Drive Your Channel Productivity Globally

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

Most channel partners don’t have a marketing department, a marketing specialist, or even an outsourced marketing provider, and even if they do, these resources tend to operate not as marketing strategists, but more as vendor interface managers - handling multiple vendors and a variety of product lines. This is where a partner marketing concierge comes in. It is fair to say that most channel partners don’t really have the capabilities to execute vendors’ marketing programs or even specific campaigns effectively. What’s more, most channel partners don’t receive enough market development funds (MDF) at the right time to hire dedicated resources for a specific campaign or program. While some large distributors and a few, very large channel partners may receive funding for certain marketing resources on an annual contract; this is more of an exception than the rule. It looks like an impossible dilemma, but there is an easy way around this: provide the channel with partner marketing concierge services in bite-sized

The short answer is – maybe. It really depends whether you are trying to use email marketing to reach a stranger or to contact someone either you know or who knows you. The whole notion of opt-in email marketing evolved almost a couple of decades ago but email marketing is often viewed as spam because so very few people actually follow the rules. Too often we see email marketers sending out emails to a broad list of recipients that they have procured either from multiple sources or from random traffic to their website. The real characteristic of email marketing is that it is an interruptive process. Suppose you are in the middle of your workday; you are waiting either for a phone call or you are actually making a call or in a conference call and an email arrives. If you look at it and see that it is from an organization you don’t know, for the most part you simply delete the email without reading it. Data shows, however, that when an email comes from an individual, even if we don’t know them, there is more li

Lackluster returns from a marketing campaign are common, but understanding why this is the case is not always clear-cut. Traditionally, poor results are usually attributed to three failures - ineffective targeting, improper implementation (failure to use integrated marketing), and diffused messaging without a clear call to action. In this article we will focus on the approaches and tactics. Marketing Automation platforms today allow any business to pick the right tactic for the right segment. Assuming you know whom to target (very important), the next step is to understand how your targets buy, and to pick the right approach for engagement. From time to time we get calls from prospective B2B clients who just want price details and a high-level services summary. Almost every time this happens, it turns out that they are just looking for information to fill a hole in a comparative vendor chart, and we don’t have a chance to bid for that deal because the inquirer usually has already made up their mind. On the ot

Growing revenue is a top priority for most B2B IT solutions providers. New customer acquisition is one way of accomplishing this, but we all know that winning new accounts in today’s hyper competitive IT market is really hard. So what else can drive this growth? The simple answer is: taking better care of existing customers. I know it sounds obvious, but the reality is, very few IT solutions providers have client management resources that are focused on growing existing relationships and do a good job with installed base selling. In our work with IT resellers we see a consistent set of characteristics among those who are successful and are capable of growing revenue. Here is a brief summary of what we believe to be the ‘success DNA’ of solution providers who have successfully grown their revenue through installed base selling. Focus on quality of service- IT is not a hit and run business. The days of shipping a product and going dark until the next time the customer needs something are gone. Even – or esp

How things have changed during the past decade! Just a few years ago, outbound business-to-business (B2B) selling to the mid-market and enterprise – was mostly an exercise in cold calling. Now, with the advent of digital marketing and the evolution of CRMs and B2B list providers, the way that super-effective sales people sell today is very different. The sales process has evolved into an integrated social selling exercise, and it’s far more complicated. The question is what steps do we need to take to be effective sales persons today? It boils down to seven critical tactics that, if they are aligned step-by-step, will increase sales effectiveness many times over... While the sales process has always been about building trust with a potential buyer who is interested in a seller offer, how that trust is built today is totally different: Social Networking - The first step in social selling is about building your social network. In the old days, we used to call it the Rolodex, a highly personal but time-consu

Wikipedia defines trifecta as “a parimutuel bet in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first, second, and third in exact order.” The good news is that when you are running a digital marketing program you don’t need to be quite so precise in order to win the bet as long as you are properly using three key tactics: Social Marketing, Search Engine Marketing & Email Marketing. And in fact, if you upgrade your usage of just one, you can make the others work more effectively as well. Over the past couple of decades, the way we track down a good B2B vendor has changed completely. Where once we sifted through magazines or asked industry forums, now almost everything happens through online searches. In recent years, multitudes of social marketing channels like Slideshare, Facebook, or LinkedIn groups, have emerged to create a rich source of interest-specific content. These channels not only offer a value added source for news and product information, but are also a great way to listen into peer revi

Most vendors spend millions of dollars in generating end user awareness and inbound leads. However, very few have systems in place for getting those leads effectively to channel partners. Instead, many of those leads tend to be pursued by inside sales teams, but lack of an integrated channel lead management system substantially reduces marketing ROI.   At ZINFI, we regularly do channel partner satisfaction surveys and ask them how vendors can help them grow their businesses. The number one item on the list is distribution of good leads to partner sales reps. What we’ve found is that, even where leads are forwarded to top tier partners, very rarely do they have a structured system in place where leads are distributed, nurtured, qualified, tracked and closed. However, a good Channel Marketing Automation platform can significantly increase sales closures through a proper lead management system. Before we delve into this topic, let’s make sure we are clear what we mean by a lead management system. It is an automa

We frequently see vendors and providers struggling to figure out what would be the right set of programs to use Market Development Funds (MDF) or Co-operative (Co-op) Marketing Funds effectively to drive value for their partners and agents, and also provide high level of marketing ROI. In fact, there are a few insights that make it easier to do the right things right.   Over the years we have seen organizations that can sell through a channel in almost a sure fire way and increase their return on investment from Market Development Funds (MDF) by focusing on a core few programs. These seven programs and ideas certainly do not rule out the opportunity to innovate in other ways, but a good approach would be to allocate more significant portion of your MDF budget across these areas first while setting aside the remainder as discretionary budget for other, creative marketing programs. Partner Training – If you have a fee-paid certification program in place, one way to increasing return is to allow up to 80% re

There’s a pot of gold waiting for IT solution providers – and technology vendors are almost uniformly frustrated in getting their channel to make use of it. Vendors who sell through a channel or an agent network allocate between 1 and 2% of their top line revenue as Market Development Funds for their partners. However, for the most part, these Market Development Funds (MDF) fail to realize their potential. There are many reasons, chief among which are the lack of organized ways to allocate funds, track activities and measure outcomes. As a result, MDF is notorious for yielding the worst return in comparison to other direct marketing activities. Through our years of engagement in channel programs around the world, we have observed that companies who take the following steps to get the highest return from their MDF programs. Understand where MDF will be relevant – Vendor companies provide clear directives for their direct marketing teams that, in turn, should dictate how funds are allocated across business l

Most organizations who sell through the channel have both productive and unproductive partners. One of the easiest ways to grow revenue is to figure out how to transform some of the partners from unproductive into productive. Partner profiling is an excellent way to unlock this potential. If you have a channel that has hundreds or even thousands of partners, it is reasonable to assume that majority of your sales come from a small, core group of partners. While there are exceptions to this rule in some specialty cases (like niche vertical solutions resellers or those working with early stage companies), the majority of the time a significant portion of the partner base only sells once or twice a year, rather than regularly or even every day, as the most productive partners do. Over the years we have performed many channel partner profiling studies and the results show that there are three primary reasons why a partner is not productive: Lack of engagement - Vendors don’t have the resources to engage with a

Most partner portals today are a reflection of how the world used to be versus how they need to be. As we talk to our client base and their channel partners, we hear a high level of dissatisfaction with vendor portals, whether it's the technology platform, ease of use or how the content is uploaded, managed and used. Yet in every aspect of portal management, huge opportunities exist to drive more ROI by lowering cost and increasing usage by making it relevant to partners. We have been doing partner research for the past few years to understand what would improve usage of partner portals, and make them a true value added tool for channel partners. Across all partner types we have consistently found demand for a core set of capabilities that would rapidly drive up portal and content utilization. Here is a two-part summary of our findings: Localized Experience – While most large vendors tend to have somewhat localized partner portals and user interfaces, the majority of the vendors today do not provide a ful

Most partner portals today are a reflection of how the world used to be versus how they need to be. As we talk to our client base and their channel partners, we hear a high level of dissatisfaction with vendor portals, whether it's the technology platform, ease of use or how the content is uploaded, managed and used. Yet in every aspect of portal management, huge opportunities exist to drive more ROI by lowering cost and increasing usage by making it relevant to partners.We have been doing partner research for the past few years to understand what would improve usage of partner portals, and make them a true value added tool for channel partners. Across all partner types we have consistently found demand for a core set of capabilities that would rapidly drive up portal and content utilization. Here is a two-part summary of our findings:Localized Experience – While most large vendors tend to have somewhat localized partner portals and user interfaces, the majority of the vendors today do not provide a fully loc