Just as you work to widen the market for your product and look to sell more, you’ve also got to think about increasing your partner’s benefit. Keeping your channel partners happy, is by far the easiest way to get them to sell your products like they’re their own. And to keep your partners happy, you’ve got to feed their appetite for big data and leads.
Let’s look at few steps that will help you to accomplish this.
#1 Connect with your channels
Most marketers think that generating leads for channel partners is not part of their job. That is the first step to a disconnected relationship with your channel partners.
Lead generation is a huge investment of time and money. Your channel partners may not be equipped with the content or data to generate leads on their own. That’s why you could save their time by generating leads for them. Have an effective channel marketing software in place, so that your qualified leads are automatically transferred to your channels. Directing these leads to your channel partners will keep their pipeline full and you can track how they are communicating with these leads.
To enable them further, you can give them the data that will help them to nurture or sell to these leads. An in-depth insight of what your leads have been up to will give your channels a foundation to build their selling strategy.
#2 Manage marketing and sales assets
Branding and consistent messaging can be a challenge when you have channel partners. We have seen cases of distorted campaigns due to inefficient brand compliance approaches. What you need is a central repository of all your assets in it. You can make this available to all your partners. The best part is that while your partners can customize these assets, there are also limitations that you can set to avoid any brand compliance issues. Use a sophisticated system that lets you to tag your assets so you can easily find them and avoid duplication; an asset management software that makes it easier to store and find collateral instead of making it a lengthy or tiresome process.
There, you have done some effective asset management for your channels. As there is no dearth of ready content, your partners will be happy to engage more and more customers using these pre-approved assets.
#3 Let them personalize
Of all the searches on Google, almost 20% are for local searches. This means that a relatively higher percentage of your business comes from your local markets. To cater to the needs of this high margin, you have to be able to communicate with them on a personal level.
Letting your channels to customize their campaigns is a great way to tap into your potential leads. You could also use this feature for ongoing promotions. For example, suppose a retail outlet e-mails discount coupons to customers who have made purchases exceeding $200 within the past month. An automated can update this list every month; so only those contacts who made purchases, above the specified amount receive the coupons.
Communicating with your customers through personalized campaigns ensures a higher engagement and conversion rate. Your channel wins, and so do you. Channel marketing software can help you accomplish this.
#4 Make your data useful
A research by IDG suggests that more than 85% people agree that big data can help businesses make more “informed” data-driven decisions. Hence, for a high impact marketing and sales campaign, it is important to provide your channels with this data.
Big data includes all relevant information about the lead that helps to classify and segment them. The same data can be used to determine the stage of the prospect’s buying cycle. Such information can let your channel partners devise highly personalized strategies aimed towards these lead segments.
The capability to devise these strategies is possible only if your big data is actionable. Usually big data is just a heap of unclear data where channels hit a dead end. But presenting the data in a way that’s understood and employed to design campaigns, makes a lot more sense to the users.
The data in your system is central and common to you and your channels. This warrants a certain level of transparency between you and your channels. You can also reach out to their assistance as and when they need, without going through some disconnected process.
#5 Automate your channel process
Your channel partners could be termed your extended “sales teams”. Just as sales enablement software is important within the organization, it is important to enable your channel partners too. Giving your channel partners the right tools can help generate, nurture and eventually close sales faster. As it is evident from recent trends, sales teams are being highly empowered to perform better with maximum efficiency. This is possible only when you give them the tools that will make “selling” their core responsibility. Likewise, empower your channels with tools like a good channel enablement platform.
channel enablement platform can track every possible interaction with the lead, allow them to customize campaigns and provide actionable big data. In short, provide them with each and everything we have discussed so far. In addition to this, make sure you give your channel partners- sales playbooks. The sales playbook can be a guide to them for each stage of the buying cycle of prospects. Channel partners will be armed with all assets pertaining to any particular campaign or stages of sales cycle or based on channel locations and requirements.
And lastly, consider channel marketing software that lets you manage your co-op funds smoothly. Managing co-op funds requires a system that allows you or channel partners to carry on transactions effortlessly. Instead of maintaining and updating data manually in excel sheets, it is much more convenient to just feed the data in the system as and when necessary. You need to have channel marketing software that lets you centrally manage all your details and transactions with each of your channels partners.
So what your channel partners expect from you is a well-nourished diet of leads, assets and actionable big data. As long as you can whet their appetite with all these, you’re golden.
To learn more about enabling Channel partners through channel marketing software, download the e-guide here.
