The full version of this article was first published at: 5 Tips for Working with Your Channel Partners
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Managing channel partners is way different from managing your direct sales team. Instead of dealing with reps on a day-by-day basis, your interactions with channel partners are inherently different. What isn’t that much different, however, are your expectations from your channel. Like your direct sales team, you should expect your informal channel partners to close business and attract new customers. Having a tough time managing both direct and indirect sales teams? Here are five tips to help you manage effectively: 1. Be clear about your goals. Establishing goals and monitoring progress for internal teams is easy. Daily interactions not only facilitate effective communication, they also make tracking progress and growth easy. When working with channel partners, it’s important to establish a sales and pipeline growth model—and enforce it with each individual partner. Develop a realistic expectation of sales and revenue by channel. And align your partners around these objectives. Ultimately, it’s important to be upfront and clear with your channel about expected sales and revenue yields. 2. Accurately determine the size of your channel. To be able to set attainable expectations, it’s crucial to have a realistic understanding of your channel ecosystem. How many prospective customers is your channel selling to? How big are these potential customers? And finally, what is the revenue potential? Knowing the capabilities of your channel enables accurate tracking and measuring of success. 3. Align your marketing process. Content is king. But if you’re unable to…
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