Breaking Down Silos

Over 70% Of B2B Companies Leverage Channel Partners, Making Their Success Essential For Growth.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with amazing channel partners, ranging from global organizations to specialized regional providers. All with unique capabilities and strategies to capture business for their organizations.

During that time, we successfully closed millions of dollars in business because of thriving channel partner collaboration and enablement programs.

All partner programs require continued improvement and maintenance, which requires both marketing and sales to collaborate as a unified team.

Today, I thought I’d share some of the best channel partner programs I participated in, and how they drove success.

Legendary Examples

When working with a top B2B technology company, their sales and marketing took an active role in channel partner targeting and recruitment, co-developing materials so that salespeople could make a great first impression with potential resellers.

Key ingredients you can leverage for your own success.

• Marketing and sales ops worked as a unified team.They did this by meeting and working together regularly, resulting in good working relationships and teams that understood each others role.

They did this by meeting and working together regularly, resulting in good working relationships and teams that understood each others role.

• They co-developed a partner program with shared responsibilities.This ensured it ran smoothly, and could be adjusted when needed.

This ensured it ran smoothly, and could be adjusted when needed.

• They leveraged an amazing channel partner portal.This included; leads, deal registrations, educational materials, company updates and battle cards to win against competitors.

  I brought this concept to a security manufacturer in 2011, and it became a catalyst for their own channel partner growth.

This included; leads, deal registrations, educational materials, company updates and battle cards to win against competitors.

I brought this concept to a security manufacturer in 2011, and it became a catalyst for their own channel partner growth.

• They created co-marketing campaigns for partners, with amazing results.It super charged engagement with partners.

  It provided time sensitive leads inside the portal, ensuring the partner was logging in regularly and reading updates.

  It created a mechanism for next steps on projects that fed into the CRM.

It super charged engagement with partners.

It provided time sensitive leads inside the portal, ensuring the partner was logging in regularly and reading updates.

It created a mechanism for next steps on projects that fed into the CRM.

• Channel Partner Synchronization.Communication is cited as the number one issue with partnerships, they overcame this with a reciprocal approach to selling with partners.

  Channel Account Managers were updated regularly on deals, so engagement was more fruitful, and focused on strategies versus check-ins.

  Good communication systems kept deals moving.

Communication is cited as the number one issue with partnerships, they overcame this with a reciprocal approach to selling with partners.

Channel Account Managers were updated regularly on deals, so engagement was more fruitful, and focused on strategies versus check-ins.

Good communication systems kept deals moving.

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This Channel Partner Program Made A Lasting Impression.

Marketing kept partners educated and engaged, showing off new products features, and “how to win” strategies versus basic “meh” materials.

They used every channel at their disposal; partner portal, emails, online events, local in person events, onsite sales training, and trade shows. This resulted in keeping their brand in front of their partners eyeballs on a consistent basis to maximize mindshare.

Sales regularly selected and elevated “internal champions” within a reseller partner, typically individual contributors that saw the value in their solutions, and ensured they were successful presenting and closing business.

This resulted in the whole team following suit, and leading with their brand over competitors.

Education, is often under utilized.

It’s typically aimed at technicians for certification requirements, and ensure installations go smoothly. While that’s definitely needed, sales teams are often trained “differently”.

The typical scenario involves a lunch and learn “drinking from a fire hydrant” with a live demo, a slide deck, and customer win examples for an hour.

Juxtapose that with successful channel programs that:

Engaged salespeople consistently over time, ensured that the partner was fully committed to being successful with their product and becoming “certified” on their solution and therefore eligible for sales qualified leads.

Much better results.

Outbound Challenges

Your B2B Buyers Receive An Average Of 149 Emails Per Day.

Due to a large volume of unwanted email, providers like google recently applied new analytics and policies to push more unwanted email into SPAM, unfortunately that can also snag your company emails in the process.

In fact, about 16% of all sent emails never reach their destination, and 15 billion emails land in spam daily. DMARC (a new partner) ensures all your emails find their deserving place in your customers’ inboxes.

If you’re engaging in direct outbound with SDRs / BDRs to your ICP your salespeople are likely experiencing a drop in replies since February.

When engaging with a new client, we survey how many emails company wide they’re sending, and what kind of data hygiene they’ve implemented to avoid SPAM.

Good reply rates start with good data, so we leverage technology to ensure outbound programs are fruitful by eliminating bad email addresses, and contacts that aren’t a good fit before running any campaign.

Creating IO Circuits

I Was Speaking With A New Partner The Other Day About How Outbound Has Changed In The Last 18 months.

His strategy aligns with ours, in that if outbound doesn’t generate an immediate reply, it should be designed to prompt a website visit to learn more.

This validates a few things.

The email landed in their inbox, the messaging was good, and the prospect was intrigued enough to want to learn more.

A signal that an email has been opened isn’t enough to validate interest.

By going to the website, marketing is able to roll out the red carpet, with a simple automated greeting from the same salesperson who sent the email, and can even be prompted to engage with the prospect in real time.

This completes a circuit.

When designing an outbound strategy, both marketing and sales should co-develop these circuits, from a specific ICP, the messaging, and what happens when they “click” on your CTA and land on a page.

If it’s going to a generic link, it will likely not generate interest.

This is why we’ve successfully leveraged landing pages with our outbound programs, they allow us to create highly relevant messaging, specifically tailored for one ICP.

Those campaigns always perform better. But, it does require a lot more research to know what will resonate with your ideal customers.

One last thing.

We strongly believe in giving away at least 80% of your best content, because this accelerates the research process of needing to “know, like and trust” your brand.

If all of your ebooks are locked behind a form, they’ll likely discourage interest, and the prospect will simply move on.

This is one of the challenges that conversational chatbots addressed, to not only engage website visitors, but reduce “form friction” with content downloads and sign-ups. The percentage of prospects willing to engage skyrocketed, and resulted in better conversions on lead magnets.

Fast forward to today – and the prevalence of chatbots has now caused them to be ignored by website visitors, unless they’re extremely personalized.

I plan on talking more about what applications can help in this area in future articles.

Thanks for reading this far. According to google, it sets you apart from the other 73% who skimmed over this article and makes you a “Deep Reader” ✌️.

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