Are you pumping thousands of dollars into your partner program, but dissatisfied with the results? Are you investing more and more every quarter into new marketing and sales collateral, partner training materials and partner engagement programs only to be disappointed when the numbers don’t really add up? This post discusses a few reasons your partner programs may not be yielding the results you seek.
One of the most common reasons is because, as a vendor, your company is not adopting a holistic approach towards partner enablement. Aligning partner enablement with through-partner marketing activities and overall partner management processes is key to ensuring return on investment in indirect sales programs. A recent poll that Mindmatrix conducted during a webinar revealed that the single biggest request vendors receive from their partners today is for marketing and sales support. 43% vendors reported that their partners seek sales and marketing support the most from them. While most of the vendors already recognize the importance of offering sales and marketing support to their partners, they still make mistakes when it comes to actually providing the support. That is because, a lot of vendors have one big misconception about how to support partners in sales and marketing. A lot of them believe providing channel partners with basic product training, a partner portal and sales and marketing content is equivalent to offering excellent partner marketing and sales support, when in fact, it is not. All of these elements are essential to partner marketing and sales success, but there’s more to it. Vendors need to really help their partners to sell. That means, vendors need to help partners with
- Building their local brand–How are your partners going to be successful in selling your products if their own brand is weak and not trusted in the market they operate?
- Lead generation–The corporate marketing team has a lot of tools and resources at their disposal to fuel lead-gen. Vendors can leverage their corporate marketing resources to generate leads and divert them to the local channel partners
- Lead nurturing for leads that are not hot–Channel partners are often too busy working in their business to work on it. They are busy selling what sells instantly. They don’t have the time it takes to educate a lead about your product subtly and convince them to make a purchase. Vendors need to do it for them!
- Closing–Vendors should offer support to partners to close their leads by offering a guided sales process that includes timely, personalized course-of-action recommendations.
Vendors who assist partners with these elements help drive revenue for them, thus strengthening the vendor-partner relationship and partner engagement. Here are a few ways to do so effectively –
Help your partners with a roadmap to successful selling of your products/services
Vendors should prepare a clear roadmap for partners to follow when working with them. This can act as a business plan or a future growth plan for the partners as far as the vendor product/services are concerned. In a multi-vendor environment, when vendors are struggling to gain and retain partner mindshare, this approach can be a game changer.
Make your products/services easy to sell
While the channel-based sales model has evolved over the years in line with the end customer’s journey, one aspect has remained the same-ease of selling vendor products. At the end of the day, those products and services that are the easiest to sell are the ones that channel partners will focus on more. Those are the brands that will see maximum partner engagement and those are the vendors with most partner mindshare.
Help your partners see how you add value to them
Your channel partners need to be able to see value in partnering with you. By providing them with a clear business plan (for your products), offering them a roadmap to growing their business and helping them move from one step to the next by clearly setting the milestones they need to achieve, you are adding value to their business.
For the success of your partner program, it is essential that the various elements of partner enablement, i.e., partner marketing, partner sales and PRM, talk to each other. You cannot have these elements operate in silos and still expect to drive phenomenal sales through your channel partners. Your channel marketing programs, your partner sales enablement programs, your PRM and other channel management initiatives all need to work in together to be able to make an impact. You may have the best PRM tool in place, or the most popular learning management system for partner onboarding and training, your partner program may be one of the best in the industry, but none of that will help you reach your goal unless they all come together and create a seamless environment for partner sales success.
Fully coordinated PRM, channel sales and marketing enablement programs support greater partner success. With the seismic shifts in the contemporary B2B buyer’s journey, hosting a comprehensive partner sales enablement program on an easy-access platform that covers channel marketing and PRM is imperative for a well-performing partner ecosystem. Having a single platform simplifies the otherwise complex tools and strategies that form a part of the vendor-partner relationship while offering significant cost savings and efficiency to the vendor.
