Blog - Channel Management
Our articles in the channel management category cover best practices, how-to guides, and expert advice on how to manage a successful channel. Whether you’re just starting out in partnerships or are a long-time channel veteran, we’re sure you’ll find helpful information to further your career.
Make sure to also check out our standalone guide on channel management software.
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 lacks easy access to channel data—visibility into partners’ profiles, recruitment pipeline and partner performance, geographic […]
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 three parties is essentially blocking revenue. Creating an Information Hub When you have one place […]
Part 2 of Structuring a Partner Program
A poorly designed incentive program can create some pretty counterproductive behaviors in your channel partners. See last week’s blog post for some of those pitfalls, and below are some ideas for preventing them. 1. First, make sure your incentive programs are strategically planned and integrated to support customer needs, vendor goals and partner […]
Structuring a Partner Program to Get the Partner Behaviors You Want Part 1
If you’ve ever had a spiff program not work the way you’d hoped, you already know that partners can behave in completely unexpected ways… Or are they really that unexpected? With a little forethought, if you consider what an incentive program is actually enticing, you will see pretty quickly that the partners’ behavior is completely […]
Channel Sales Visibility Helps You Beat the Competition
The law of the jungle is survival of the fittest, and few jungles are as competitive as indirect channel sales. Someone else will eat your lunch if you’re not operating at peak performance. To ensure you are optimizing your channel, it’s important to get full visibility into your channel performance. On top of losing deals […]
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 in your sales pipeline, the better you can forecast your partner channel revenue, and the […]
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 has focused on providing static marketing materials, funds for marketing campaigns, and distribution of leads […]
More MPG: Three Things You Can Do to Make Your Channel Program More Efficient
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that launching an indirect channel sales program is a significant undertaking requiring a major investment of time and budget. How do you make sure you’re maximizing your chances this investment pays off? One key to success is always fine-tuning your channel program to make […]
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 different, that wild success is inevitable—just get some partners and launch. But the fact is, […]
Joint Business Planning: A Myth or Necessity?
I bet you’re hoping I’m going to say “myth.” No one likes planning, right? But we might as well face facts: joint planning with partners is a critical best practice, and vendors that make the effort are much better positioned to have a successful channel. Joint planning keeps your partnerships from going dormant. Vendors usually […]