Tools

Are you ready to make your channel managers feel as loved by their partners as their favourite rock idols? Imagine the cheers and admiration that your channel managers will get as they roll into your partner’s offices. Your partners will be queuing up outside your offices waiting for a chance to meet them, but it’s important to know that this is not a fantasy at all. Here are some easy steps that you can take in order to make all of this happen.

Channel Management

Your channel management team really do have the potential to make a fantastic connection with their partners. If they want to be able to achieve this status, then they need the right set of tools. This will help them to build deeper and deeper into their relationships and it will also help them with their commitments too.

Start with your Expertise

Partners are looking for advice and expertise from any channel managers that you have. This will help them to be far more successful with their brand. They also expect your channel managers to share some of the best practices too. If you want to get some help with this, then you have to make sure that you look into partner delivered services, packaging and positions, and even solution bundles as well. Leading vendors directly through product managers will help you to provide differentiated products, but this alone is not enough for you to succeed. You need to offer a package deal.

Stage Score Cards

Channel managers really will rock their partnership relationships by having tools that will help them to assess a partner vs best practice. If you want to create a custom scorecard for your partner, then you can generate a life-stage card. Partners love to see where they stand based on whatever you expect from them. They are also equally interested in finding out how they compare with any peer partners as well. This type of report is then completed with each partner and it is even used as part of a quarterly action plan and update process.

Scorecards

Why bother to set sales targets if you never know how good you are doing? If you can, you should always make sure that you are providing the right kind of information. You also need to make sure that you are making your goals achievable. One way for you to do this would be for you to provide a performance dashboard to your partners, as this will help to establish an honour system and it will also help them to push that extra mile.

Partners are having a great time going on about these types of scorecards, and the main reason for this is because they know exactly what is expected of them. They are also aware of where they stand in terms of achieving those goals too. Your partners will probably give you some extra time and they will also be very motivated too.

Business Planning

Excel planning and score sheets are tedious to say the least. On top of this, they are not very insightful. The act of having to fill out a spreadsheet can be boring, but if you have an intelligent and guiding process then this will help your team to make the most out of their historical sales. It will also provide them with forecasts and in some instances, it can create a multi-year plan too.

Partners will be automatically provided with the figures from last year and this will be fully integrated from the vendor’s own CRM system. You can even use the ability to see a percentage from the year’s forecast too. For products that they have not sold in the past, it is very easy for them to see the solution area too. You may have heard from countless partners to see if they can commit for the next year, but this way you can get everything down on paper. The recommended forecast is at three different levels and this will give partners a very specific framework that will help them to build a very realistic and even an attainable forecast. This will also help channel managers to build fact-based recommendations that will help them to build a trusted partnership for the future.