For years, channel sales, account management, and marketing roles have remained, largely the same. Namely, sales teams have endlessly been on the road, meeting partners on a case-by-case basis to go over agreed discounts, supported deals, and marketing plans. In parallel, marketing teams have tried, often retroactively, to support what their sales counterparts have requested, and put plans and programs in place to meet these needs.

It’s taken COVID-19 to allow channel teams to break for the norm. We are not talking about the fact that these meetings are now happening all online. We’re not even talking about the surge of enabling activities surrounding Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platforms. We are talking about radical changes to the way these channel teams work together and collaborate.

Channel account managers now have more time to meet more partners. This is enabling them to be less reactive and allowing them to do more analysis, planning, and spend more time with those partners who have more potential; as opposed to those who shout the loudest. They can now look at enabling ‘second-tier’ partners who not only show potential but want, and maybe need, to do more.

Because all of our meetings are online and take less time to organize and travel to, we see channel account managers involving their marketing counterparts more often. This collaborative change has resulted in joint meetings where not only do all parties (channel partners and vendors) discuss current and new deals, but also future activities and plans around these future activities.

In the past, this rarely happened but it is now the new normal. More joint discussions, more joint business planning, and more strategic activities being driven by sales and organized by marketing. So, are we at a juncture where we need to continue on this path and ensure tighter and consistent collaboration between channel sales and marketing? Our obvious answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ Include marketing, sales, or others on any calls where you see an opportunity for innovation and growth, and watch the collaboration take place.

So, let’s chat and discuss other changes your channel organizations and teams are facing and experiencing. We’d like to invite you to join our Channel Chief & Chill series. It is an informal but highly engaging drop-in interactive meeting happening every Friday. Find out more about this new series from Impartner by registering for the North America discussion or the EMEA discussion.

Let’s talk about integration. With everyone working from home and many offices switching to fully remote positions, we are relying heavily on tools and solutions that help keep our teams connected and our customers happy. If you’re using online communication tools like Slack to chat with your partners or if you’ve invested in management solutions and business planning tools, it is so important that these solutions integrate seamlessly with your channel. Integration partnerships are the key to building better partner relationships, and now more than ever, we need to create a one-stop-shop experience for our partners.

Multi-channel Communication Integration

Whether your program has 25 or 2,500 partners, you need a quick and easy way to communicate with your partners. With a huge increase in remote workers, we have been seeing a rise in multi-channel communication tools like Slack and Teams. Companies are steering away from email and instead of leaning on messaging tools to get real-time conversations started and interact on a quick basis. Working closely with your IT and development team to integrate these communication tools with your current channel will help you manage your team, stay connected, and help send out important notifications to your partners. Whether you are sending a quick message to congratulate partners on finishing their certification, sending reminders to finish training, or simply doing wellness checks on your team, we find there is real value in integrating multi-channel communication tools.

Business Planning Integration

Working with a lot of data can feel challenging and integrating tools into your current channel might sound overwhelming. We find that starting the conversation with your IT and development teams to get the ball rolling is always the hardest part of this integration journey. You might think that integration means building and creating a new portal or user interface for your channel, but a lot of solution providers will license their business planning tools so that you can easily and seamlessly integrate it with your channel. Your IT and development teams will draw from the actual business planning dashboards with a parameter that pivots the data within the dashboard for the partner who’s logged in, while still keeping in mind the partner experience they’re used to with these tools. You will be able to see portal traffic going up, updates on sales and be able to track leads with real-time data right in your channel by integrating your business planning tools.

CRM Integration

We have a handful of customers that have CRM integrations with their top partners, yes, it is an IT-heavy integration, but the benefits and high revenue truly outweigh the work involved. Applying a CRM integration in your channel eliminates that swivel chair that so many partners have complained about. How many sales reps are your partners dealing with, how many customers do they have, how many portals are they logging into and how many products do they sell? It’s almost impossible sometimes to get them to go in and register a deal, and in some cases, if you’re dealing with a large partner, they won’t allow their sales team to access another portal. Having some of that back and forth eliminated with CRM integration has proved to be very successful for our customers and has resulted in automated actions that expand the functionality of their portal, eliminating the need to jump back and forth between systems.

You may be surprised at how many channel chiefs are experiencing the same challenges you are. If you would like to meet with and talk to other channel chiefs and find out how they are working through their obstacles, join our Channel Chief and Chill discussions every Wednesday morning at 9 am MST for North America and every Friday morning at 9 am GTM for Europe. You can sign up for your respective region’s discussion here. 

Remember the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? Working during a global pandemic can feel like you are living your own version of Groundhog Day. You’re stuck at home, days have turned into weeks, weeks have turned into months and escaping the monotony of your daily work-from-home routine can be challenging. Although it feels like there is no end to this unforgettable chapter in your life, you have to remind yourself that you are encountering problems you’ve never dealt with before and you are resilient. You’ve learned to be resourceful with fewer resources, to embrace change and to be a channel-champion for your partners. Here are a few more helpful tips to get you through those channel challenges:

Rely on Referral Partners

In addition to your regular onboarding process of recruiting traditional partners, build out a lower tier for your referral partners. Allow these lower-tier partners to refer opportunities and receive an award for doing so; this can be an incentive for closed opportunities or an incentive for new opportunities. This will help speed up the sales cycle and provide a low barrier to entry by waiting to onboard some partners until they spend more time demonstrating their value. It’s fairly inexpensive to pay out a referral and it’s a way for you to observe the self-qualification of those partners that will naturally rise to a productive partner position. Help partners get in, spend less time onboarding and help new opportunities get into the pipeline and close.

Organize Your Content

Because we can’t go onsite, having a quick playbook of short videos demonstrating a product or functionality can be extremely beneficial to partners. Create product playbooks by organizing your content in such a way that partners can grab blocks of assets without searching across different portal pages or different folders. Organize them into a playbook that can be favorited quickly by the partner so that they can easily find that content block. These content blocks can have talk tracks, information on the competition, training videos, scripts and quick role play videos.

Create a Partner Advisory Board

Similar to a client advisory board, creating a partner advisory board can help build lasting relationships within your partner program. It can be as simple as asking partners what they want to see in the portal, getting honest feedback on the portal, products, or the company, and creating a space where they can speak openly. It can be as easy as setting up a call on a quarterly or semi-annually basis, asking for feedback and just making partners feel more included in the process of coming up with the content and strategy around their partner program. Make sure to also follow up and provide feedback on future plans or what the next steps are.

You may be surprised at how many channel chiefs are experiencing the same challenges you are. If you would like to meet with and talk to other channel chiefs and find out how they are working through their obstacles, join our Channel Chief and Chill discussions every Wednesday morning at 9 am MST for North America and every Friday morning at 9 am GTM for Europe. You can sign up for your respective region’s discussion here. 

One size doesn’t fit all. As we’ve all been at home a lot more lately, shopping online has become a regular way of life. Every time you log in to Amazon, you see things that are strategically positioned to your liking and interest. This obviously benefits Amazon, but it also benefits you, as the consumer just as much. Because it’s not one size fits all, you don’t have to wade through products that don’t relate to you. This is the exact reason partner personas are so important to create for your partner program. 

You may have already ventured into the segmentation of partners by type, size, or other criteria, which is a great start, however, creating partner personas digs into the next level of personalization to enhance the partner experience. There may be multiple titles at one organization logging into your partner portal and typically they don’t all want to see the same content. Not only that, but they typically should not see the same content. A marketing contact at your partner account does not need to have the same experience as a sales contact logging into your portal.  

As discussed in our recent Channel Chief & Chill best practice discussion, building these personas not only benefits the partner, but it also lets you, as the vendor, see what personas are accessing various content and pieces of training. These reports give you an advantageous viewpoint on how your partners use the resources you give them. Once you have these insights, you can reevaluate and revise the experience and the journey you are giving to partners based on actual data and activity.  

If you have not yet created partner personas for your program, here’s a tip to start: Put yourself in the shoes of the different people logging into your portal. Physically map out these personas on a spreadsheet, on paper, or any way that feels right to you. What would you want to see if you were that partner contact? From there, decide which resources should be accessible to which personas and what experience you want each of them to have in your portal. With these changes, your partners will realize how easy it is to do business with you and how much you enable them to do their job effectively. 

Zoom meetings, invitations to virtual events, and embarrassing conference calls with your team where your three-year-old decides to make a guest appearance—this is what we are dealing with right now. If you’re currently reading this blog from your home office, chances are your office is closed, just like mine, and your team is working fully remote. Global health crisis or not, you need to juggle all the balls you’re given, plan for your team’s success and rise to the occasion… and let me tell you, it can be done.

One of our channel leaders, Robb Franks, senior director of sales engineering at Impartner, shared in our latest Channel Chief & Chill discussion how to stay afloat in a sea of uncertainty and his tips to build an unsinkable ship. Here are some of the highlights from his discussion:

Events Are Cancelled, Now What?

With the current lack of travel, the world practicing social distancing, and face-to-face meetings being nonexistent, we have been getting a lot of questions from our customers about how to support training during this COVID-era and how do you create that one-on-one experience virtually. Set up a self-service approach through computer-based training, allowing partners to move at their own pace, whether it’s through a full-blown LMS or through the Impartner training modules. So, when industry events like ImpartnerCon are gone and trainings have been canceled left and right, your partners still get that personalized training. You are able to hold partners accountable through tracking and partners can easily get access to the accreditations or certifications to hit their goals.

Do you have a COVID-19 First Aid Kit?

Impartner customers have been adapting well to all of the changes in the environment and have created a quick COVID resource center within their partner portal. Something as simple as a page or section within the asset library where partners can get to specific content and resources quickly. Whether this resource center becomes a permanent piece of your partner portal or a resource during this pandemic, having messaging, tips and tricks, videos, how-to guides, or timely policy documents readily available will reassure partners and help them help their customers. It’s as easy as adapting to what’s going on, understanding the need, and supporting your partners with valuable solutions.

If you’re curious about our discussions and you’d like to participate, we’d like to invite you to join our Channel Chief & Chill series. It’s an informal drop-in interactive meeting happening every Friday at 9:00 am MST and another at 9:00 am UK GMT. Find out more by registering for the North America discussion or the EMEA discussion.

Are you doing everything you can do for your partners? Likely you’re working very hard, but there is always more that can be done to better equip the partners in your channel program. What’s stopping you? If you are like the channel chiefs that join our Channel Chief & Chill discussion, it might be a lack of time, lack of resources, lack of understanding of tools, or something else. Our channel chiefs voiced these challenges and talked solutions.  

Here are a couple of suggestions from those same channel chiefs who are on the front lines every day, just like you. 

Advance your channel program from “nice to have” to essential 

Take a step back and start with the big picture. Many channel programs are viewed internally as “nice to have” but not absolutely essential to the business as a whole, as they truly are. This is either because the channel is not producing or more likely because the fruits that come out of the channel are not accurately portrayed to the rest of the company. If your organization as a whole doesn’t prioritize its own channel program, it can be difficult to find the proper resources and time to truly strengthen that program. 

Make your partner program more relevant to your business by having the correct conversations and showing the proper metrics to the leadership team. Use detailed reports and real numbers to show how much of a difference your partners are making and create a business case for spending more time and resources on these partners…then do exactly that! As the business gets behind the program, more resources can be allocated, and you can focus on your partners. 

Feed and feed from the same channel trough  

Channel becomes more relevant when the vendor starts to simultaneously feed and feed on its partners. Vendors cannot just take, take, take. They need to feed opportunities back into the channel as partner-shared leads. Offload deals to the channel that are not the right fit for your direct teams to work on and then pull leads out of that same channel that is brought in by your partners. As this symbiotic relationship continues and strengthens, you will see stronger and more loyal partners who will continue to fill up the channel trough.  

You may be surprised at how many channel chiefs are experiencing the same challenges you are. If you would like to meet with and talk to these other channel chiefs and find out how they are working through their obstacles, join our Channel Chief and Chill discussions every Wednesday morning at 9 am MST for North America and every Friday morning at 9 am GTM for Europe. You can sign up for your respective region’s discussion here.  

Don’t let your partners be a one-hit wonder. 

Too many partners stop by your program, throw a lead out the window and go back to their work — only to drop off the next lead to your competitors. Don’t let this happen to your channel program. Create loyal partners and get them revenue-ready by giving them the right experience with the proper journey built out specifically for them. Below are two key ideas discussed in our most recent Channel Chief & Chill to take your partner journeys to the next level. 

Segment, Segment, Segment 

Remember, not all of your partners are starting in the same place or even have the same goals. This is where segmentation comes in. Just like jeans are made to fit tall, short, large or skinny people, partner journeys are not one-size-fits-all. Different journeys can and should be created to fit whatever situation your partners are in. A couple of examples that were mentioned in one of our recent Channel Chief and Chill discussions was to segment by partner type, region, length of relationship or even by activity. As you create these different journeys for your partners, they will be onboarded and maintained according to their needs, which will create loyalty and in turn means more revenue for you. 

Use a Referral Program to Onboard and Off-board 

A key highlight around the idea that journeys needs to be segmented, which was brought up in this discussion and used by one of the customer participants, is using a referral program to effectively onboard and off-board partners. As partners come into your program and you are unsure of how much they will produce, it may be best to start them out as a referral partner and ramp them up from there, depending on productivity. On the opposite side of this, if your once-thriving partners are now less active than they used to be, off-board them by making them a referral partner. Get them into an automated communication stream instead of spending your time sending them personalized emails, when you could be using that time to work with upcoming, higher-producing partners. If you have questions on how to better make this work for your channel, you can reach out to an Impartner representative. 

If you’d like to be involved in discussions like this every week with top channel chiefs from around the world – please join the community! These informal meetings happen in North America every Wednesday at 9:00 am MST and another for Europe on Fridays 9:00 am UK GMT. You can register here, North America discussion or the EMEA discussion. 

Impartner kicks off a new virtual discussion series featuring best practices, channel experiences given the impact of COVID-19, insights and strategies, personal care, and more. Earlier this month we launched Channel Chief & Chill, an informal drop-in discussion that takes place every week, and registration is available to channel leaders in North America and Europe from top corporations across several industries. Think of it as an open space to connect, share key trends, and have coffee with your peers. As these impactful conversations and relevant topics have emerged in these virtual meetings, we have heard vibrant discussions, built new relationships and networking opportunities, and witnessed a truly collaborative community.

These are a few examples of the timely topics that were highlighted in recent weeks:

Showcase Your Partners
With the current situation, face-to-face meetings have become non-existent, website traffic has increased and transactions are being made online more than ever before. To help ease marketing and sales efforts, your partners need to feel seen and you need to provide partners with true real estate on your website. Feature your Partner Locator front and center on your homepage. Instead of just listing your partners on your website, create an interactive marketplace where potential clients will know exactly who to turn to for the next steps and resources. Create a user-friendly system where users can fine-tune their search filters and categories, easily contact trusted partners, and utilize an interactive map to find the perfect partner for their business. If you don’t already have these solutions reach out—Impartner does!

Pivot and Prosper
It has long been known that 20% of the partners are most likely bringing in 80% of your channel revenue. Now is the time to give your next 20% of partners some love. Identify the next grouping of partners using analytics, support this new tier of potential top partners with the right toolset, and set them up for success by placing them on a partner journey. Help this new group of partners so that they can be revenue ready, faster than before, by splitting up your time to provide more of your attention to this new group of potential top tier partners. As you automate processes like onboarding, training, and segmentation, use the right partner management software and provide the right toolset so that this new group of partners can be placed in a position of success within your program faster than ever. Having the correct tools, such as PRM, is key to gaining the proper insight into these metrics. In the last few months we have seen a 34% increase in partner portal logins among our customers’ PRM platforms. If you have been thinking about implementing or upgrading a PRM, now is the time.

Humanize Your Business
We have become the largest workforce to ever work from home in history and often forget that we are constantly communicating with other humans virtually and that our virtual presence matters. In our interactions with our partners, we need to maintain a personal, human relationship. Automation in the channel should allow you to focus on the human connection aspect of a partnership. If you went to lunch with partners before COVID-19, continue to have lunch with them through virtual meetings, coffee talks or happy hours. Stay connected, get creative, and utilize tools like Event Calendar to leverage these connections. Many people are struggling with new emotions, your meaningful actions during this difficult time will create a stronger, beneficial, and more personal relationship for the future.

Ready to join other experts in your community and share your thoughts and insights on real-time topics? Grab a cup of coffee, hit unmute, and join us for our next Channel Chief & Chill discussion. Without networking events and onsite meetings, it is difficult to connect with your peers and find out what they are doing to be successful during these uncharted times. We are here to help, join us Wednesdays at 9 am (MST) for North America and Fridays at 9 am (GMT+1) for Europe. You can sign up for your respective region’s meeting by visiting impartner.com/channel-chief-and-chill.

Last week in our Channel Chief & Chill discussion, Robb Franks, senior director of sales engineering, shared some of the things he’s seen, and the pivots being made by his clients during the uncertainty we are currently facing in the market. His focus was on creating new pipeline with new partnerships in your channel. Here are some of the highlights from Robb’s discussion:

• Get more out of what you currently have by identifying and focusing on the next grouping of partners that can quickly be in a revenue-ready position. Identify this new group of second/third tier partners using analytics, place them on an automated partner journey, and position them to become top tier partners.
• Broaden your reach by casting a wider net with the many partner types within your channel. As customer’s needs and the ways we interact are changing, accommodate to the current climate by going through different partner pipelines and creating new partnerships.
• Ask your partners to do even more and turn your partner from a co-seller to a true extension of your brand and the initial frontline support. Look for well-positioned partners, provide your partners with the expanded toolset they need to succeed, create a self-service system for partners to extend marketing reach, and empower partners to generate, present, manage, and close deals.

If you are a channel thought leader in your organization, we’d like to invite you to join our Channel Chief & Chill series. It is an informal but highly engaging drop-in interactive GoToMeeting happening every Friday at 9:00 am MST and another at 9:00 am UK GMT. Find out more about this new series from Impartner by registering for the North America discussion or the EMEA discussion.

In our Channel Chief & Chill discussion, Olivier Choron, managing director of EMEA, shared his thoughts, feelings and experiences about this global health crisis. Olivier brought up the struggles many people are facing with this new normal of social distancing, working from home and navigating these new emotions. He urged everyone to reach out to others, practice patience and remember that as humans, we are all in this together. Here are a few of the highlights from Olivier’s discussion:

• We have more time to work, more time to spend online and more time to communicate with our partners/vendors/suppliers. As we shift our routine from working in the office to being more active online, be sure to keep your portal active with relevant content, and take care of your active audience.
• Help your partners stay in touch with their customers by providing them with more personalized marketing content, whether that is sharing more social posts or sending them more emails. Make sure some form of communication is being sent to capture that audience and use the extra time you have to add that personal touch to the content that you share with your partners.
• We are working from home and in a very informal state, we have to remember that everyone is human, and we are all dealing with similar struggles. Get rid of the corporate talk from your time before COVID-19 and make your actions and communication more humanistic.

If you are a channel thought leader in your organization, we’d like to invite you to join our Channel Chief & Chill series. It is an informal but highly engaging drop-in interactive GoToMeeting happening every Friday at 9:00 am MST and another at 9:00 am UK GMT. Find out more about this new series from Impartner by registering for the North America discussion or the EMEA discussion.

Last week at our first Channel Chief & Chill discussion series, Lindsay Jensen, one of our strategic account directors, discussed what her clients are experiencing during this global pandemic and the successes coming out of this situation. We summarized some of the highlights from Lindsay’s discussion in these recap posts:

• Employees are working more while they’re at home, and we have more time than ever to be focused on our work and portal activity. This is the best time to engage with partners, update portals, and utilize social sharing.
• Many companies are on a spending freeze, cutting team sizes and are having to cut back on their resources. Businesses have to do more with fewer people and fewer funds. Utilize your PRM solutions by automating your workflow and any manual processes.
• During this downtime, make personal connections with others in the industry and be more human. Utilize lunch and learns virtual meetings and take advantage of tools like Event Calendar to connect and engage with others.

If you are a channel thought leader in your organization, we’d like to invite you to join our Channel Chief & Chill series. It is an informal but highly engaging drop-in interactive GoToMeeting happening every Friday at 9:00 am MST and another at 9:00 am UK GMT. Find out more about this new series from Impartner by registering for the North America discussion or the EMEA discussion.