Author: Gary Morris

If You Put One Dollar into Your Channel, How Many Dollars Do You Get Back?

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date April 27, 2017
1 Comment on If You Put One Dollar into Your Channel, How Many Dollars Do You Get Back?

Most channel executives are familiar with the dreaded question from the company CFO or CEO: What did we get for what we spent in the channel last quarter? Channel budgets have never been under more intense scrutiny, and the need to justify the return on investment of expenses is a continuous area of concern for channel chiefs.Two channel budgets that are most often under the microscope are rebates and marketing expenses.

Channel Rebates ROI:

Because channel rebates align to specific revenue targets, it is possible to model the revenue attributed to the payment of rebates versus prior year. Channel teams typically create a comparison of a partner’s revenue growth either quarter-to-quarter or current quarter versus prior year and then calculate the ROI on channel rebates based on the incremental revenue earned versus rebates paid. This straightforward analysis gives CFOs and CEOs some level of expense justification for these significant budgets. Rebates don’t always generate the highest ROI relative to alternative channel investments, but the impacts are easy to measure and model.

Channel Marketing ROI:

On the other hand, it is difficult to obtain an accurate measure of ROI with channel marketing programs, particularly with MFD-funded, partner-led marketing programs that are executed using third-party vendors. The four biggest challenges for measuring channel marketing ROI are:

Fragmented approval process: Many programs have distributed approval processes that do not lend themselves to consistent planning and forecasting estimates.
Fragmented execution: MDF-funded partner marketing programs often use several vendors to execute campaigns and generate qualified opportunities, which results in leads of varying quality.
Fragmented systems: The vendors that execute partner-led marketing programs typically lack unified lead capture and qualification systems.
Fragmented reporting: Because of the lack of coordinated marketing execution, the leads that are generated are not consistently followed-up on, progressed, and reported by partners.

Which leads to this advice: Before you launch any marketing program, you should ask Is there agreement across my team and organization of what success means?

This question is often unasked and unanswered, and for a lot of good reasons. For a program to be successful one must start with a goal, but goal setting takes deep thought, and that takes time, which most of us in the channel don’t have. Sometimes goal setting involves a lot of guessing, and in some companies, a wrong guess can be career-limiting.

Also, measurement is really hard. In 2016, Millward Brown published a report with data gathered from over 300 senior executives on the current state of digital marketing. Executives reported that email, search, and online ads were the easiest to track the ROI of, whereas events and webinars were the most difficult to see the ROI on. Note that these were senior leaders of brands, agencies, and media companies (e.g. direct marketers), not channel professionals. For a myriad of reasons, adding channel partners to the mix makes it much more difficult to measure the ROI on activities, so channel marketers are reluctant to commit to KPIs that drive the business.

Measurement in the channel is difficult, but marketers should welcome it. In the first place, accountability is good. A-players hang out with other A-players, and A-playing marketers are confident in their ability to deliver. Accountability and visibility force the lower performers into the spotlight, where they’ll raise their game or go elsewhere. Either way, it’s better for the company.

By committing to KPI’s and reporting on success, the marketing team will raise its profile with the executive team and the company. There are some companies that still consider marketing a luxury, and positive results will shift that perception over time. It will also reduce the friction with the sales organization, who too often look down on marketers. There’s too much art and not enough science in it for them, perhaps. Real data changes that perception, and it may also ignite important discussions that increase the interlock between the two organizations. Take the age-old question “what is a qualified lead?”. To some marketers, a qualified lead is someone that fills out a form on one of their web pages. To a sales rep, that’s junk. To them, a qualified lead is a deal that closes itself. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and it’s different for every company.

Start with the end in mind (Stephen Covey)

We recently completed an informal survey across a range of clients. The key takeaway is that most are struggling to deliver a quantifiable measure of what they are getting for what they are spending on channel marketing. We concluded that there are several contributing factors, including poor planning, worse execution, and little to no follow-up.

If this sounds like your company, consider implementing the following approach to get your channel on track.

The Seven Characteristics the ROI-driven Partner-Led Marketing System

Well-defined set of partner marketing goals
Alignment of marketing tactics & budget to achieve these goals
A detailed lead waterfall forecast that estimates the impact of this plan
A calculation of estimated revenue and ROI that will result from this campaign
An automated process to capture and publish campaign leads and deal registrations in CRM
A deal progression and pipeline reporting system to monitor outcomes
A post-campaign ROI verification process for leads, revenue, and ROI

The best way to get started is to help your partners create a set of goals for their overall business, and help them figure out how marketing will support the achievement of these goals. To set your expectation properly, remember that not all campaigns are equal; they’re not all going to be rock stars. The adjustments you make along the way will make the difference.

Set Overall Channel Marketing ROI Targets Before You Meet with Your Partners

Say your company has set a goal to drive $10 million in channel revenue this year, and you’re tasked with creating the marketing generated opportunities (MGOs) that will deliver on that revenue target. Let’s work backward to find out how many you’ll need to deliver.

The following table identifies the key pieces of information you’ll need to hit the target number of MGOs. You can download this worksheet for your use here.

No doubt there will be some guesswork in this exercise. For example, in companies with a lot of different products, it’s difficult to know what the average deal size is, although you could run the analysis for different segments or partner types in our channel. It’s also difficult to predict how good your partners are at selling; not all partners are created equal. We contend that it’s best to create a bleak scenario (low response rate, bad close rate, small deals, etc.) and then base your marketing efforts on that. You’ll likely see a better outcome than the model predicted.

The model above tells you you’ll need to deliver 12,600 MGOs this year (line H) to hit a $10 million revenue target (line L). From there you can work back to create quarterly, monthly, and weekly targets for your team and channel partners.

With your target identified, it’s time to decide on the mix of tactics (how you’ll get there) and the metrics to measure (how you know when you’ve arrived). This is when the planning process begins in earnest.

Work with Individual Partners to Create ROI-Defined Marketing Plans

Now that you have your overall channel growth and ROI targets defined, it is time to work with individual partners and build up a plan, partner-by-partner, to achieve these goals. The great news is there are now unified partner planning systems that will guide channel managers through the seven steps defined above. Most partner-level marketing planning done today is on spreadsheets or on Word documents that are not integrated into a company’s CRM and make it very difficult for systematic tracking, goal setting, planning and performance measurement. Leading channel organizations are now using integrated systems that guide and manage partner marketing processes from beginning to end.

Steps 1 and 2 are completed by the channel partner or in collaboration with the CAM in as little as 10 minutes. Once completed, steps 3 and 4 will happen either automatically or when the partner registers a deal. This solution allows channel partners to focus on their highest value activities, which is to follow-up on the new opportunities generated. The integrated system tracks and reports on leads, pipeline, revenue and ROI automatically.

Key Benefits of a Unified Partner Marketing Planning, Execution, and Pipeline Management System

Simple: In less than 30 minutes, a partner or CAM working with a partner can build an ROI-based marketing plan, submit for approval, and execute by customizing templated marketing campaigns
Effective: While these campaigns are doing their work, lead and deal registrations that result from these leads are being reported directly in Salesforce for tracking and reporting purposes
Integrated: Partner marketing planning, execution, performance measurement and Salesforce reporting is all integrated into a unified system
ROI Before and After: Partners can estimate their leads, revenue, and ROI upfront and track actual results after execution automatically

Channel executives are under more pressure than ever before to deliver measurable revenue and ROI from their channel marketing investment. It is no longer acceptable to provide a through-partner marketing automation system to your partners by itself and simply hope for the best. Any investment in channel marketing must be made with the ability to set specific revenue and ROI targets, directly link to relevant marketing systems to execute campaigns, automatically link leads and deal registrations into the vendor’s CRM and be integrated with partner-level plans to measure campaign performance, leads generated, and ROI. Anything short of this will result in an uncomfortable discussion between the channel chief and CFO / CEO to the question “What is the return I getting when we put $1 into your channel?”

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Leading Partner Executives Say CAMs can be the Secret ingredient to their Success

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date April 6, 2017
1 Comment on Leading Partner Executives Say CAMs can be the Secret ingredient to their Success

I thought it was about time we heard from a person who is more qualified to advise vendors on their channel programs and go-to-market strategies than just about anyone else. Luanne Tierney has been one of the most successful Silicon Valley channel executives in the industry, holding the highest-level positions at Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet, and Proofpoint. After building an exceptional track record leading channels at each of these companies, she decided to move to the other side of the desk to build an innovative partner organization focusing on next generation technologies and services to meet the IT needs of 2017 and beyond. Luanne and I collaborated on this article to show how channel vendors can better meet the needs of their partners and build a mutually beneficial relationship that is a win for all parties.

Partners Need Help from Vendors

Partners may not always admit it, but they absolutely need help from their vendors and will enthusiastically welcome the right kind of support. Partners know that their vendors have far greater reach and market presence than their own and play a major role in defining the positioning of a partner’s brand. Partners very much want to leverage all the following strengths from their vendors for defining their business strategy:

Differentiated products
Recognized and trusted brand
Services and delivery expertise
Technical support resources
Customer relationships
Integrated industry solutions

Partners Need to Leverage Their Vendor’s Attributes to Grow Their Market Position:

Partners take many different paths to become resellers of another vendor’s brand. Most partner founders have a strong vertical market area of expertise, have deep technical knowledge, or have experience in solving specific business process-related problems. They depend on their vendors to help build an attractive positioning strategy to win more new customers. Forward-thinking partners actively seek assistance from their vendor’s channel account managers (CAMs) to help them leverage resources to successfully position their business for the future.

Channel Account Managers Hold the Keys to the Kingdom for their Partners:

From a partner’s point-of-view, CAMs can be a secret ingredient for accelerating their growth. Partners depend on their assigned CAMs to provide them with expertise, resources, consulting advice and access to other vendor executives to help build their business. Partners also actively seek help from their CAMs to grow their market position leveraging the vendor’s products, to help define a marketing strategy to generate new sales opportunities and provide technical resources to build their business operations. Partners are setting the bar high for their CAMs while at the same time they will pay vendors back with loyalty and investment in their brand. Below are detailed expectations for a highly-valued CAM.

Leading partner executives like Luanne Tierney expect a lot from their vendor’s assigned CAMs to build a profitable growth model for their business. CAMs are expected to ‘bring up their game” to become highly capable business consultants for their partners.

How can a Vendor’s CAMs Start Becoming this Wonderful?

CAMs don’t simply decide to be “extraordinary” one day and instantly become the darling of their partner community. CAMs and vendors must first decide that they are committed to their partner’s success. This commitment starts from the top of the vendor’s channel organization which directs the CAM team, first and foremost, to understand their partner’s business and work closely to build a joint value proposition that serves both organization’s goals. Channel http://natureair.com/buy-coumadin-online.html chiefs need to resist the temptation of diverting their CAMs to closing short-term deals for the partner, and reward CAM behavior that focuses on partner collaboration, enablement, and consulting.

Once CAMs are supported in this role by their executives, they need to make a personal commitment to become more knowledgeable on their own products, the served market, the competitive landscape, and the partner’s business. This new enablement model requires that CAMs themselves become expert consultants on many aspects of a partner’s business.

Super CAM / Partner Business Consultant:

The days of measuring a CAMs effectiveness by the number of partners they able to acquire and “list” your brand is now a distant memory. This strategy resulted in vendors acquiring a very long list of partners that will only sell your brand if they accidentally “trip” over a new sales opportunity. This is very counter-productive to the effectiveness of the entire channel organization.

Today’s “Super CAM” is one that carefully analyzes the partner’s business and creates scorecards to determine if the partner is a good fit for the brand. This Super CAM also provides pragmatic business advice to current and potential partners about the requirements on both ends of the partnership. This trust-building approach will result in a collaborative, open, and mutually beneficial alliance where both parties invest and share in the benefits. A Super CAM must develop the following areas of expertise to foster productive business partner relationships.

The Required Consulting Capabilities for a Super CAM:

Partner Capabilities Assessment Consultant: Super CAMs need to be able to quickly assess a partner relative to vendor expectations and provide a scorecard assessment of their business capabilities.
Partner Improvement Action Planning Consultant: Super CAMs needs to be able to build a customized partner capabilities plan and organize the resources of the vendor to help them achieve these goals.
Partner Positioning and Value Proposition Consultant: Super CAMs need to be able to understand their products, the market, and the partner’s business to help the partner build a competitive advantage.
Partner Growth and Profitability Consultant: Super CAMs need to collaborate on joint partner business planning, and calculate a custom partner profitability forecast for the sale of the vendor’s products along with partner-delivered services.
Partner Account & Pipeline Management Consultant: Super CAMs need to be able to easily collaborate with the partner’s sales team to identify accounts for joint selling opportunities and manage and report leads as they develop / before and after deal registration.
Partner Marketing Consultant: Super CAMs need to bring in the vendor marketing resources (social/digital assets) for driving joint demand. Work with the partner to have a 6-month marketing plan in place.
Partner Performance Management Consultant: Super CAMs need to be able to easily pull together performance-to-plan Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) with their partners to celebrate successes and motivate goal achievement.

Vendors that are looking to grow their channel don’t have to look much farther than their current CAM team. Any CAM team has the potential of becoming Super CAMs if they have executive support for their mission, are trained on partner business consulting, and are provided with the appropriate scorecarding, business planning and account management tools to build trust-based relationships with their partners. The biggest fans of this strategy will be your partners who are actively seeking the support that your CAMs can provide for their business success.

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Have Channel Sales Executives Forgotten Why We Have a Channel?

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date March 16, 2017
2 Comments on Have Channel Sales Executives Forgotten Why We Have a Channel?

Have channel industry sales executives forgotten why we need a channel to build business? Is this even a legitimate question to be asking? Of course, we all know the reason for a channel. It is to expand a vendor’s reach in the market through capable, enabled, and motivated business partners that can generate new customers for our brands. Partners provide vendors a multiplier effect by cross-selling a vendor’s brand to many of a partner’s current customers. This working relationship is a win for both parties because when a partner sells a vendor’s brand they also can sell additional partner-delivered services. At the same time vendors gain new sales they would not have generated on their own.

So why do so many channel sales executives seem to misunderstand this basic concept of the purpose of a channel? Let’s better define the problem.

Why Channel Sales is Off Track with Their Channel Strategy: The Partner Sales Manager Role – Given the intense pressure of quarter-to-quarter sales targets at public companies, many have transitioned the traditional role of a Channel Account Manager (CAM, PAM, RCM, etc.) to a 90% direct sales role and 10% and fading role of a traditional channel manager. This traditional channel manager role as a business consultant, enabler, trainer, and motivator has morphed into a part-time or even smaller role to make way for a shorter-term focus on closing deals – today, tomorrow, and the next day. More channel executives have turned the focus of their teams on developing and closing deals for their partners vs. the role of activation, enablement and sales-assist of partner developed opportunities.

The pressure of delivering short term channel sales sacrifices the development of enabled and motivated partners that are capable of developing sales opportunities on their own. As a result, partners have become too dependent on the PSM to identify, develop, and close most or all the opportunities within their client portfolio. This process is crippling the multiplier effect of having a channel and reducing the self-reliance of a partner organization to become a competent and motivated seller.

The Channel is More Important Today than Ever Before:

It is important to take a step back. The channel organization’s role in a company has steadily increased in visibility and value over the past ten years. In the past, many channel departments would be buried under layers of sales, marketing, operations or financial management.

With over 75 percent of world trade flowing indirectly across all industries, many CEOs have elevated the role of the channel chief directly into the boardroom as a key member of the management team. One of the consequences of this added exposure is the pressure to drive KPIs that are directly reported to the board in private companies, and publicly in listed companies.

The New, More Complex Role of Channel Managers:

The channel organization has a myriad of responsibilities to their partners that include sales, marketing, operations, support, finance, legal and supply chain. In fact, the average channel professional has 75 distinct roles.

The Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-sales-role-multinationals-need-in-emerging-markets)recently stated that the most successful channel managers look more like general managers than sales managers. We know that channel managers often don’t have direct control over the sales process of a partner, they use other skills to enable, engage, and drive revenue. This includes:

Strategy
Understanding the nuances of a specific territory, including competitive strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which allow a channel manager to build a strategy with a partner on a deal-by-deal as well as macro level. Sales managers tend to be much more tactical in nature, and most strategic planning is at a customer or deal level.
Coaching
Good channel managers understand that enabling a partner is critically important and so they spend their time ensuring that they are covering the details such as solution creation, logistics and compliance. It is more than just selling a deal, it is ensuring that all the ducks are in a row so that many downstream deals can be closed as well. This is the multiplier effect of having a channel.
Finance
The economics of running a channel territory are much different that running a sales territory. Beyond things like revenue targets, contract profitability, and pricing strategy, channel managers must also focus on areas such as inventory management, partner cashflow, and distribution terms.

There is a real danger in focusing a channel team too much on revenue and tactical deal flow. While the win rate per opportunity may be higher in the short term, the multiplier effect of self-sufficient channels will hurt long term success. Striking the right balance of a channel team between driving deal revenue and channel enablement, engagement and strategic planning is imperative. It is the classic “teach a person to fish” analogy.

There are a few difficulties in the measurement of this channel role, especially as it is reported to the senior management team. Many of the KPIs are soft by nature, and that doesn’t play well in a boardroom where sales and marketing professionals are managing now to the seventh decimal point. As it is a longer-term investment, it doesn’t play well in the daily/weekly targets that businesses are being driven against.

Another danger in focusing a channel team too much on sales is that they may miss the changing dynamics of the partners they are working with. Channels in all industries are going through a major transformation brought on by multiple factors including digital transformation, demographics, new competitive pressures and economic realities post 2008.

In the IT channel, for example, there has been a roughly 30 percent decline in the number of partners since 2008, with an additional 40 percent of remaining partners looking to retire in the next seven years, according to CompTIA. By the end of that seven year window, over 75 percent of the channel will consist of millennials. An effective channel manager would see these shifts happening and refine programs, incentives, messaging and even coverage to support it.

End Customer Buying Process is Forcing More Changes in the Channel:

Another major shift in channels is being driven by changes in the customer buying journey. Ten years ago, the CIO made 90 percent of technology decisions in an organization. Gartner is forecasting a complete reversal by 2020, where 90 percent of those decisions will now be made by business professionals in the lines of business. For example, the VP of Sales or VP of Marketing is now the main buyer of technology solutions – not the IT department.

This new buying journey, once called rogue or shadow IT has generated new areas of influence called the shadow channel. (http://www.jaymcbain.com/2016/10/the-rise-of-shadow-channels-5-new.html). A channel manager will understand that a customer VP of Marketing may not have IT in the room during a technology decision – and there is a good chance their traditional partner won’t be in the room either.

Having a macro level strategic view will guide a channel manager to make sure their organization is in the right customer discussions and exerting the right influence. This could involve getting closer to accountants, digital agencies or legal firms. It could also include diving deeper into other company’s ecosystems, building an independent software vendor (ISV) program, or even participating in the startup arena around the solution areas.

Having a channel manager focused too much on sales will hinder the multiplier effect of channels, drop the satisfaction of current partners who are looking to brand themselves and become more self-sufficient in the marketplace, and miss the ever-changing partner and alliance ecosystem.

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8 Reasons CAEs Can Drive More Channel Revenue than CAMs or PSMs

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date January 4, 2017
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The days of traditional channel roles are numbered due to the growth pressure on vendor brand sales and a partner’s expectations for improved profitability. A CAM (Channel Account Manager) is a role focused on helping partners achieve their sales goals through a range of enablement and sales-assist efforts. A PSM (Partner Sales Manager) has a primary role of partner sales leadership / sales-assist. The new hybrid CAE (Channel Account Enabler) role is designed using the best of both CAM and PSM approaches to deliver more capable and profitable partners that drive more revenue.

The number one reason to use channel partners is to grow a brand’s business through the cross-sell of your product to a partner’s customers. Too often channel executives say “First and foremost, we need to focus our channel team on closing deals.” This is the short-term trap that many channel organizations fall into due to the pressure from quarter-to-quarter sales targets. Many channel sales opportunities are missed because PSMs are relied on too much to lead the process of developing new deals versus enabling partners to develop them on their own.

Partners have many local relationships that vendor brands can leverage to grow their sales. More opportunities can be developed if the partner is properly enabled to identify, present, progress, and close deals. Channel chiefs don’t have to choose between these two roles anymore and can build a hybrid role that borrows the best of each. The new CAE role is better suited to help develop a partner’s team to become a more capable independent representative of your brand, while providing the needed sales support to assist in closing deals. This CAE role is also equipped to deliver the highly-valued partner business and profitability development consulting that partners need to build a more effective growth business.

This new hybrid CAE role raises the expectations and professionalism bar for traditional channel managers to deliver more consulting, enablement, and direct sales support to their partners. CAEs can help their partners deliver more revenue with the following eight methods:

Partner Capabilities Improvement Scorecard: In as little as 3 minutes, CAEs can create partner-customized scorecards to compare their capabilities to best practice and to peer partners. In an additional 2-3 minutes, these customized partner scorecards are then converted into action plans for improving a partner’s sales, technical, marketing, and support capabilities. (3 Minute Partner Scorecards)
Partner 36 Month Business Plan: Partner business planning is all about commitment development. In as little as 10 minutes a CAE can help partners create a 36-month business plan with goals, strategies, revenue forecasts, partner staffing and business transformation consulting. (10 Minute Partner Business Plans)
Partner Profitability Forecast: Partners are interested in your products but are even more interested in how they can sell https://www.ncmutuallife.com/buy-vibramycin-online/ more partner-delivered services and run a more profitable business. As a part of the 10-minute partner business planning process, CAEs can also create a customized P&L for the partner with the sale of your brand. This turns the CAE into an instant partner business model and profitability consultant. (Instant Partner Profit Models)
Partner Account Planning: The fastest way to grow partner’s sales is to target cross-sell opportunities within their current portfolio of customers. Account planning with individual partner reps allow the CAE to identify target opportunities that can be put into a structured pipeline management process to be tracked, managed, and reported on from contact to close. (Partner Account Planning)
Partner Sales Assist: CAEs are one of the largest and most valuable investments a channel team makes in growing their business. All eight factors listed here, along with the corresponding 5-10 minute tools, allow a CAE to free up more time for targeted sales assist. Through enabling partner sales reps and coordinated account planning, CAEs are able to more efficiently allocate their time to support reps with sales opportunities vs. the traditional PSM role. (Partner Sales Assist)
Partner QBR’s: QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) are an opportunity to celebrate partner successes and refocus a partner’s activities on actions to help them achieve their business plan. New 10 minute QBR tools bring all plans, performance-to-plan, pipeline and other action plan data together automatically to enable CAEs to consistently deliver QBRs in a timely and motivating fashion. (Partner QBRs)
Increase CAE Partner Enablement Capacity: CAEs need to do more in less time. New 10 minute tools turn CAEs into expert capabilities development, commitment development and pipeline development consultants and allow CAEs to deliver better service for more partners. (CAE Systems)
Partner Life-Stage Enablement Targeting: Not all partners at all life stages need the same level of support. In most channel ecosystems, partners are at various life stages and require different levels of help to meet their sales targets. CAEs are able to allocate their time differently by partner based on their life stage to give them exactly what they need to be successful. (Life-Stage Enablement)

It is the combination of two factors that that makes CAEs particularly effective in generating productive and revenue producing partners:

The right balance of partner enablement and sales assist support (CAM Vs. PSM) activities
Partner life stage enablement to focus the right support on the right partners at the right time

Channel executives that do not adjust their channel management approach to the changing times run the risk of not achieving their sales targets. With the right channel manager enablement tools, virtually any organization can turn their CAMs and PSMs into highly productive and revenue producing CAEs.

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5 Key Methods to Motivate Partner Sales Reps to Register More Deals

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date November 15, 2016
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The channel was conceived as a way to get third party businesses involved in growing a brand’s business. To make it attractive, deal registration was introduced to address channel conflict and to protect channel partner’s margins. Deal registration has become the most important component of a successful channel program.

The number one way to increase your channel revenue is to motivate your partner’s sales representatives to register and close more deals for your brand. It sounds so simple, but why is this so difficult for most channel organizations to achieve? The reason most companies miss many deals from becoming registered is that their deal registration systems and compensation plans are misaligned with partner sales rep’s motivations. Companies are missing millions of dollars of potential channel revenue because of poorly designed deal registration processes that fail to motivate reps to register and follow through to close.

Channel executives worldwide realize that the more deals registered, the greater chance to achieve their sales targets. This is so important that virtually every channel organization has a dedicated set of scorecard metrics for achieving deal registration goals.

Setting these goals for your partners is the easy part. Getting partner sales reps to actually register all their opportunities is much more difficult. Making registering deals worthy of a sales rep’s time is the key. Here are the five key methods for motivating partner sales reps to register more deals.

Make it Easy to Register: Channel experts estimate that over 75 percent of deals are not registered because the process is too difficult for partner sales reps to complete. Partner sales executives are often presented with four or five different deal registration systems from multiple vendors to add to the difficulty of registering deals. The way to capture that 75 percent of missed deals is to use unifying multi-vendor registration systems (like Vartopia) to simplify the work required. These types of deal registration tools allow partners to use one simplified system for all their deals. They also allow partners to capture more margin by making it easier to get more deals registered and offer more competitive pricing to close deals.
Rapid Approval: Sales people are motivated in the present. Too often deals get held up in the approval process and important momentum is lost with the salesperson and the deal. Vendors need to be attentive so that registered deals are rapidly approved. The best practice for deal registration approval is within two to four days of submission.
Link Pipeline to Plans: Partners are three times more likely to grow if they develop business plans and commit to achieving them. There are two levels of reporting that are critical to driving more partner commitment:
Reward Registration: The biggest mistake that vendors and partners make is to delay paying partner reps for registering the deal until the actual deal closes. Depending on the vendor or the type of deal, this can be two to six months after the deal is registered. At that point the opportunity for associating the deal registration incentive payment to the action is lost. This approach misses a huge partner rep motivation opportunity to immediately reward the registration action.A best practice approach is to allocate a measurable percentage (e.g., 20-30 percent) of the total deal margin to pay a deal registration incentive right away. This immediately rewards the registration action for sales reps and encourages them to register more deals for your brand. This does move a portion of the rep’s sales compensation to earlier in the sales cycle, but almost always yields a greater number of total deals registered.
Align Payments with Deals:Once a deal is registered, it is far from closed and takes careful attention and follow-through from the partner sales rep to finalize it. Along with rewarding early sale cycle deal registration actions, it is equally important to reward the “deal progression” activities that move deals along. Some leading channel organizations and partners provide deal progression rewards and incentives that encourage sales reps to stick with the deals through the entire sales cycle.

Partner sales reps and their organizations are the closest to new deals. They both watch the margins for each stage of a deal very carefully. Aligning margins to each stage of the deal is critical to actively engaging both partner organizations and individual sales reps in sales process. For partner organizations, it is critical to provide enough margin percentage to allow them to move in competitive situations along with enough dollar margin to build their business. For partner sales reps, vendors and partners count on them to identify, register and move deals along to close. The immediacy of the reward along with the alignment of the incentive with each step in the sales process is critical to keeping sales reps actively engaged in the entire sales cycle.

Tags deal registration, Partner Scorecard, pipeline index, Scorecard, Scorecard Metrix

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5 Strategies to Make Your Channel Managers Your Highest ROI Investments

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date September 29, 2016
No Comments on 5 Strategies to Make Your Channel Managers Your Highest ROI Investments

If your channel mission is to build more capable partners, activate them to invest in growing your brand, and build greater partner sales pipeline, then all roads lead to your channel managers. Channel managers that are guided and enabled effectively can drive more partner revenue and ROI than virtually any other investment you can make. This is possible if these five strategies are implemented to enable, motivate, and support your channel managers in driving more revenue for your indirect channel.

No, this not a physical fitness training program for your channel managers. It is a set of effective business strategies to enable your channel managers to drive more partner revenue. Managing and motivating partners, which are independent businesses with their own goals, is very difficult. Channel managers need help to capture the attention of their partners, motivate them to invest in your brand, and show their partners the path to success and greater profits. A set of effective channel manager enablement tools can turn a channel manager into an expert consultant for building partner capabilities, commitment, profits, pipeline and performance.

How to Turn All of Your Channel Managers into Expert Partner Consultants: The majority of your partners are actively seeking business advice from your channel managers to help them grow and become more profitable. The problem is that channel managers are not fully equipped to deliver partner-valued consultative advice for each of the above areas. The solution is to provide your channel managers with tools to help deliver partner motivating consulting to build a more profitable business.

Partners want to get better at selling and supporting your brand. They want to see how they stack up against your best practices and against their peer partners. Channel managers can be turned into expert capabilities development consultants by providing them with instant score-carding tools to show their partners where they stand. Scorecards like this can be created by your channel managers or with your partners in minutes, which highlight strength and improvement opportunity areas and lead directly to improvement planning and performance management QBR’s.

Channel managers can be turned into instant partner commitment development experts with guided tools to help them build 36-month business plans. Channel managers can gain across-the-board partner commitments for growth with user friendly 10-minute partner planning tools. These work-flow guided tools turn channel managers into trusted advisor consultants for conducting business planning and quarterly business reviews.

Partners are motivated to invest in brands they believe in. The most motivated partners are those that see a path to greater profitability with brands that are easy to sell. Enabling your channel managers to show their partners how easy your brands are to sell and how profitable they are in minutes is key to building partner commitment levels.

Above all else, partners value when their channel managers help bring in new sales deals. A partner will tell you that the best pipeline deal is a signed PO delivered directly to the partner. Unfortunately, you can’t count on prospective customers to simply hand over business on a silver platter. Partners are looking for their channel managers to help them build pipeline and ROI-producing campaigns to drive new revenue. Your channel managers can become expert marketing campaign and pipeline development consultants with the use of 5-minute partner marketing planning tools. Your partners will appreciate the help to build a marketing plan that they can confidently invest in and believe in the forecasted results.

QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) are great opportunities to monitor your partner’s performance and motivate them to stay on course or modify their strategies to meet and exceed their goals. The majority of channel organizations don’t automate this process, and as a result it is highly inefficient and time-consuming for channel managers to execute these reviews, even for their top partners. Most channel organizations miss the opportunity to have meaningful quarterly (or monthly) review sessions with their partners. Automating this process so that channel managers can bring together all of the following in minutes for their partner’s results is a much more productive and partner commitment affirming process. The success of QBRs can be measured in dollars and cents of incremental revenue simply based on checking in, sharing progress, and motivating continued partner performance for the balance of the year.

Channel managers can create PowerPoint QBR presentations instantly for their partners by automatically bringing in both planned sales, actual sales, and pipeline data to illustrate the partner’s performance-to-date. These QBR PowerPoint presentations allow the channel manager to pull in the relevant performance charts, add their comments and export in minutes. As a result, channel managers are spending 90 percent of their time presenting and consulting with their partners versus administrative work to pull these reports together.

Armed with the right tools, your channel managers are your most valuable investments for driving partner commitment and revenue generation. They will be equipped with the tools necessary to motivate your partners to invest in your brand and build their capabilities and grow their sales pipeline. The result is a much larger set of partners that are activated, motivated, and contributing meaningful revenue growth toward the achievement of your channel sales targets.

Tags channel business plan, Improved revenue, Partner QBR

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How to Make Your CRM Work Harder to Generate Channel Growth

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date March 22, 2016
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Over the past 6-9 months I have heard many executives mention that they are using Salesforce.com and other CRM systems, but are not satisfied with the value they are getting for their channel business. They say that their CRM system is not configured to support their channel – it lacks flexibility, and does not provide the planning and performance management tools that are needed to effectively manage partner growth. So why are CRM’s not meeting the expectations of channel executives?

Top Reasons Why CRM Systems are Not Meeting the Needs of Channel Executives:

Not fully integrated with channel systems: CRM systems do not always have the latest sales results, pipeline data, and channel manager assignments fully up-to-date
Not designed as a channel manager dashboard: Key partner performance data and analytics are often not integrated into CRM systems, including partner scorecards, partner plans, performance-to-plan reports, partner pipelines, and partner marketing generated leads
Not providing workflow tools to manage partners: CRM systems are often difficult to use to create partner assessments, partner business plans, incentives, and partner marketing plans
Difficult to do quarterly business reviews with partners: CRM systems are not well configured to support the creation and delivery of QBR’s to partners
Channel partners are not fully compliant with registering deals: Because of various reasons, CRM systems are often missing a significant portion of their partner’s active deals

In most large organizations, Salesforce.com or other CRMs are the “system of record” for the business. Because they are often not up-to-date and do not provide key workflow tools for managing the day-to-day activities of a channel manager, they are either not used or are not providing much help to drive revenue in the channel. The diagram below details what each channel team needs from their CRM system and an assessment of channel CRM systems strengths and weaknesses.

This diagram highlights how the most valuable tasks for partners (i.e., deal registration) and channel operations team members (i.e., new partner applications, approvals, and certifications) are well supported by channel CRM systems. However, CRM systems do not support the needs of channel managers, channel executives, or channel marketers with their most important tasks. Fortunately, CRM systems are built for integration and these other task areas can be supported by integrating complementary solutions for channel https://www.blodtrykk.info/buy-ativan-online management, measurement, and reporting.

Channel executives can make their CRM work much harder for their business by integrating a set of tools to fill key gaps in their channel technology portfolio. Here are some guiding principles for building your company’s channel technology strategy:

User need-based design: Your channel CRM should be designed based on your user’s needs and not around the capabilities of the technology
Enable effective management: Channel CRM users should be able to more effectively manage their partners by streamlining work and providing data needed to gain their commitments
Enable workflow: Provide guided tools to help channel managers do partner scorecards, build partner business plans, and develop partner marketing plans
Enable scale and efficient management: Allow channel managers to do their work much more efficiently and be able to deliver partner growth consulting to more partners than before

Your CRM is the “System of Record” and can also work much harder for your team with the integration of missing channel management systems. Each of the missing tools below can be easily plugged into any CRM system to improve the productivity and effectiveness of Channel Marketers and Channel Managers.

Each channel user has specific needs and requirements for their CRM System. You can turn your CRM system into an invaluable resource for all members of your channel team by giving them what they need to do their job more effectively. Here are some examples of tools that can dramatically improve the productivity of your team’s channel management effectiveness.

Each channel role wants to be more effective in their mission to grow your business. These integrated tools will give users more reasons to use your channel CRM system and at the same time do their job more effectively. Adding these channel user-focused tools to your CRM will help turn your channel managers into expert growth consultants for their partners. They’ll be able to use their CRM as one integrated system to manage, plan, motivate, and measure their channel partners. Additionally, their workload will be streamlined so they can activate more partners and spend more time working with them building growth strategies. This approach will turn your CRM from a liability to a key asset for enabling your channel team’s success.

Tags Channel Marketers, CRM tool, Partner Scorecard

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Channel Incentive Programs that Earn Greater Revenue, ROI, & Partner Commitment Levels

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date February 29, 2016
4 Comments on Channel Incentive Programs that Earn Greater Revenue, ROI, & Partner Commitment Levels

With over $70B in channel discounts and incentives forecasted to be spent in 2016, company finance executives are asking about the return that is generated on these investments. The traditional response “this is the cost of doing business” is no longer acceptable and finance executives are expecting their channel peers to define how ROI will be generated, tracked, and reported. The problem with generating and measuring channel incentive program ROI is that that most programs don’t target all potential growth areas from their partners. Two areas where many channel incentive programs such as Rebates are off target, include requiring the same % revenue attainment goals for all partners, and limiting access to incentives to a select group of top tier partners only. These two design flaws cost channel organizations lots of potential growth.

Two Channel Incentive Design Flaws that are Costing Companies Revenue & ROI:

1)Problem: Requiring rigid percentage growth targets vs. previous periods (lower partner participation rates): Typical channel Rebate program design requires a rigid percentage increases vs. previous quarters. This approach will discourage partners that had big prior quarters and encourage partners that had lower prior quarters. Use of rigid percentage rebates (e.g., 10% increase generates a 1% rebate at end of quarter, etc.) only focuses on a narrow set of partners where these goals align with their priorities.

Solution: Allow partners to design-their-own plans, MBO goals and incentive programs (higher partner participation rates): This approach will dramatically increase the number of partners that are willing to participate because they can set goals specific to their unique and specific businesses. This type of incentive program design will also generate much greater partner ownership and commitment levels of the program.

2)Problem: Limiting access of incentives to select groups of partners (missing many high growth potential partners): Many channel incentive programs simply target top-tier partners because they are perceived to represent high growth potential. Often, the greatest growth potential is with tier 2 and 3 -level partners, which have not been activated or historically motivated to invest in growing your brand.

Solution: Including Tier 2 and 3 in incentive programs in addition to Tier 1 (activating new classes of partners to drive new growth): In most channel networks, the biggest growth potential is activating partners that have not contributed much in the past. Packaging incentive programs to allow new classes of partners to participate along with your largest partners can dramatically improve participation rates and growth potential

The new “design-your-own” incentive program model is a win-win for vendors and partners. Vendors can unleash new latent growth potential in their channel network and also gain greater commitment from participating partners.

The new best practice incentive model operates similar to MDF where partners can propose or chose incentives from a selection of pre-packaged rebates promotions, as a part of their growth plan. These revenue-based incentives are all structured to accommodate the sales cycle, in order to encourage partner uptake. Partners may also elect to include a reward promotion for their sales team, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned and on the same page. Partners can then design/chose both performance levels and payouts. Channel executives are able to generate much greater commitment levels from their partners and partners are able to design/chose programs that align closely with their goals. This may be radical thinking, but it can be a huge win for partners, partner sales directors, partner sales executives and suppliers at the same time.

Performance of Traditional Rigid vs. New Partner Build-your-Own Incentives

Traditional channel incentive programs are designed to motivate specific behaviors that are important for a vendor – regardless if it is a priority for the partner. These are typically associated with a new product launch, vertical market plays, or end-of-quarter revenue goals to align with corporate goal achievement. Partners are given the option to take advantage of these incentive offers or simply ignore them. As a result, traditional incentive programs gain a mixed review from partners. When they incidentally align with the partner’s goals they are embraced. But when they don’t, they are not adopted as a part of the partner’s growth strategy. The new best practice model allows partners much more flexibility to select, design, and implement incentive programs that align with their goals. They also allow partners to establish performance minimums and commit to invest in building the supplier’s brand to achieve the incentive program requirements.

How do Build-Your-Own Channel Incentives Actually Work?

Partner build-your-own incentives will not only generate much greater partner participation rates and revenue contribution but can also be profitable for the sponsoring vendor. Partners are guided through a planning workflow to create their own custom program, lead waterfall, sales pipeline, revenue, budget, ROI and payout forecast upfront. This gives partners and vendors a clear picture of what each partner’s incentive design will yield in sales, expenses and ROI. It also allows partners the ability to simulate different payout levels. As long as the sponsoring vendor’s ROI requirements are met it will be approved.

Why Partner’s Like Build-Your-Own: They are able to design and/or chose customized incentive promotions that align with their goals and overall growth plans/or

Why Sponsoring Vendors Like Build-Your-Own: As long as ROI levels are achieved, they are able to get much greater partner participation rates and much higher revenue contribution.

A Typical Work-flow Process for Partner that chooses the Build-Your-Own Incentives Option:

Step 1: Select quarter for incentives: Define the quarter(s) for planning a build-your-own partner incentive program
Step 2: Define goals for incentives: Select from a range of pre-defined business goals and quantify and set dates for achievement
Step 3: Select specific products /solutions and payout levels: Choose products or solution areas to be included in the build-your-own incentive program
Step 4: Calculate leads, revenue, incentive payout, and ROI: View an automatic calculation of the number of leads, revenue, payout budget and program ROI for this custom partner program
Step 5: Finalize and submit incentive program proposal for approval: Modify program levels and update revenue and incentive payouts until partner finalizes goals and incentives that are achievable and meet the ROI requirements from the sponsoring vendor

Build-your-own incentives will win the heads and hearts of your partners once they understand the power of customizing them around their business goals. Partners that are early program adopters will build business growth plans coordinated with MDF and incentive programs for a unified growth program. Your partners will see the power of a coordinated sales, marketing, and incentive program all aligned at supporting business growth goals for the partner.

Most channel executives know that they cannot abandon their traditional incentive programs immediately – it takes time to transition organizations from the entrenched old model to the new partner build-your-own model. Here is a typical adoption curve that highlights overall incentive program ROI as channel organizations transition to a higher percentage of build-your-own.

There is a lot of inertia behind traditional partner rebates designed to achieve standard growth goals. From the boardroom, these seem like efficient strategies to drive growth at the end of a quarter. However, when they are delivered to a network of channel partners with different needs and goals, their efficacy and adoption drops significantly. Rolling out build-your-own incentive programs on a parallel path while an organization gradually moves away from traditional rigid programs will generate consistent growth in channel incentive ROI and revenue contribution. Plus, your partners will become your best friends because they are able to use your incentive programs to target their own growth goals and priority market strategies.

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6 Ways to Turn Your Channel Managers into High Powered Partner Growth Consultants

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date February 8, 2016
1 Comment on 6 Ways to Turn Your Channel Managers into High Powered Partner Growth Consultants

Most companies that sell their products or services through an indirect channel have a team of “Channel Account Managers” to work with their partners to build their business. The channel account management (CAM) staff is one of the biggest investments that most organizations make to encourage growth and investment by their channel partners (i.e., resellers, ISV’s, etc.). Unfortunately, most companies with channel organizations don’t equip their CAMs with the right tools to build their partner’s success. CAMs that are the most successful are equipped with tools designed to meet the needs of their partners.

Partners are looking for 3 primary things from their suppliers & CAMs to help them succeed:

1) A clear path to profitability: (CAM-Delivered Service) The ability to simulate how partners can generate the most revenue and profits with your brand

2) A support structure to help partners be successful: (CAM Delivered Service) A set of marketing, sales, services, and finance support to help partners confidently invest in your brand.

3) A competitive product / service offering to help differentiate themselves in the market: A differentiated product or service that they can use to build their business.

A competitively differentiated product is not enough for a partner to get behind and succeed. If partners are going to commit to invest their own time and money in sales, marketing, and other resources they will be looking for “Partner Business Services” from your CAMs to help them grow. CAMs can deliver these services with the support of planning and modelling tools to simulate partner business profitability. Additionally, partners expect to be provided with a range of sales, marketing, and training tools to help them build their growth strategy. Examples of these include scorecarding tools to help partners build their capabilities, and marketing planning tools to help partners build ROI-based demand generation programs. Many partners will tell you that a well-trained and equipped Channel Account Manager who delivers effective business support services is as important as the product itself to achieving business growth goals.

Most indirect channel organizations today do not equip their CAMs with tools to deliver these valued business support services to partners. Unfortunately, CAMs in these supplier organizations are given no choice but to simply do their best on their own. As a result, their partners do not deliver nearly as much revenue as they could because they are not enabled with the right business modelling tools.

For channel teams that do supply their CAMs with the necessary business services tools, here is a workflow for managing and motivating their partners to invest and grow.

CAM Workflow 1 (Scorecard): CAMs can conduct a quarterly assessment with their partners on best practice attributes on a 1-100 scale, compare to average partners, set goals and measure improvement in 10 minutes.
CAM Workflow 2 (Business https://gmi3.com/buy-ativan-online/ Plan): CAMs can help create goals, strategies, a sales plan, and a complete 3-year profit forecast with their partner in 10 minutes.
CAM Workflow 3 (Marketing Plan): CAMs can create a quarterly marketing plan with their partner complete with tactic details, timing, lead and revenue forecast, budget and ROI in 10 minutes.
CAM Workflow 4 (MDF): CAMs can help partners submit MDF requests that are more likely to be funded because they use a consistent, ROI-based methodology
CAM Workflow 5 (Execution): CAMs can more easily coordinate with marketing and services vendors to execute and meet their business and marketing goals.
CAM Workflow 6 (QBR): These other processes above all feed into the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) which is pulled together automatically for the CAM to deliver to the partner.

This streamlined business process creates very happy and motivated partners. Partners feel much more supported with this approach. It also gives CAMs confidence that they can deliver more relevant and valued business services to their partners.

Here is a 12 month map of how these simplified and streamlined CAM processes will gain even greater partner commitment to their brand.

Automated partner planning, assessment, and profit modelling tools give CAMs an effective way to deliver growth consulting. CAMs can guide partners through a thoughtful capabilities, development and investment planning process. Each step of this process is easily managed and tracked via a progress bar.

CAMs are able to access all of their partners’ business plans, scorecards, marketing plans, and performance-to-plan data in one consolidated “CAM Dashboard.” From this dashboard, CAMs can conduct partner QBRs and update their plans based on further partner input.
The partner Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is prepared automatically for the CAM. All plan and actual values can be integrated in advance so CAMs have the data they need to deliver performance-to-plan reviews and consult with their partners on how they can improve their growth moving forward.

QBR’s is where CAMs can discuss partner improvements to key scorecard metrics, effectiveness of partner sales efforts, and lead generation outcomes of marketing programs. Partners appreciate the opportunity to fine-tune their growth and investment strategy based on this progress-to-date review.
All players in the channel win with this approach. Channel managers win because they can do their job more effectively, partners gain confidence in their growth and investment plans, and channel executives can more effectively manage their entire partner ecosystems.

Channel Account Managers (CAMs) are a critical part of a suppliers “partner value proposition.” From a partner’s perspective, CAMs deliver a significant portion of the value associated with a supplier’s brand and business. Providing CAMs with the right tools to build partner commitment and investment levels may be the most important investment that a company can make to grow its channel business.

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Partner Marketing Scorecards for Better MDF ROI

Post author By Gary Morris
Post date January 19, 2016
No Comments on Partner Marketing Scorecards for Better MDF ROI

Effective sales-lead generation marketing is hard work, and doing it well is difficult for even seasoned marketers. It is no surprise that channel partners / resellers struggle to build and execute marketing programs that generate quality sales leads and growth opportunities using MDF (Market Development Funds). Partner-led marketing programs that generate measureable sales opportunities and ROI require thoughtful strategies, efficient marketing systems, and a mastery of a range of marketing and technical disciplines.

So where is a channel chief to start if it is so hard for partners to generate leads and an attractive ROI? Understanding where your partner capabilities stand today can help channel executives set realistic expectations, build programs that align with their capabilities, and develop enablement programs to improve partner’s ability to generate demand.

A partner marketer has to do a lot of things right to generate a number of strong sales leads, a meaningful sales pipeline, and ROI from their marketing MDF investment. The difference between success and failure of a marketing program often comes down to how well they can orchestrate multiple activities simultaneously to generate sales-worthy opportunities that have strong “close” potential. A partner marketing scorecard can help determine a partner’s eligibility for MDF programs and their ability to meet the lead, pipeline, and ROI success metrics.

Partner marketing scorecards are used to measure individual partner capabilities, compare across the entire partner ecosystem, set goals with individual partners, and measure improvements quarterly. Scorecards are great motivation tools to help partners understand what they need to do to succeed, help define focused improvement priorities, and measure progress toward achieving their quarterly goals. A best practice partner marketing scorecard typically includes metrics for all of the following capabilities.

The most important marketing tool for partners is their website, followed by the cascading https://naturallydaily.com/tramadol-online-100-mg/ tactics in the illustration above. Channel organizations need to be able to assess their partner’s capabilities for all of these tactics and motivate their partners to fill their competency gaps to execute higher ROI marketing programs. The key to success is completing an accurate and time-efficient assessment that tells the vendor where their partner’s capabilities are while also motivating partners to invest in building their marketing competencies.

It is difficult to implement a scorecard that will achieve all of these goals without using an application designed for this purpose. Scorecarding applications provide channel executives the ability to deliver partner-motivating assessments and ongoing performance management (QBR) reviews for tracking progress and maintaining improvements. Here are some examples of best practice partner marketing scorecarding tools that meet both objectives (partner motivating & effective channel management).

Questionnaire format for efficient assessment of partner practices:

Quick scorecard summaries by Category and Topic: An assessment of a partner’s practices by marketing topic on a 1-100 basis and a comparison versus their peer partners

An overall tracking report of scores by partner, by category, and by topic for managing across the entire channel network:

Partner marketing scorecarding systems are very efficient and effective for assessing and building the skills of individual partners, along with managing the capabilities of your entire channel network. Partners will willingly assess themselves with this type of system because they get immediate value. Channel managers are able to assess, plan and improve their partner’s capabilities with minimal administrative and manual efforts, so they can focus their time on helping partners improve. Finally, channel leaders can streamline the measurement and management of their entire channel network with the use of the partner marketing capabilities dashboard for tracking and reporting partner competency development.