Think Vertical
Program Elements
All channel professionals are known for caring very deeply about their program elements. If you are one of those people who spend weeks or even months on end designing programs then you will probably benchmark the industry. You will also assess your programs against the competition you have, and learn updates years in advance. You have to know that the most critical element for success is all about partner enablement. Solution providers really do need to be enabled so that they can market, sell, support and even manage the services and products that you provide. Over two-thirds of vendor respondents indicated that their enablement priority corresponds to the value and even the differentiation of their products.
Vendors never truly believe that partners have a good understanding of the products or even how they are different from non-competitive products. What’s on the bottom of a vendor’s priority list is actually enablement for partners to try and develop a vertical solution and even selling to a much broader set of customers. This is too bad because it is true that these two things would actually help vendors to expand their sales in a whole new way. They would also be able to capitalise on higher value too.
Training and Certification
Drilling into the training and even certification programs, the vendor respondents seem to prioritise pre-sales and even sales over post-sales support. They are also discounting professional services, training and certification. This just goes to show that vendors care more about landing customers than ensuring that they are actually satisfied and successful. In future years, it’s hopeful that the training and emphasis on certification help to land customers in a whole new way and that it is successful as well. Over one-quarter of vendors require a good level of certification for them to be able to access their products. T
his can seem like a lot, but it is very easy to see the certification required for access to more advanced technology. This includes new products or even cloud-based solutions. It’s surprising that vendors didn’t actually indicate at all that certification is required for product access. It’s shocking that only half of vendors indicated that certification is even required in order to sign up for the program and that 50% aren’t using any kind of sales volume in an attempt to push their sales even more.
28% of vendors indicated that partners need to be certified if they want to offer their own services. What right do any vendors have in dictating the qualifications that partners have? This is especially the case when you look at their own offerings and their own services. Vendors are missing out on a huge opportunity to grow their partner sales and success. Solution businesses are now becoming more and more differentiated as cloud adoption continues to grow. This creates a niche of expertise and this is done in the line of business selling and even in technology solutions as well.