Vendors often fail to provide their channel partners with a guided sales process. When a new channel partner is recruited, they are provided with a bunch of documents related to the product/service they are to push. They are never really given a clear roadmap or action plan on how to sell. Lacking that, channel partners find themselves grappling with questions such as what to say, when to say it and how to say it to their prospects. Such selling is not very effective, ends up being quite generic and often ignores the USPs of the product/service. The lack of a guided sales process and insufficient training and guidance for channel partners hinders lead closure leading to poor channel performance. Offer your channel partners a guided sales process—a clear action plan for selling. They are more likely to be successful when they have a PRM tool providing them a roadmap that covers every possible milestone on their way to a sale.
Tip: Channel sales playbooks play a role in the creation of a guided sales process. A playbook helps connect your content to the buying stages. It lets you map your sales assets to the relevant point in the buyer’s journey and gives your channel partners easy access to all the sales and marketing assets they need when reaching out to their leads. Create playbooks for different plays, different sales cycle milestones and even different prospect personas, and pain points. Once you give your channel partners the answer to the when, what and how of selling, you will make it a lot easier for them to close leads.
