Unlike salespeople, your channel partners don’t have hands-on access to your sales/marketing training sessions or brand induction workshops. They don’t have the luxury of having a solid sales game plan written out for them every quarter. This post tells you how you can help your channel partners sell more, faster with sales and marketing tools.
Offer the right training
You may have recruited the best partners, but have you offered them the best training? How strong is your partner on-boarding process? Does it cover every aspect of your business and product/service line that your channel partner needs to know? If you want your channel partners to sell your product the way you would do it yourself, a strong partner on-boarding and training process is a must. It enables your partners to understand your market, product and selling methodology as well as you do.
Offer the right tools
What tools are you giving your channels partners to help them sell? Are your channel partners relying on a set of outdated presentations and other sales collateral to pitch your product/service? Provide your channel partners with tools that help them sell your product effectively. The right selling tools for channel partners include-
- Lead prospecting tools that assist your channel partners in generating quality leads they can sell your products/services to
- Lead management tools that help your channel partners understand every lead, segment them and then reach out to them in the way that’s most effective
- Sales automation tools such as lead nurturing email drips
- Tools that allow your channel partners to engage in local marketing and sales campaigns effectively
- Easy sales collateral creation tools that give your channel partners the ability to customize content according to their needs: Your channel partners need content to be able to pitch your brand successfully to their leads. However, they will not take the effort to generate content nor will such content adhere to your brand and messaging. Content syndication, which will work automatically to customize sales and marketing assets to third party sites, such as social media platforms and partner portals for use at the local level. Content syndication makes channel partner marketing easy by offering corporate marketing teams an interface to create everything channel partners need from their corporate offices.
- Notification tools that alert your channel partners about significant lead activity so they take the right action at the right time
- Social media automation tools that help your channel partners engage with prospects early in the sales cycle: We all know that effective marketing and brand building demands consistency, but often the channel partners are too busy selling to be consistent in social media or email marketing. Make sure your PRM software offers you ways to ensure your channel partners are consistently pushing your products and services on social media and via emails without taking their focus away from their main task at hand—selling. So, while your channel partners are off selling, your PRM software works with you behind the scenes to help build your brand and relationship with clients to help them close more leads for you, faster.
Offer support
One of the key ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors is by offering complete support. Support your channel partners with playbooks and documented sales processes, so they know exactly which way to go. If you have provided your channels with a PRM software, then make sure it is easy-to-use and the vendor offers strong technical support.
The key to strengthening channel partner relationships is making it easy for them to sell. And, one of the ways to do it is by running marketing and sales campaigns for them. Sounds like a lot of work? It doesn’t have to be! When picking a PRM Software, just make sure it allows your corporate marketing teams to engage in marketing and sales campaigns for your channel partners. The on-behalf marketing feature of your PRM software will allow your corporate marketing teams to send emails and update social media pages on behalf of your channel partners, thus allowing you to help your channel partners build their local brand and successfully market and sell your products at the local level.
Lead registrations and MDF fund management
How easy is it for your channel partners to register their leads or apply for MDF funds? By making mundane administrative processes easier, you are giving your channel partner more time to focus on the real stuff: selling.
Despite spending a sizable amount on partner relationship management program and channel marketing automation software, companies often find that there is a gap between their expectations versus actual channel partner performance. Companies can bridge that gap by partnering with a channel enablement company that takes care of every element involved in PRM and Channel Marketing Enablement— from attracting the right channel partner, on-boarding them, providing them with the tools they need to sell to offering the right kind of support, so you and your channel partner can benefit from the relationship.
