Your Business And Channel Partners

About Channel Partner Programs
For those of us who do business through channel partners, finding out exactly what happened to leads that are sent to the channel is always a challenge.  How many of those leads did your partners follow up with?  How many turned into sales?  What's the ROI for each program that generated those leads?

If you're fortunate enough to have a channel sales rep helping your partners follow up with and close leads, you're doing a better job than most. Still, many leads fall through the cracks.  Why?  Because sales is a numbers game and warm/cool leads are on the losing team.  Each partner rep may work with dozens of channel partners each of whom may work hundreds of leads. And when a rep is working to close a deal, he's not focused on the other leads.

Incentive marketing programs differ from vendor to vendor. Others are more comprehensive with more bonuses and rebates while other vendors, smaller companies or start up companies, offer just the basics and a promise to increase as the company grows. Training and certification included in the package is not only beneficial to customers, but to vendors and resellers as well. Certification allows channel partners to offer value added services that not all resellers can provide. There is tangible proof that a reseller firm has the credential to offer specialized and quality services with quality products.

Good communication is the key to creating better relationships not only with your customers but with your partners as well. For companies that focus on channel management services, creating effective communication among business partners is vital.

For example, channel conflicts can easily be avoided given the good connection and contact between parent/manufacturing companies and their resellers. For partners, however, it takes more than just good communication to motivate the workforce in general.

One has to take note that motivating a channel partner may differ from motivating a staff of their own and would usually require channel management services from a software company. The difference is that the boss would usually want to inspire the staff into the direction of the company's commerce objectives like sales performance and customer service while motivating channel partners like dealers and distributors require their inspiration to be directed to easy product sells.

Basically, the staff would just want to do a better job at keeping the blood of the company going while business partners would want to vertically develop their own trade in a faster and easier way. This means that these businesses partners would to know and understand better the "how to's" of promoting and delivering their goods or services in all aspects of the business. To put it simply, they are result driven, usually with the purpose of being on a short term goal.