Drive Your Channel Productivity Globally

Organizations selling through the channel always worry about one primary thing: driving more sales at a lower cost. The entire purpose of a channel organization is to extend reach to every part of a market where the product or service has value, ideally piggy-backing on other organizations that already have invested in generating demand and capturing it through their sales and delivery teams. A major focus for any partner relationship management (PRM) program is a unified lead management capability for generating leads and distributing them to partners—but also for allowing partners to generate leads and close deals on their own. In this article, we will explore how partner relationship management automation can help organizations generate more leads at a lower cost and then manage the lifecycle to attain a higher sales closure rate. The primary purpose of lead generation and management is to identify prospects who have a pain point that a specific product or service can fulfill. Entire armies of marketing

Over the past 40 years the world has been speeding up the pace of digital adoption. While it may seem like Amazon was founded yesterday, it was actually founded in 1994—about 25 years ago. Microsoft was founded a couple of decades earlier than Amazon, in 1975, and Oracle was founded in 1977. About a decade earlier than Microsoft, Intel was founded in 1968. I think you get the point: The advent of digital goes back about 30 to 40 years—roughly half the span of an average human life—but the pace of change keeps getting faster, most recently with the explosion of cloud-based applications and solutions (hardware and software working together). This is also true of technology that addresses partner relationship management (PRM).  As we adopt more and more digital tools in our lives—at work, home and school, and while travelling away from home—silently but surely we are rebuilding how we work, live, learn and enjoy our leisure. Partner relationship management (PRM) software is no different. Partner management ha

It has been almost two decades since customer relationship management (CRM) applications began to be adopted as a powerful way to automate sales processes. Meanwhile, we have also seen marketing automation grow rapidly over the past 10 years or so to augment the CRM process experience for direct sales teams. However, the rise of partner relationship management (PRM) SaaS applications like ZINFI’s has demonstrated where an application like Salesforce often falls short. While the development of a Salesforce-like CRM applications that can be customer-configured to address many partner relationship management requirements has been a big step forward, companies still need to invest substantially to customize these solutions successfully. The fact that CRM systems also lack built-in applications essential for PRM means they fall short of  providing true Unified Channel Management (UCM). This is why connecting an existing CRM infrastructure like Salesforce to a PRM infrastructure like ZINFI’s makes a lot of sense. I

In the early 2000s we saw the rise of multiple CRM solutions. Most of them were on-premise, but some were cloud-based, even though at that time “cloud” was not the buzz word it is now. Over the past couple of decades, Salesforce stayed focused as a cloud CRM provider, and evolved into a massive SaaS ecosystem featuring a variety of business applications. Over the years, others like Microsoft and SAP followed suit, either through organic (built in-house) or inorganic (acquired) offerings. Some of these direct sales automation tools—for example, SAP—also introduced a bare-bones application for partner relationship management (PRM). Eventually, Oracle and Salesforce did as well, but none of these PRM applications could fully address automation requirements for the entire partner lifecycle.  Now, while this was going on in the market space, HubSpot came into existence about a decade ago as an alternative platform for marketing automation, and over the past five years has evolved into a complete marketing and s

If you manage a distributed network of partners and they are more than just a fulfillment arm for you, then chances are you have considered through-channel marketing automation (TCMA). In this article we will explore one of the core tactics of TCMA—email marketing—and how it can be used as a part of your overall TCMA strategy. While email marketing has been around for a while, it’s not always used effectively. Refining your email marketing tactics can enable your channel partners to generate leads in a low-cost, highly effective fashion. First, let’s briefly discuss what email marketing is and how TCMA-based email marketing tactics may differ from your direct email marketing efforts. We all know that email marketing was very likely the first digital marketing tool that marketers used, starting in the early 2000s. While we suffered through a plague of spam emails during much of that period—and even today a few of those spam emails get through the spam filters—it’s important to emphasize effective email marketi

In today’s business environment, every organization is asking its channel management team to do more with fewer resources. This is a common challenge for any channel organization. It’s not enough just to get busy—the key is to figure out how to drive partner recruitment, enablement, management and sales growth in a focused way. This is where partner relationship management  (PRM) software can help significantly. In this article, we will explore some of the core activities that PRM software can help automate. Before we take a deep dive into the specific activities that PRM software can automate, let’s discuss briefly how the activities tend to vary by company size. Focused channel (100 – 500 partners) – Companies in this category tend to sell through the channel independent of their own size. In our customer base at ZINFI, we have multibillion-dollar organizations that have only a couple of hundred partners, but we also have much smaller customers who have a few thousand partners. In a focused channel where

If your company (or even country) is under a travel ban due to an epidemic like the coronavirus outbreak—or perhaps because of budget restrictions—and you have to cancel your road shows to train and enable your partners, don’t despair. There are multiple ways to enable your partners remotely without meeting face-to-face by leveraging partner relationship management (PRM) software. In this article, I will explore how you can deploy a set of pragmatic PRM channel automation tools to enable your partners in a few easy step. There are essentially two types of enablement involving collaboration with channel partners using PRM software: tactical and strategic. Let’s briefly address both. Tactical enablement: Tactical enablement includes activities like pushing a promotion through the channel, rolling out sales incentives for partner sales reps to sign up for and execute on, or creating programs to train partners on new product launches. Within 4–6 weeks you can easily deploy a partner relationship management (PR

If you suddenly find yourself relying on Zoom, Teams, Outlook and Excel to manage your channel in a world that has suddenly shut down completely, you are not alone. This article explores how you can get started on a remote management strategy for your channel partner network that suddenly needs more support faster as some deals appear to be on the verge of evaporating. My goal here is to help you set priorities for virtual collaboration so that you can be ready to respond in a fast-changing world. Much in the world today is outside your control, but you can quickly take control of your channel management approach by following a few sequential steps. Before we begin, let’s just reflect for a moment on the intrinsic challenges that were already a part of channel management even before the pandemic damaged our economy and took away thousands of lives. We are all beginning to realize that, while managing a direct sales force is tough, managing an indirect sales force—what we all call a channel—is even tougher in

The word “channel” indicates a passageway through which something flows. Channel management is a discipline in management science in which a vendor organization or “brand” creates, captures and fulfils market demand via another set of organizations who act as channel partners and ecosystem players for the subject vendor.  In this podcast, we will expand on this basic view of channel management and attempt to explain in more detail how it functions in real-life scenarios.

The word “channel” indicates a passageway through which something flows. Channel management is a discipline in management science in which a vendor organization or “brand” creates, captures and fulfils market demand via another set of organizations who act as channel partners and ecosystem players for the subject vendor.  These channel partners act as a kind of mechanism that enables the orderly “flow” or distribution of products and services for the vendor to the end customer. In this article, we will expand on this basic view of channel management and attempt to explain in more detail how it functions in real-life scenarios. Any for-profit organization—and even some non-profits—that depend on providing products and services to customers in order to survive require two core functions: sales and support. In today’s world, most organizations that sell products and services also require a marketing function. The entire goal of a commercial organization, in fact, is to find buyers, make them aware of the vendor’

In our earlier articles on lead management, we discussed why it is essential to have the right strategy, structure, staffing and systems. As a part of building the right systems, we talked about aligning channel programs, processes and platforms. In this article, we will dive a little bit deeper into the automation aspect of lead […]

Most companies selling through an open channel tend to implement deal registration programs. While some deal registration programs are helpful and actually help channel partners close deals and serve their own interests, many programs are inward-looking initiatives that don’t seriously take partners’ core business goals into account. In this article, we will briefly discuss why most deal registration programs fail and explain some of the fallacies associated with them. Failure of most deal registration programs can be attributed to one or more the following reasons: Complex process – Most deal registration programs have too many steps or hurdles for partners to deal with. These programs tend to fail because going through the burden of protecting an opportunity outweighs the risk of losing it. If the deal registration process involves more than a simple form and a few approval steps, chances are that partner organizations have decided the extra effort is not worth it and they don’t participate. Small deal

Partner relationship management (PRM) is a complex process, but when vendors get it right they can drive truly profitable growth via a network of distributed channel partners. Unfortunately, most companies marketing and selling through the channel tend to rely on their existing customer relationship management (CRM) software infrastructure to manage their partner base instead of using a dedicated PRM platform. This is simply a bad idea. Before we jump into explaining why, let’s take a few minutes to describe what a state-of-the-art PRM actually does. A purpose-built PRM platform should allow an organization to recruit, engage, enable and manage their partner base seamlessly. Most organizations using CRM to manage partner relationships end up resorting to various point applications, attempting to integrate them into their CRM in order to automate their workflow. The primary goal for partner relationship management (PRM) automation is to provide a portal that partners can access to learn about the vendor’s solu

If you are selling through the channel and wondering how to do more with less and how to drive better performance through partner relationship management, then you are not alone. All of us who have lived and thrived in the channel have had to face this fundamental question, and we continue to face it today across the many clients we serve globally. As I step back and look at the core success factors that drive a high-performing channel, I find I can group those factors into seven categories. That’s what we will explore here today. Product – If you are selling through the channel and partners, the fundamental reason for that business model is that you have a product or a service that you want to distribute to a broader audience. However, for a group of businesses—your partners—to successfully distribute that product or service, your offering must be unique and stand out.While there are doubtless a lot of me-too products/services that get distributed via channel networks, those relationship are not sustainab

Most organizations selling through a channel don’t realize that partner onboarding is not a one-time event but an ongoing activity. This is where partner relationship management software, or PRM software, can greatly help. The purpose of PRM software is to automate four core workflow activities related to partner recruitment, partner engagement, partner enablement and partner management. The major step between partner recruitment and partner engagement is proper onboarding. In this article, we will explore how PRM software can significantly streamline this onboarding activity. Before we explore in detail how PRM software can accomplish this, let’s start with a basic question: What is onboarding, and how can it impact your partner base? Wikipedia defines onboarding as “the process of bringing a new employee on board, incorporating training and orientation.” Pretty comprehensive—right? When we apply this to channel marketing, “employee” would refer to employees from the partner organization across marketing, s

As a provider of a leading SaaS-based channel marketing management (CMM) platform, we get asked a lot about the right set of metrics an organization should consider when they are deploying such a platform globally. Our answer is always, “It depends.” Do I sound like a lawyer? If I do, then I am sorry, but I am not trying to be mysterious. It is truly an honest answer. While there are core metrics tied to return on investment (ROI) that any organization should look for to measure the impact from their channel marketing management platform, the answer is not really that straightforward. With that said, let me see if I can lay out a logic and a path that will help your organization pick the right set of metrics to drive ROI from a recently procured channel marketing management platform. First, let’s briefly define business metrics, and then we’ll discuss the importance of thinking through what makes sense for your organization. As per Merriam-Webster, “metrics” refers to “a standard of measurement.” On online s

What is the most important feature for partner portal software? Hint: No two partner organizations are exactly alike, and that’s something your software must be able to accommodate across a broad range of functions. Partners have different workflows and different needs, and partner portal content should always be relevant to individual partners and specific partner types. Essentially, partners need to have access to the right information at the right time. Can your partner portal software provide that?

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software has been around for about a decade or so, but only a handful of organizations selling through the channel have actually deployed PRM software. The primary reason behind this is that neither the use cases nor the business benefits from such automation are clear to most channel professionals. In this article we will try to provide that missing information and discuss how PRM software can drive partner performance. There are basically four primary phases that matter when it comes to channel partner lifecycle management: recruitment, engagement, enablement and management. Most organizations selling through the channel today work through all of these phases. Now, each of these phases may vary considerably for different organizations, depending on the countries and regions represented in their channel. Use cases will also vary according to the different products and solutions that they sell. In general, the larger the organization selling through the channel, the more

While the Internet was invented almost 50 years ago in a research environment, it wasn’t until the late 1990s, with the advent of the dot-com era, that organizations were able to embrace technology to thoroughly automate their business processes.Partner management software is a prime example of business process automation. This is a standalone category that didn’t really exist a decade ago. Since then, however, purpose-built partner management software has emerged as an important component in the evolution of business process automation.Today, partner management software tends The post Partner Management Software Can Change Your Channel Forever appeared first on ZINFI.

Companies selling through the channel, especially in the technology segment, need to make sure that a potential end buyer is not being approached by multiple partners unnecessarily. While competition is healthy, end customer satisfaction is paramount. Therefore, most organizations with a distributed and mature channel deploy deal registration software to protect specific deals for specific partners. This eliminates a potential waste of resources. More importantly, it increases satisfaction among both customers and partners. In this article, we will explore a few ways a deal registration software can be deployed. Before an organization deploys deal registration software, it is essential they identify the specific criteria required for deal registration. These criteria may focus selected business verticals, partner specialization aligned with those verticals, deal value, and the total number of deals or distribution of deals in specific geographical locations. In addition to setting such parameters, the vendo