“Channel Partners are essential to your business and can accelerate or slow down your sales”.
We are sure you have heard this before and have realized the importance of treating your partners right. But is that enough? Many enterprises create a Channel Partner strategy that works well on paper but fails in reality. In practice, vendors often treat Channel Partners as third-party sales representatives and not as equal partners.
WHY ARE CHANNEL PARTNERS NOT DRIVING DESIRED SALES TO YOUR BUSINESS?
Channel Partners can have a strong influence on your business. Today, Channel Partners have market knowledge, sales expertise, awareness about leveraging distribution channels and ability to cultivate customer relationships. Channel Partners are no longer disorganized and have the expertise to independently handle your sales. You should keep in mind that Channel Partners choose to sell your products and services. So, treating them as “juniors” is only going to leave them with feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration. To avoid this, you need to build a strategy that is inclusive, transparent and makes your channel partners feel like equal contributors to your business. With this approach, you will ensure that Channel Partners channelize their productivity towards driving your sales.
GAIN MORE BY TREATING CHANNEL PARTNERS EQUALLY
Your strategy will work if you grant access to product details, pricing information and lead management database to your Channel Partners. While this seems like a time-consuming task, it is not. You can ensure that transparency, fluid flow of information and productive collaboration between your team and channel partners is maintained by adopting a Channel and Partner Management CRM. The benefits of investing in a partner management software? Improved flow of information, heightened transparency and higher profits for your business. With these tangible results, you also gain long-term support and loyalty from your partners.
A PARTNER MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE THAT BEST FITS YOUR NEEDS
Vendors who understand the importance of cultivating trust, collaboration and loyalty as foundations of driving channel sales will benefit from Paramantra’s Management CRM Software. We take of care of the entire trajectory of Channel sales starting from the onboarding process to sales results.
- On-boarding – Losing sight of channel partner functions occurs when current processes are manual, unclear and fragmented. While you do want to empower your partners with data, there is always a fear of losing ownership. Our CRM combats this fear by balancing your need for ownership with your Channel Partners need for autonomy. A systematic, rule-based, transparent and automatic system ensures that you gain access to all data and actions at any time. You can shorten the onboarding process by updating and storing a partner’s KYC documentation in the CRM.
- Lead Management – Which leads are not being worked on by your channel partner and why? These are the tough issues you need to address with your partner. Monitoring your channel partner’s approach to Lead Management backs you with data about Partner performance and helps you understand why Partner productivity is failing. Our CRM gives you this insight by de-duplicating leads and aiding proper attribution. When you gain clarity about partner performance then you can easily address matters of compensation. You can then determine payment based on volume, product, and promotions.
- Information Flow -The threat of a knowledge gap is real when it comes to boosting Channel sales. Your partners must receive regular information about products, promotions, campaigns, sales events, and training sessions. When you share information with your partners, you educate them about selling your product in the best way possible. These updates also ensure that your customers don’t receive incomplete information from Channel Partners about your product.
- Pricing Control and Change Management – Your Channel Partners send quotations and invoices with the wrong pricing due to lack of updated information. Channel Partners don’t receive accurate information about pricing because they are dependent on manual processes and rigid management systems. With our system, Channel Partners can access pricing updates for all products before sending quotations to customers. When your Channel Partners are clear about the pricing they can offer, then it reduces conflict between you and your Partners. The end result? your customers receive accurate pricing at all times which reduces the bottlenecks that impede closures.
- Sales Management – A hands-on approach to partner management can help you understand and suggest improvements to the channel partner strategy. Equipped with our CRM, you will stay on top of Channel sales by understanding targets, automating forecasts and maximizing sales performance of each employee of the Channel Partner. With this monitoring in place, you can filter active participants from passive consultants. You can also determine brand allegiance by understanding the contribution of each employee of the Channel Partner. Not only will you gain more control but also understand the way your brand is marketed to customers by your partners.
With Paramantra’s Channel Partner CRM you get a bird’s-eye view of partner relationships, marketing expenses, customer journey, sales cycles, and progression of different products.
