Drive Your Channel Productivity Globally

Over the last decade or so, a new category of software called partner relationship management software or PRM software has been evolving rapidly. What’s the primary driver behind this evolution? Organizations are recognizing the need to build a direct sales force that can increase their reach and drive sales at a lower cost. PRM software tends to address four basic areas of partner lifecycle management: partner recruitment, partner engagement, partner enablement and partner management. In this article, we will explore how to effectively manage incentive programs that are designed to enhance partner behavior and performance. As part of that discussion, we’ll examine the core requirements and capabilities of PRM software in more detail. But before we begin to specifically address incentive management, let’s talk a bit about channel management, and why it’s so complex. (For a more detailed discussion of the challenges of channel management, please refer to our on the topic.) Challenges At a high level, when a co

Why is multi-touch marketing important? Customers today live in a complex buying world. They now have the option to buy in traditional brick-and-mortar stores as well as online, by phone, via social media and more. Making it easy for the customer to make a purchase has been taken to the next level. While this is great news for most consumers, it requires a new thought process in the world of marketing. In order to reinforce their company’s brand and message, marketers are now required to reach out to consumers in a variety of different ways at the same time. While most marketers these days are aware that they will need to communicate across a variety of channels, many forget that for maximum effectiveness they should be doing it all at same time. Below are some of the most prominent reasons why multi-touch marketing is no longer optional for successful campaigns. Your customers want a choice. In an age where digital marketing and integrated campaigns emphasize the importance of a good website, it is import

Telemarketing has been around for decades, and everyone is very familiar with the dinnertime “Are you happy with your long distance service?” phone call. A proven technique for drumming up widespread sales and awareness, telemarketing has become a cultural norm. The evolution of marketing in recent years has marked the emergence of a new term, “inside sales,” that refers to a more focused, prospected and targeted approach to lead development—not just churn. Teleprospecting grew out of inside sales and has now become a first-tier technique used in conjunction with other lead and demand generation efforts to not only commence dialogue but also achieve qualification of new leads that come across any vendor’s radar. Teleprospecting best practices to ensure sales success are now a focal point for any good sales enablement scenario. It is important to differentiate between the goals and definitions of teleprospecting versus telemarketing. The two terms are often used interchangeably. Both are seen as a phone-based

Wouldn’t we all rather have customers willingly walk through our door instead of having to stand on the sidewalk and wave our arms for attention? Once upon a time, business had a solid advertising model to get an audience—you have a product, so you pay for print ads, billboards, television time and radio spots to get the word out. Commerce had to rely on well-placed advertisements to show up and be positioned where the target audience was. But now, in the Internet age, people are surfing in droves on the web. We know where they will be, and the savvy marketer can now get a very clear view of their searching and browsing behavior. So, instead of making a lot of noise with paid marketing and vying with your competitors for ad space (outbound marketing), you can carefully place attention-grabbing content in key online venues and—in very targeted ways—engage your audience, intrigue them and get them to come to you. Welcome to inbound marketing. Let’s be clear on the difference between these two approaches. Outbou

The very first thing that scares most people about sales is the initial cold call. Often it can turn away a potential salesperson before they ever get their feet wet in the business. Cold-calling can be hard! What if I told you that a few simple cold calling tips can be the difference between sinking and swimming? Give these tips a try. Start with a smile. Have you ever heard the expression, “You will attract more bees with honey than vinegar?” The simple truth is that people are just more attracted to someone who is smiling—and, yes, you can actually hear a difference in the tone of a voice when someone you are talking to on the phone is smiling. Here’s another interesting thing happens to someone who is smiling: They will automatically be more expressive with their words, their tone and their demeanor. The first three seconds of cold calling contact are all about likeability. Smile! Remember to ask, “Am I catching you at a good time?” The very first thing that puts people on edge is the perception that you

What is a partner portal? What are the primary components of today’s partner portal? Where does program content end and relationship automation begin? And why are so many systems needed to make it work (even though in reality we know that most of the elements of the partner portal don’t actually work well together)? In truth, most partner portals today require too much work and too much dependency on subsystems like CRMs and learning management and incentive management tools that are all patched together. We know they don’t flow together well, they don’t work together well and ultimately they create a very complex experience for all users. As a result, partners are frustrated, vendors are frustrated, programs are not updated on time, and it’s hard to find price lists or product information or the latest training information or events. Basically, it’s a nightmare. What if we took a different approach? What would the next-generation partner portal look like? What about adopting a unified approach that creates a

Content marketing has become the cornerstone of marketing effectiveness, and content syndication provides amplification via an extended network. Organizations selling through the channel can reach an audience of unprecedented size if they put together a cohesive strategy to distribute relevant content for strategic audiences. Rising above the noise is very important, but so is building a content-based relationship with target buyers via a distributed network. However, many companies flounder when it comes to pulling together a comprehensive content syndication strategy. In this article we will explore seven core mistakes or pitfalls that can be avoided to maximize the benefit from content syndication via a distributed network of partners: No overarching content strategy. Often, companies will dive right in and begin leveraging content syndication to drive awareness and reach, but without taking the time to think through how their overall strategy, both from a cadence perspective—daily, weekly, monthly and

Leads, leads everywhere—but not a single one to close. Isn’t this what you hear almost every day from vendors and their partners? Vendors spend millions on end-user marketing to generate leads, while partners rarely follow up to close on them. That’s what a vendor would say. On the other hand the partners say, “Well, I never get a good lead from my vendor. How can I grow their business without decent leads?” This is where good lead management can save the day. A channel is primarily a fulfillment mechanism. Yes, it can generate demand to extend a run rate business, but the primary purpose of a channel is to close and deliver. The job of marketing really belongs to the vendor. This is why lead management is so important. If it is not done right, not only do millions go to waste, but partner satisfaction—and ultimately business growth—drops substantially. The good news is that there are now state-of-the art lead management systems available in the marketplace for channel professionals. Once you deploy an end-to

Over the past decade or so, organizations that rely on channel infrastructure to reach their end buyers have been making significant investments in unified channel management activities. However, they seldom consider the fact that these channel management activities can vary quite a bit across countries—not only from a deployment perspective, but also in terms of their effectiveness. Why is that? How can the organization recognize these differences and adapt accordingly? Before we answer those questions, let’s quickly review the areas in which channel management activities tend to do the same, regardless of country or region. There are several basic principles that apply across all geographies around the world: When a company sells through a channel network, they will generally sell through either a one-, two- or three-tier system. Yes, multi-level distribution (more than three tiers) exists, but that tends to be more for business-to-consumer products than they are for business-to-business products and se

Most vendors that are selling through the channel depend on their partners to generate demand instead of just relying on leads generated by the vendors. However, the sad reality is that the channel often remains as a fulfillment arm. Despite heavy investments that many vendors have made in channel marketing—particularly in automation and concierge services—most partners do not use marketing development funds (MDF). In fact, our worldwide channel survey data shows as much as 60% of market development funds (MDF) are not used on a quarterly basis. In this article we explore the key reasons why. Before we delve into the issues, however, let’s spend a few minutes on the 40% of the cases where market development funds are claimed and used. In the majority of these cases, the funds are used by large partners who know how to navigate the MDF approval process and have a much larger bucket of funds. These tend to be large channel partners who have deep relationships with the vendors and have competencies in place to m

There is no doubt that channel management is complex. (For more on this, see our previous posts, 5 Myths of Channel Management and Challenges of Channel Management.) However, it’s made more complex when it is managed through a set of tools and systems that can easily be compared to a patched-up quilt. In many organizations, channel management systems actually consist of a hodgepodge of diverse systems that have evolved over a long period of time. As a result of that, most companies today that try to implement a unified approach to their channel management struggle to make it work and get a decent return on their investment. The primary reason underlying this problem is a lack of available end-to-end systems that can readily adapt to each organization’s unique needs. Every company is different. So, for example, a horizontal product like a customer relationship management (CRM) system cannot really address the requirements for unified channel management. As a result of that—while marketing automation systems ha

As more and more companies add channel to their sales equation, the competition to reach the end user via channel has increased substantially. New partners enter the marketplace in the same way vendors do, but in the end what matters is having access to a group of successful partners who have been in business for a while. This is not easy without a structured channel management approach. That’s where automation comes in. Organizations need to pick the right channel management software platform, not only to make sure their go-to-market approach via channel is fully optimized and earns the respect of their channel partners, but also to substantially increase sales productivity. With that as a backdrop, let’s look at some things to consider when selecting a vendor. It’s important to keep in mind that channel management software is a new category. While partner relationship management (PRM) software concepts and even tools have been around for more than a decade, until recently truly affordable solutions didn’t r

Most organizations selling in a business-to-business (B2B) environment today have implemented customer relationship management (CRM) software. While proper deployment of a CRM system is highly dependent on an organization’s ability to streamline its own internal sales processes, in many cases ineffective use of automation systems can also be attributed to an organization’s poor sales enablement capabilities. This is where content syndication can play an important role and lay the foundation for sales enablement—that is, when it’s done right. In this article we will explore what steps an organization can take to build on their CRM foundation and engage a cross-functional team to properly enable its sales team via content syndication. Whether an organization is selling technology, insurance, financial products or other B2B solutions, in most cases the sales process can be broken down into stages for each of the three primary types of sales cycles: for small and medium business segments, for mid-market and enter

Over the past few decades, companies have invested considerable sums in building out an inside sales infrastructure. During this same period, we have also seen increases in demand for marketing automation. However, in many cases those two organizational investments have not come to fruition, and companies are asking whether they have the right investment mix to move forward as buying journey has changed completely over the past decade or so. We all know there has been a recent shift in the marketplace, a relatively new phenomenon in which buyers are going online, searching for what they’re interested in, doing research, finding possible vendors and then checking out vendors online to come up with a short list of who to call. That entire process used to be a function of the traditional sales process. An inside sales rep would call up a potential prospect—essentially a cold call—to set up an appointment designed to educate the buyer. Today, that entire buying process today is completely visible. It follows that

Many vendors today are deploying channel marketing software solutions to drive partner marketing activities. The goal for this class of software is to get partners actively engaged in various channel programs and enable them to drive demand generation activities. However, there are multiple options available in the market today from as many as 30 different vendors, which makes it very hard for an organization to determine the core set of features they should look for. This article will explore 10 critical features a channel marketing software platform must have. Requirements Portal content management. The goal for this capability is to allow an organization to set up a mobile-responsive, dynamic portal through which various assets and information can be communicated to partners that are in the channel program. Without a platform that can be completely localized across multiple countries and used in a mobile-responsive environment, the potential of a channel marketing software platform is rarely realized.

Vendors selling to a channel need to enable their channel partners to generate and drive channel partners. This has been a challenge for almost all vendors, whether they are selling to vendors or consumers. While partners are a great fulfillment arm, few of them generate enough leads to drive demand on their own. To address the problem more companies over the past few years have been deploying channel automation platforms. However, the adoption of these platforms in the channel has been quite poor, and this has led to a lot of speculation and frustration. It has also led a number of companies to switch providers of channel marketing automation platforms, thinking that the move from one platform to another might help them attain higher levels of adoption. However, the issues generally lie elsewhere. Yes, the channel marketing automation platform needs to be robust, scalable, easy to use, etc., but only rarely is the failure to achieve widespread adoption of automation in the channel tied directly to the channe

Over the last year or so, there has been much talk about another impending recession and how it could impact channel management. The recession theory is based upon historical trends, which suggest business cycles tend to last around five to seven years each. That means every five to seven years we experience some sort of a recession. Eventually the economy recovers, and then something else happens to triggers another recession. Current discussions are predicting another slowdown soon. This article explores how you can get your organization—and your channel management team —ready for the moment when another recession arrives. Channel management is complex (see our article Challenges of Channel Management for more on this), but with proper preparation you can address many of the problems and even succeed in the face of the next recession. Is recession coming? The current state of affairs Bear market rallies Over the last few weeks, the global markets have seen a series of bear market rallies, and several analys

Appointment setting has actually existed for nearly two decades. Over the last five to seven years, however, it has undergone a dramatic transformation. When appointment setting began, it focused primarily on the business-to-business environment, where an inside or outside sales rep would cold call into an account to set up a face-to-face appointment. Even today, it is common to observe salespeople knocking on the doors of small businesses, trying to drop off their business cards—whether they are selling copiers or cleaning services or maintenance and repair services. The goal of securing a face-to-face meeting is still quite common today. However, traditional methods of appointment setting require a huge investment of sales resources, and from that perspective these methods are simply not productive anymore. The fact is, traditional appointment setting wastes a lot of money and time today. However, when conceived as the last step of a structured digital prospecting process, appointment setting can be totally

Many organizations selling through the channel today are trying to determine how best to automate their partner relationship management (PRM) process. In order to do so, quite a few are getting online and searching on Google and other search engines for “PRM software.” When you do so, multiple vendors pop up. How do you distinguish among them? And how do you select a PRM software vendor that can satisfy your needs? In this article, we will explore in an objective way five key capabilities that PRM vendors must provide in order to meet the needs of most organizations. Flexibility, localization and scalability. When you think carefully about PRM software and what it is supposed to do, you realize the main purpose of PRM software is to truly automate the PRM process end-to-end. True PRM automation would not only bring a structured approach to partner recruitment, partner engagement, partner enablement and partner management, but it would also offer visibility and scalability on a global level. A company that

Introduction Channel management is complex primarily because of what it tries to manage. The word “management” implies some level of control to achieve performance from an individual or from a team, either through inspiration or through some level of enforcement. The meaning of “management” varies greatly when it comes to an organization’s structure—depending on whether it’s a startup, a more mature company or a governmental organization like the military. However, in every one of those instances there is a direct relationship between the manager and the subordinate or employee or team member. In the case of a reseller network or a partner network, that relationship is very different, and it presents some unique challenges. Let’s take a moment to explore those challenges. Challenges 1. Channel partners are companies, not people. Ordinarily when we talk about management, where there is some level of control over employees or consultants or contractors, we are exerting some level of control over people. But wh