key steps to be taken. To build a state-of-the-art channel marketing platform, a vendor needs multiple core components - a channel program, partner profiling, channel marketing automation, partner marketing concierge services, proven and tested end user marketing campaigns, and marketing and sales rewards. The great news is that many of these elements can be replicated a