Channel Readiness Blog

You are the sales and marketing leader for your emerging growth company, responsible for your company’s top line.  You and your boss, the CEO, have made the decision to use outside sales partners to accomplish the ambitious sales targets. As the person responsible for channel management, you have found the perfect sales channel partner organization.  Now, how do you make them productive?  The initial phase of this process is called onboarding.

Managing channel partners is a daunting task.  Most sales executives don’t relish the responsibility without direct control that comes with channel partner management. Nevertheless channel sales is one of the best ways to grow the top line in an emerging company with limited resources. On my wall is a list of all the things I have to worry about when recruiting, onboarding and managing channel partners:

You’ve got a great product. Your marketing materials are in good shape. You’ve built a profile of your best prospects and even have a sales process that’s worked in the field – a couple of times. Many VP’s of Sales at emerging growth companies are in exactly this predicament. Numbers to make with everything lined up except the prospects.  Geoffrey Moore, author of the best-selling business handbook Crossing The Chasm, used the image of a perilous divide to refer to this phase of company growth. Many businesses fail to make the transition from startup to high-performing household name and one of the reasons is failure to create a scalable, dependable sales channel.  What are your options for building a sales channel that will propel your company to greatness?

Times have changed, however. Now, end-user customers have even more influence. Not only can the customer express their opinions about specific products that are produced utilizing social media outlets – customers can also communicate their opinions regarding channel strategy and service levels. This means that manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers who were once “hidden” from customer views can be scrutinized almost as easily as the resellers and retailers.

We're all familiar with the life cycle of a product. We learned in our business classes and through hands-on experiences that product marketing must be managed differently through each linear phase of its life-cycle (development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline) to maximize long term ROI. Similar to a product life cycle, channel managers need to become familiar with the Channel Life Cycle such that performance can be maximized at each stage in the evolution of the distribution channel.

Shipments are being missed. Quality levels are dropping. Employee turnover in the channel is high. Expenses are increasing. Your business is showing serious signs of trouble because it's not easy for dealers to do business with you. Inside the walls of your business, your management team is fighting every fire with the best of their ability. But your channel partners don't have business processes in place that drive the entire organization towards optimal results. There are increased return rates and customer complaints. Phones are ringing with training issues or troubleshooting questions. Why haven’t your channel partners done what they need to do to fix THEIR problems?

According to an Industry Week study, half of the 217 employers surveyed state that their readiness training programs have had low success rates.  Poorly trained employees can lead to greater defects, more product returns, poor product sales and low customer satisfaction.  While having a training program is good, certification programs offer additional benefits to all partners in the selling ecosystem.

Detailed product information must be shared with all re-sellers including dealers and distributors so that they can properly represent and sell products.  Sounds obvious...right?  So, why doesn't every manufacturer do this well?

This press release announces the launch of LogicBay's PRM technology, the Performance Center™, for Freightliner Custom Chassis, a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks North America.

Reaching synchronicity with your channel partners provides your business as well as your partners tremendous benefits.  The channel will realize improved efficiencies and greater productivity as well as a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace.  Partner relationship management – or PRM – is a strategy to help your channel to coordinate and synchronize for highly effective results.