What does a fully-enabled channel look like? Simply, it is a channel partner who perceives your product/service line to be the “go-to” one when it is time to sell to a new prospect. It is the one that markets itself and is easy to sell. In a broader sense, Channel enablement drives channels to willingly take ownership. They feel they have the freedom to market effectively to regional and local markets, personalizing as needed without tedious reliance on the parent marketing arm. Enablement makes your product easy to sell, so your prospect focuses on you, not another vendor. An additional virtue of the enablement model is that it takes the pressure off the use of the “price only” sales model. It helps avoid price becoming the preferred driver of channel sales.
How does Channel enablement happen? Let’s take a look
Create a strong partner training and onboarding process
A successful onboarding program is the stepping stone for your channel partners when they sign up and serves as a guide for future action. Almost every vendor has an onboarding process in place, but a majority of them find that it doesn’t get good results. We tell you about 3 elements that can help you take your onboarding program to the next level
- Training playbooks
When your channel partners sign up, they expect much more than a bunch of induction presentations and brochures. What they really need are plays for different scenarios and plays for prospects that are in different stages of the sales cycle. Channel playbooks fit this need perfectly. Create channel playbooks that are easy to understand and share them with your channel partners. Playbooks should help your channel partners understand the what, when, and how of prospect engagement—what to say to a prospect, when to say it and how to say it so they can respond to leads anywhere in the sales cycle. These are the 3 key questions that your playbooks should answer for your channel partners.
Tip: Make sure the playbooks are easy to access, use and are always up-to-date. Remember, the playbook is NOT an asset dump. Your channel partners shouldn’t have to sift through multiple folders and documents before they find the asset they require. Instead, it should be an organized collection of assets where they can quickly find what they need.
- Automated certification programs
Merely training your channel partners is not enough. You need to make sure they have understood and can apply the knowledge you shared. One way to do this is through automated certification programs. Encourage your channel partners to take certification exams from time-to-time: upon introduction of a new product or service line, in the event of product updates, or even in general to ensure they are in touch with the features and benefits of your products/services that they are selling. After all, if they are to convince someone to buy a product or service, they have to be convinced of its benefits themselves.
Tip: Set-up 2-way alerts for your training and certification exams. Have your channel partners get automated notifications when they are due to take an exam, their certification is about to expire, or a new certification requirement has been introduced. Conversely, you should get a notification when someone acts or when the results are in. This not only increases the chances of getting a response from your channel partners, but also helps you keep track of the most engaged channel partners. Check which partners are actively relating with your brand and which ones just don’t bother. Why invest your resources in partners who just don’t care to learn more about you?
- Channel partner portals
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. A partner portal compensates for this by providing your channel partners with easy access to critical elements that will help them close deals faster. A partner portal plays a key role in helping make it easy for them to sell more for you.
Tip: Make sure your partner portal covers EVERYTHING that your channel partners will need when selling your product or service. Examples include asset repository, deal registration capability, MDF application, access to training & certification programs, and access to chat support so they can reach out to you instantly. Channel partner portals are becoming commonplace. If you want your channel partners to use your partner portal regularly, you need to make it better than the others. Offer tools for collaboration, support and assistance direct from the portal, and of course, make sure it is available whenever they need it. That means making sure your partner portal is accessible via smartphone and other internet-enabled devices. The more hassle-free your partner portal, the greater the chances your channel partners will actually use it.
No one can sell unless they fully understand you, your product, and what sales tools work best with what, where and when. More importantly, they shouldn’t be expected to figure this out for themselves. Playbooks can do much of this, then certification programs serve to assess and guide training, and partner portals provide ongoing access to collateral.
