Selling through a partner network is a great way for vendors to expand their market reach. Vendors will benefit from incremental revenue as channel partners know customers vendors do not know themselves. These channel partners also know their customers business and concerns; they know the decision makers and often have a good understanding of the budget available.
This is all great news to vendors however there is an important challenge vendors are facing. Their sales force is dedicated to selling a vendors product or service while the sales force of channel partners is looking after many products from different vendors. They can therefore not invest as much time selling a particular product, have the level of knowledge vendor’s sales people have nor are they commissioned to sell a vendor’s product only.
Vendors can increase their success with channel partners by making it easy for them to sell their product.
- Define a target market and customer profile for a product or service – make it easy for channel partners to position your product or service to the right customers.
- Outline the business benefits of a product or service – make it easy for channel partners to position and sell your product or service
- Provide concise, clear and easy to use sales material – include sales scripts, answers to frequently asked questions, and answers to possible objection from customers to buy and show where your product or service fits the channel partner’s offering.
- Provide easy to use, customizable marketing material – make it easy for partners to market your product or service with email templates channel partners can customize and co-brand, marketing content, images, ads, online banners and more.
- Provide quality support - customers may experience challenges implementing your product or service, make sure you also support partners after a sales has been close.
There is no one size fits all support model for success. It depends on the complexity of your product or service, importance of your product in a business solution, value of your product to a customer and more. Think about each of these tips, consult your channel partners to analyze their needs and keep updating your offering throughout the life cycle of your product or service.
Include this material in your partner portal which includes functionality for channel partners to easily find, use, customize and share it.
