If you are a channel manager or a business owner, chances are you’ve sat down, taken a good look at your partner base and wondered why your partners don’t sell more. After all, you have a great product, it’s easy to use, and you have market penetration–what could possibly be the issue? The truth is, there are many problems channel partners face when trying to resell. Here’s a rundown of some of the most common issues they face —
Marketing Challenges for SMBs
Enabling partners to market your products can be harder than you think. The truth is, most small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) might have a marketing team but not really be familiar with industry standard strategies to show value to their prospects, such as pushing educational content that shares general solutions your product provides vs outright discounts and sales to push product. As a channel manager, you need to find ways to empower your resellers to market efficiently and with respect to best practices.
The best way to do this is to provide content that supports these efforts. Many PRM software programs thrive because they offer a way for partners to download appropriate content that directly helps these marketing efforts. Ensure that you are sharing the same content with your channel partners.
Sales Challenges regardless of business size
I’ve mentioned before that one of the issues you can face is competing for market space in your channel partner’s catalogue of reselling options. One of the biggest obstacles you’ll face is ensuring your partners understand that your products exist and how to sell them. Knowing your brand exists is great, but do your partners really understand how to talk about your product’s relationship to their prospect’s bottom-line? Being able to speak intelligently about the solutions your product brings to the table is a tremendous asset when trying to close an opportunity.
A complete PRM software can help you create assets that target common customer personas (CTOs, CIOs, CEOs) who would make decisions to buy and empower your channel partners with materials they need to support those prospect’s buying decisions across applicable markets.
You can provide these resources through PRM software as well — call scripts, presentation decks, product comparison sheets–all of these items cut down on time needed to close deals and can result in greater sales.
Product market competition
Have you prepared any assets that explain how your product stands out from your competitors? Branding makes a difference here, but providing your partners with talking points and additional knowledge about why your value is so much better will be a huge boon to your channel program.
Make sure your PRM software offers access to quick resources, such as video content or simple training materials that channel partners can absorb to better understand your product’s advantages and benefits.
