Category Archives: Indirect Sales Channel

A Prettier Partner Portal Won’t Determine Your Channel Program Success

It’s easy to see why one of the most common concerns from people new to the PRM world revolves around the aesthetics of a portal.  More often than not it’s the marketing people who are building out the instance, so … Continue reading

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Channel Management Best Practices: Avoid Playing Telephone with the End Customer

The children’s game “telephone” illustrates how a message can get mangled as it passes from person to person. The lesson of the game is to be wary of a communication that comes in third-, fourth-, fifth-hand. Of course, that’s the … Continue reading

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The Best Way to Prevent Channel Conflict? Survey Says…

The 2112 Group’s survey of North American IT solution providers, service providers and telephone agents, shows that this group finds deal registration the most effective tool for maintaining fairness and consistent channel sales engagements with partners. In fact, deal registration … Continue reading

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Canaries in the Coal Mine

Canaries in the Coal Mine – Apparently Minor Issues That Quickly Become Revenue and Market Share Problems Keep an eye on these dead canaries to detect problems before they start killing sales. 1. Small Declines in Customer Satisfaction These could … Continue reading

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Determining the ROI of Your Channel

Everyone is looking to get an ROI read on their indirect sales channel, especially those organizations that are just starting out with a partner program. If you’ve been tasked with managing this initiative, odds are your CEO is regularly asking, … Continue reading

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What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You

Lack of visibility into the channel is one of the most common contributors to a failed indirect sales initiative. There’s no way around it: you can’t manage in the dark, and you can’t build effective strategy on guesswork. When management … Continue reading

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Smash those Silos from Your Indirect Sales Channel

Silos have their use – if you’re a farmer – but you don’t want them in your channel. The more obstacles between vendors, partners and their marketing teams, the less productive the channel. Anything that prevents information flow between these … Continue reading

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How to Increase Deal Registration

Deal registrations are the key to channel visibility and, therefore, to accurate channel sales projections. The first key to getting partners to register their deals is to acknowledge this value proposition for yourself. Obviously, the better you can see what’s … Continue reading

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The Channel as Search Engine Optimizer

Five Steps for Dominating SEO Using Your Channel Lets face it: The reason you build a reseller channel is to accelerate your company’s sales ten times faster than you could by building a direct sales force. Historically, Partner Relationship Management … Continue reading

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The Truth about the Magic Hockey Stick

It looks so nice on the channel partner revenue graph — a line inclines gradually for a year or so, and then makes a sharp upward turn, the shape of a hockey stick. Everyone thinks their indirect sales program is … Continue reading

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