Does your company rely on both, channel partners and a direct sales team to sell your products or services? If yes, then chances are you already have direct and partner sales enablement programs and strategies deployed. But, are they effective? Often, companies that have direct sales teams and a channel partner network selling their products and services make minor tweaks to their direct sales enablement programs and apply them at the partner level. However, it doesn’t always work because enabling direct sales teams and partner networks are very different. Let’s take a look at some of the differences between direct and indirect sales channels which make it essential for vendors to have very focused partner sales enablement tools and strategies for their channel partners.
One of the key differences is, your salespeople are your employees. They are dedicated to selling your products and services, one hundred percent. However, when it comes to your channel partners, more often than not, that’s not the case. Unless you have an exclusive partnership agreement with your channel partner, they will also be selling products and services of other, competing brands. Unlike your direct sales teams, your channel partners have a business of their own and their primary goal is to keep their customers happy and grow their sales revenue. This means, you are not only competing with other brands in terms of quality and price, but also in terms of partner mindshare. Partners are most likely to push the brand that is the easiest to sell. The one that sells the most, fastest and with minimal efforts from the partner’s end, wins partner mindshare. Vendors need to ask themselves these 2 questions-
- How are we making it easy for our partners to sell our products?
- Is there anything else we can do at the moment to help them sell our products faster?
Before deploying any new partner marketing software tool, strategy or process, in the partner environment, vendors need to ask themselves if it is easy-to-use and truly value adding to the partners. If the partners find the new addition cumbersome or time consuming, they are more likely to not use it. Your partners don’t have the time or inclination to use yet another partner marketing platform, when they’d rather be focusing on growing their business.
Vendors can overcome this challenge by investing in a partner sales enablement platform that offers everything the channel partners need to sell vendor products effectively. This includes marketing and sales content, sales playbooks, lead intelligence, sales prospecting tools, MDF management, partner portal, partner marketing software/TCMA tools, etc. It is even better if the partner sales enablement platform integrates with any of the partner’s existing platforms, so partners don’t have to switch between multiple platforms.
The second difference on the training and onboarding front. In many organizations, channel partners don’t get access to the same training and onboarding tools and resources as the direct sales teams. Once partners sign up with the vendors, they are given access to the partner portal, a few training videos and sessions, some sales and marketing content and expected to start selling. For increased partner engagement and involvement with the brand, it is important to equip channel partners with all the knowledge they need about the brand to sell confidently. And, this shouldn’t be a one-time process followed at the time of partner onboarding. Regular partner training sessions should be conducted-
- Every time there’s an update to the product/service they are selling
- When there’s a change in the vendor’s messaging, brand positioning or sales and marketing strategy
- When partner performance is measured and is found lacking
Vendors can overcome this challenge by investing in a Learning Management System (LMS) which helps manage not only the onboarding but also facilitates continuous learning for channel partners. LMS with partner evaluation, scoring and certification capabilities help vendors understand knowledge gaps in the partner environment and plug them accordingly. It also helps vendors gauge partner engagement with the brand.
The third area where the difference lies between a direct sales team and channel partners is, sales and marketing support. Unlike the direct sales teams that have the corporate marketing team to support them extensively, channel partners don’t have a dedicated marketing team to rely on. While the vendor’s corporate marketing team does provide channel partners with marketing support, it is often not as robust as what the internal sales team gets. This results in the following challenges for the vendor –
Lack of partner engagement
Channel partners lose interest in selling the vendor products/services. If they don’t get the right marketing support, partners are more likely to move on to the next brand that offers great marketing and sales support or whose products sell faster, naturally.
Brand and messaging dilution
When channel partners don’t get the right marketing support at the right time, they tend to make the fixes themselves. For example, a channel partner may want to personalize the vendor-provided brochure or email to include their updated logo, email ID, phone number or other contact information. Or, they may need an email with a very specific messaging drafted to be sent out to a certain prospect base. In such cases, channel partners who work independently risk diluting the brand by not using the brand elements correctly, or may end up with messaging that doesn’t align with the brand message.
In response to this challenge, vendors can deploy partner marketing software tools that allow them to engage in to, through, with and for-partner marketing. Such tools allow vendors to run centralized marketing campaigns for/on-behalf of channel partners, personalized for their local market. From the channel partner’s perspective, such campaigns help build their brand at the local level and also offer a more personalized messaging experience for prospects. Also, vendors can offer marketing and sales support as a part of concierge services to partners to their channel partners. Channel marketing concierge services, as a part of partner sales enablement help companies offer better support to their channel partners by ensuring that the partners get the support they need to sell company products/services, just when they need it–even if the corporate marketing team is too busy to offer it to them.
In conclusion, it can be said that when enabling channel partners, vendors need to make sure that their tools and strategies are-
- Aligned with partner goals
- Truly add value to the channel partners
- Seamlessly integrated into the partner environment
Anything that helps channel partners grow their business, build their brand and generate sales revenue will be welcomed by the partner network.
