Your company’s channel manager is searching for the right tools to manage the sales channel effectively. The company has just begun onboarding new partners, and the team wants to ensure that everything is done to achieve the highest levels of engagement and collaboration with these partners. There are four key areas that your channel sales manager needs to concentrate on to maximize the chances of success:
- Lead management
- Training and certification
- Marketing and communications support
- Performance management and collaboration
The main reason for channel conflict is ineffective lead management. Your channel partners will have leads that they need to follow up on promptly. You must have a system that makes it easy for them to register these leads. The lead management system should allow your channel manager to quickly approve leads. If the system is complicated and takes too long for the salesperson to get permission to pursue the lead for your company, they are less likely to sell your product or service to their customers. Keep in mind that your channel partners are also selling for other businesses, so it’s natural for them to want to prioritize the companies that are easiest to work with and most supportive.
Sales people need to be trained on your products and services. People learn at their own pace and by using different learning tools. Your training and certification tools should include instructor-led classroom training, webinars, e-learning, workgroup collaboration and on-the-job performance support. While your training platform needs to be flexible as it relates to your channel partners, it also needs to be a tool that your channel manager can easily navigate. Your manager needs to be able to create, launch, and manage a training program. Also, your channel partners and your company must have the ability to monitor how each sales people is doing in terms of their training results and completion milestones.
Communication with your channel partners on a daily basis is vital to the relationship. An easy to use communication process and tool will go a long way to increasing the level of engagement with your channel partners. This communication takes many forms: sales and marketing collateral materials that are co-branded for your partners, timely access to press releases to ensure that your partners will be prepared when taking with the end customers, and product alerts and service bulletins.
All good sales people need to know where they stand in terms of commissions and performance incentives earned. You need to have a process and tool in place that allows the sales team to know where they stand, but it must also give your channel manager the ability to track and measure the performance of each of individual sales person across the various channel partners. This visibility will allow your channel manager to decide where to focus their time and energy.
These four focus areas make sense to you, but how does one implement the processes and systems that will allow your channel manager to effectively manage these interactions with your channel partners? This is where a partner relationship management (PRM) system comes into play. At its core, a PRM system is a partner portal through which your channel partners are able to access all of the resources they need to sell and service your products. A partner portal truly helps to simplify the interaction between your company and your channel partners. Your interaction with your partners takes place in this single portal – no need to bounce around from system to system (CRM, ERP, marketing content management system, learning management system, etc.). Today’s robust, cloud-based PRM systems can create a highly personalized environment that is easy to maintain and update. It is fully configurable, scalable, and easily accessible from anywhere. Also, today’s systems are affordable, with some pricing plans offering a fixed fee as low as five dollars per user per month.
LogicBay’s Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Technology is rich with best practice workflows making it easier for organizations to do business with channel partner re-sellers. The result: More engagement and Mindshare. Greater Efficiency and Cost Savings. Alignment with Channel Partners. And, Performance Improvement for the Entire Sales Enterprise.
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 | Link to LogicBay’s Library of Partner Relationship Management White Papers. These white papers provide best practice ideas on a Channel Readiness and Performance Improvement strategies. Topics include subjects such as: Effectively launching a LMS for the Channel, Applying Lean Principles to Channel Management, Channel Life-cycle Management, Partner Portal Technology Unification, and much more. |
 | Link to LogicBay’s Library of Client Case Studies. Learn how LogicBay’s PRM Solutions and Technology have created significant performance gains for clients such as Caterpillar, HP, Daimler Trucks and Outdoor Living Brands. |