Maximize Channel Sales: What Every Channel Partner Manager Must Know. (part 2)
Written by Lisa M. Masiello
In Part 1 of our channel sales series, Are You Prepared to Launch a Successful Channel Sales Strategy?, I reviewed why you might want to have an indirect distribution channel as your new sales model. I also helped you assess if there is a genuine need for your new product or service by evaluating the components of an effective go-to-market strategy.
Once you have developed your go-to-market plan and decided that an indirect distribution channel is right for your business, the next step is to ensure your company is “all in” and ready to execute on a channel sales strategy.
Now we’ll address how to prepare your internal teams for this shift in strategy and mindset.
To launch an effective channel sales program to a group of newly acquired channel partners outside of your organization, it’s essential that everyone within your organization is on board and each understands their individual and team responsibilities.
In this post, I’ll look at five crucial adjustments that you must make to get your channel sales model on the road to sales growth. They are:
Executive management leading the charge
Staff fine tuning
Channel partner management
Specialized expertise
Marketing resources
An effective sales strategy is not the sole responsibility of sales, just as a go-to-market plan is not the sole responsibility of marketing. You achieve effective, efficient, and successful channel sales preparedness when everyone in your company is committed to and focused on channel success.
To deliver successful channel integration outside your company, it is critical that everyone inside your organization is on board and understands their responsibilities.
Executive Management Leading the Charge
For this channel partner strategy to be a long-term success, you must have a commitment from your executive management team, including your CEO, COO, CFO, CMO, and others, to support the initiative. They may not be actively involved in the actual implementation, but they must fully support this effort.
Building a new channel sales model, whether it will supplement your existing direct sales efforts or will be your only sales channel, is a significant decision that affects the whole organization. If employees believe (whether real or imagined) that even one member of the c-suite is not entirely committed, they will not give their full attention and effort to this strategy. It will fail before it even begins.
Once you decide to develop a channel sales program, everyone needs to be on board.
Staff Fine Tuning
Your sales, marketing, and customer care teams know everything about your target customer in a direct sales model. They know what the customer needs, their pain points, how to speak to them, and what marketing tactics to use.
Supporting channel partners who hold a unique and powerful position between your business and their customers requires a very different strategy and mindset.
To establish a well-informed, helpful, and effective internal channel sales team, you need to make a few decisions:
Could hand-picked employees within your organization switch from their current responsibilities to channel partner management roles, or will you need to employ a new team from outside your organization to fill those positions?
Channel partners must go through an onboarding process, come up to speed on how to sell your solutions, and reach out to you for support as needed. How will you delegate responsibilities among your channel management team for each of these areas of focus?
Will you support your channel partners in the field? Put another way, will you provide support near your channel partners, or will all support, including sales, marketing, and more, be delivered from your headquarters only?
Will specific employees be required to travel (frequently or infrequently) to partners’ offices to participate in in-person training, joint sales meetings, or announce a new product launch?
Channel Partner Management
If you are in a large organization, your channel partner management team will most likely be solely responsible for the success of your company’s channel sales. They will seek out and sign channel partners, complete the onboarding process, provide support, distribute marketing resources, and help the partner community be successful in their sales efforts.
If you work in a smaller organization or a startup, these employees may spend part of their day focused on direct sales and the rest of their day on indirect sales.
If you plan to split each person's responsibilities between direct sales and channel sales, it is essential that they fully comprehend what is required and the effort, time, and resources they must allot to each.
Specialized Expertise
Channel sales management requires a different approach and capabilities to be effective.
Assess your team’s knowledge and expertise. As part of their training, create realistic situations where you highlight potential obstacles and objections they may face and practice how to eliminate them successfully.
Marketing Resources
Channel partner marketing resources are unique to indirect sales and will need to be developed in addition to any direct sales and marketing collateral you may produce.
Start by creating a detailed list of all the resources you need to market to and train your channel partners and materials they can use to sell your products to their customers.
Pay particular attention to materials needed during the onboarding and product enablement phases because these phases establish the foundation for future sales success. Sales collateral, training materials, support documentation, marketing presentations, and more may all be included on your list.
Since your channel partners have a closer relationship with their customers than you do, and they understand what materials and messages customers embrace, allow your partners to modify your materials. The ability to customize a piece by including a channel partner’s unique value proposition or other information specific to them enables them to benefit from materials you create but differentiates their business from competitors and your other channel partners.
You must be ready to answer an essential question: who will be responsible for your channel partner lead generation—your marketing team, that will distribute the leads to your channel partners, or your channel partners themselves?
Suppose you are selling into an existing market that you already know very well. In that case, it may be more effective to own the lead generation responsibilities yourself and distribute the leads to your channel partners for follow-up and customer close.
Suppose you are entering a new market or will be selling to an unfamiliar customer segment. In that case, you may be more successful if your channel partners take responsibility for lead generation since they already understand who the customer is, their needs, and the appropriate messaging that will close the deal.
The Next Step in Your Channel Partner Strategy
In this post, I looked inside your organization, highlighting essential adjustments that you must make to ensure your in-house employees, systems, and resources are ready to sell through channel partners.
In the third and final post in this series, Channel Sales: A Comprehensive Guide to Successfully Launching Your Partner Program, I discuss specific, actionable steps you can take to assess, recruit, sign, engage, and support your channel partners to drive ongoing growth.
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About Lisa M. Masiello
Lisa M. Masiello is a business owner, author, and coach who equips new and aspiring business owners with practical tools and clear knowledge to break free from the stuck phase and make real progress. With over three decades of experience guiding fast-growing startups and large corporations in their marketing strategy, she knows what it takes to build momentum and deliver results.
