Drive Your Channel Productivity Globally

With the rise of content marketing as a primary way to engage the target audience and drive sales, channel marketing is also evolving rapidly. A decade or two ago, channel marketing pretty much meant running events (for recruitment, training and lead generation) and giving away market-development funds to those who knew how to leverage them. Today, unified channel management is changing the way companies invest, track and improve ROI from their channel marketing activities. A core set of channel marketing metrics play a critical role in driving better ROI. Before we take a deep dive into the channel marketing metrics that truly matter, let's step back and clearly define the objectives of channel marketing. If marketing is about driving awareness, engagement and customer intimacy, channel marketing essentially means the same thing, but it operates in more dimensions: The first two dimensions are the channel partners who resell the products and services, and the end users who procure them. To that you add a thi

When it comes to business-to-business (B2B) social network, LinkedIn is the gorilla, and has certainly started to act like one. Why do I say that? Well, it's based on a lack of innovation. The stock price is down, and the analysts are no longer sure – the future is not as clear as it used to be. Believe it or not, LinkedIn has been around for well over a decade now. It is older than YouTube. In the beginning, it was an incredible tool for upgrading your static Rolodex into a dynamic database of personal contacts, but then it morphed into an online resume, networking tool and much more. Thanks to Reid Hoffman's brilliance in pulling a team together that was incredibly successful in harnessing the untapped potential of a B2B social (or should we say also B2B social marketing?) network, LinkedIn became a valuable tool for the professional world. Certainly some of its success was attributable to timing, as Malcom Gladwell points out in Outliers, but a lot of its success was tied to the uniqueness of its original

The most recent trend in channel marketing automation has been the rapid deployment of Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Software along with Partner Marketing Management (PMM) capabilities in multiple industry verticals. In this article, we will focus specifically on the value of Partner Profile Manager (PPM) as a core feature for PRM Software. Before we begin, let's discuss the rationale for using a Partner Profile Manager (PPM) and how it can help. The primary use for a Partner Profile Manager (PPM) in PRM Software is to make sure the vendor selling through the channel has detailed records for each partner company and their team members. This functions almost like CRM software, but with a lot more data and search capability associated with a specific partner profile. We have discussed earlier how partner profiling can boost channel sales. The main objective of the Partner Profile Management tool in PRM Software is to give a vendor the ability to profile or segment their partner on a dynamic basis, and u

With the passage of every day, month and year, content marketing continues to take over marketing (branding and lead generation). Unfortunately, most channel marketers still remain stuck in the archaic 20th century model for lead generation, using appointment setting for their business-to-business (B2B) channel partners. This model still requires a phonebook, a telephone and a script-driven telemarketer. What's wrong with this picture? Actually, a lot. But there is a much better way. Before we explore what the alternatives are, let's take a look at how we got here. Over the past three decades, as channel became an important asset to go to market in an efficient way, channel partners began to recognize they needed to build their own pipeline. In the 1980s, the proliferation of business database companies led to the evolution of a whole new segment of lead generation companies. They focused primarily on appointment setting, putting sales people behind a telephone and equipping them with a list and a script to c

Managing a direct sales force is tough, let alone managing an indirect (channel) sales force. The concept of a channel has existed since the existence of fire, when one person bartered with another. While technology has evolved rapidly over the past few thousand years, for many companies the state of their channel maturity still resembles how the channel was managed in the Stone Age. That doesn’t need to be the case, however. If you are considering building a channel to sell your products and solutions, or upgrade an existing one, channel marketing automation can significantly increase the efficacy of the deployment and management of your channel network globally. I consider the Internet as the second Big Bang. Yes, really. It has transformed how we look at the distributed world, and now the evolution of cloud-based software solutions is automating distributed workflow at a rapid pace. Please refer to our article on “Channel Marketing Software – Why The Rapid Emergence?” where we talk about what is truly driv

When selling through a channel, chances are every now and then you will need to run partner recruitment (existing and new partners) campaigns into your channel program. Automating your recruitment and onboarding activities via purpose-built partner relationship management (PRM) software will significantly increase your speed to revenue and reduce ramp-up costs substantially by streamlining many of the activities and eliminating manual steps. Partner recruitment basically has five core steps: partner profiling, partner outreach, partner qualification, partner sign-up and partner onboarding. The focus of this discussion is on partner onboarding. Assuming that you have qualified a partner and are ready to onboard them onto your channel program, let’s explore how partner relationship management (PRM) software can significantly speed up sign-up and onboarding steps. We’ll talk about these two steps in sequence. Partner sign-up – Most organizations today have some sort of a sign-up form, whether it is a Word do

Before we delve into the reasons why you should consider insourcing your event marketing management activities, let’s take a moment to define clearly where this logic could apply and where it wouldn’t work. In our experience, companies tend to outsource events because they have been working with a provider for a long time and think that’s the easiest way. But as a company using both our own marketing automation software and external agency services, our experience tells us that outsourcing may not always be the best option. While the prospect of managing an event may initially be daunting, the actuality is less so. Depending on the scale and frequency, many B2B events can be insourced quite effectively as long as you follow a few simple processes. Of course, there are other events – like major trade shows or global sales or partner conferences – that need to be outsourced, until and unless you have a full-blown event management team. In these cases, it makes far better sense to outsource some or all of the re

Consumer and business buyers all go online to do their research before committing to a purchase, reading peer reviews and comparing products as a normal part of their decision making process. The entire sales cycle has turned upside down: now it’s a buying cycle. This dependence on online research has made web content syndication critical for content marketers. In the B2B and B2C spaces, sales success is no longer dependent on how you reach out to prospects, generate leads and forecast your pipeline. These days, your sales pipeline only begins at the last stages of buying, so if you are to have a prayer of influencing the process, your marketing cycle must be in complete alignment with the buyers’ buying cycle. A strategic approach towards web content syndication is of great benefit in helping to manage this cycle. In the old days, content marketing essentially consisted of creating advertising, packaging, promotional flyers, tradeshow materials, and maybe issuing occasional press releases. The advent of the

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