Channel Management Blog
Our blog features channel management tips, best practices and expert insights to help you get the most out of your PRM and create a successful partner program.
Feeding Your Channel Partners High Quality Leads
For most things, you get out of them what you put into them. The channel is no different, but too often vendors enter the channel to reduce internal head counts and cut costs, with the idea that the channel is a launch-it-and-forget-it kind of thing.
Deal Registration Best Practices
The overarching best practice in deal registration is to design your process with partners’ interests in mind, and they’ll register deals without too much prompting from you. If a partner’s relationship with your company and product is serving them, they’ll register deals.
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, “what are we getting out of the channel?” This is true especially for CEOs who […]
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, […]
The Beauty of the “Ready, Aim, Fire” Approach to Building Your Channel
This bounces off the post we wrote last week, where we explained the three things to consider before shopping for a channel solution. Not getting ready before moving to the “aim” and “fire” phases may be the most common reason for the failure of an indirect channel marketing strategy. You can invest the time now […]
Building the Partner Relationship: It’s a Lot Like Dating
For the sake of this post, let’s assume you’ve already looked carefully at your company’s situation and determined it is, in fact, the right time to start selling through the channel (or you might want to read my previous post, “Are You Ready to Dive into the Channel?”). Now it’s time to find the right […]
Which Comes First – Lead Generation or Partner Recruitment?
“I want to be working with a channel, but which should I be doing first?” This question comes up regularly on LinkedIn groups. It may sound like a chicken and egg question: How do you service leads without partners, and how do you engage your partners without leads? The fact is you need to be […]