Channel managers often have questions about setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for their sales channel ecosystem. It's clear that an indirect-sales ecosystem requires different KPIs than a single-channel direct-sales organization and quite often many KPIs will remain the same. For example, sales targets are still sales targets. However, channel sales KPIs should also relate to the ecosystem itself, and be more future-focused as well. Your KPIs should provide an overview of how your overall partner ecosystem is doing and also provide a sort of road map towards future channel growth. Here, we discuss five critical factors to think about when choosing KPIs.
1. Recruitment
While there are times an ecosystem may want to slow down for the sake of balancing itself and preventing over-extension, it’s fair to say that most of the time consistent expansion is desired. KPIs relating to recruitment are critical. The metrics used should cover areas including how long it takes to recruit partners, as well as the costs involved.
2. Geography and Market Targeting
Knowing how effectively your partners are covering geographical areas you want to reach and targeting specific personas within those regions is detrimental to a sales ecosystem. KPIs relating to these matters can let you quickly see if there’s a gap in your coverage, such as critical markets going unserved in a region that you should have full distribution in.
3. Training & Certification
Does your training and certification program include multiple levels or tiers, or several different developmental pathways for trainees to follow? Either option presents prime opportunities for KPIs that allow you to track the progress of your partners’ training initiatives. You can quickly see how many partners have reached top tiers, as well as the distribution of training throughout the system. If too few partners are making use of training and certification opportunities, it points to a need for better incentives or higher-quality materials.
4. Partner Enablement
In many cases, vendors want to see their top partners bringing solid business plans to the table, and following those plans towards greater success. A KPI here can easily track milestones along the way, allowing you quick access to an overview of how well your partners are doing in their work to align their business goals with yours.
5. Technological Transitioning
More and more vendors are moving towards Partner Relationship Management software and similar management suites to make it simpler to do business across their entire ecosystem. PRM doesn’t only make vendors’ lives easier, it also simplifies life for channel partners by setting up a single central portal for handling all business relating to that vendor. Transitioning onto PRM can be somewhat time-consuming and it’s generally done on a step-by-step basis rather than all at once. Therefore, KPIs can be extremely useful in keeping track of your technological transition, including both internal adoption as well as usage rates among partners.
LogicBay can help make the implementation and changeover to PRM as painless as possible, while quickly bringing you the major benefits. Contact us today to learn more about how powerful PRM can be.
