Gaining traction with the channel

Vendors might talk about “share of wallet,” but they need to start thinking about “share of focus” in their channel if they are to overcome the challenge of reduced airtime in front of channel sales teams. By developing new methods and styles of communication that make every minute count, vendors stand a better chance of securing crucial and improving sales productivity.

Distribution

The issue is particularly acute in distribution. Margin pressure and revenue reduction has resulted in sales teams being trimmed, and attention focused on existing, large vendors with most new vendor acquisition relegated, or even ceasing all together.

So how does a new vendor ever make a breakthrough, attract a suitable distributor and then engage successfully with their sales team? Obviously, they need a good product or service to start with, yet many of these never “cross the chasm” from test bench to channel adoption and ultimately end user penetration.

Regardless of reputation, scale or brand awareness channel inertia can affect any vendor. Many vendors, despite having great solutions fail because they do not apply basic sales principles to the channel. Small vendors find themselves frustrated and no further forward, whilst large vendors struggle unless end user brand awareness generates demand for their solutions. The clear and present danger is of taking the concept of partnership too literally and expecting goodwill to sell your solution for you. More often poorly executed sales incentives and a few points of margin are applied, and that is never going to result in undivided attention and a flood of purchase orders.

A far more effective approach would be to treat the channel as a customer.

Unique sales approach

Each tier of the channel requires its own unique sales approach.  Just as all good salespeople have an understanding of their clients’ issues and needs. So vendors must apply this knowledge to their solution in order to craft a set of compelling reasons for why their solution, rather than that of the competition, fits the bill.

Vendors therefore need to give better thought to the implications of how their solution fits alongside other products in a partner’s portfolio, and in particular how it meets the needs of their customer base.

This can be achieved through a logical process that considers their solutions and relationship status [see table: Relationship Vs Opportunity]. In short order a vendor can begin to discover and understand an angle they can take it to the channel partner concerned and so start the process of crafting a value proposition. Done properly, there will be a minimum of five compelling business reasons to sell solutions through a distributed channel model. It is important to recognise that the partner’s management team will be interested in a different set of criteria to the sales people, so the proposition will need to be ‘fleshed out’ to cover all stakeholders in the account.

Alongside considerations such as addressable market and margin models, vendors shouldn’t miss the opportunity to build sales messages upon their commitment to manage competition in the channel, or by demonstrating how different departments within the vendor will integrate with their peers to make business processes simpler. The support that a partner can expect from the vendor is a real cause for concern amongst channel leaders today so shouldn’t be ignored.

Communication

Good communication then is critical. Even with strong relationships formed at management level, efforts still need to be made to ensure new and innovative methods of communicating with sales people and end users.  Let’s face it, mass email communication is mostly likely to be deleted unread, the majority of webinars struggle to maintain interest beyond the first few slides and information portals quickly get jammed up with mundane documents, but there are other more involving options. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin can work well for providing regular updates, but such communication must be kept relevant and concise if it is to maintain value and not become another distraction for partners who already are time conscious.

Whilst this task may seem onerous at first, the cost of failing to diligently engage in this activity will be significantly higher and the missed opportunity for vendors with good products could run to millions.

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