A lot of people often wonder how they can improve their channel practices so that they can save time, effort and money. If you are one of them then the only thing that you need to do is take a look below so that you can begin transforming your current process.
Why is Channel Functionality Important?
Ultimately, you have to make sure that your channel functionality is the best that it can be because 64% of sales on average, work through a channel. For this reason, channel functionality and PRM solutions have become intertwined.
Why should You Be Trying to Better your Channel Practices?
If you do not invest enough time and effort into your practices, then you may find that you quickly get left behind. Your partners will seek out other options and the results that you achieve won’t be as good as they could be. It’s possible for you to avoid all of this by following the guide that is listed below.
Secure Deals
Don’t have all of your partners submit the deal registrations with a public forum. You need to give them access to a portal where they can then register. This will also give them a chance to view all of the deals that they may be working on at that moment in time. One bonus of having a secure deal portal is that it will provide transparency and it will also go a long way to building trust too. The best practice when it comes to deal registration is for you to design your process with the interest of your partner in mind. If you can do this, then they will be able to register deals for you. So why is this important? It’s vital because it helps you to revolutionise your process while also providing your partners with the help and support they need to make better decisions that are calculated. It also helps to build trust as well as making sure that you do not compromise your operation.
Vetting Prospective Partners
Partner portals tend to have sensitive information about services or products. They also house information about sales and data that relates to opportunity as well. The great thing about vetting partners is that you can ensure that they meet your prospective goals. You can avoid any kind of auto-avoid process by doing this and you can also stop anyone from being able to access your data. So why is this important? It’s because if you give everyone access to your data, then you are essentially giving your competitors access to your information and this is the last thing you want. Keeping your business secure is vital, and that ultimately starts with vetting your prospective partners.
Integrate a CRM
Good data is truly everything. For this reason, you’ll want to make sure that you invest in a good PRM, so that you can sync it with your CRM. It doesn’t matter whether you are using Salesforce, Hubspot or anything else of the sort because having some kind of truth source is key if you want to make good decisions. It may be that you have deal registration data appear automatically so that your CRM can then deal with real-time consolidations, or that you are simply able to avoid combining reports from various systems. Either way, it’s important to know that your PRM has to give you the chance to customise exactly how your CRM works and that you have complete control over the data and the flow between all of your systems.
Prioritising Functionality
Branding and consistency are vitally important but if you spend too much time on your portal design then this will come with a big price tag. You may even find that it slows down your implementation overall. It’s more than possible for you to increase the ROI of your partner program if you spend both time and money on your partner acquisition and your partner training. You also need to make sure that you spend time on your programs if they are going to impact your success. Taking advantage of this will help you to better your channel as well as making sure that you are continually striving for improvement overall.