Thursday, February 05, 2004
Tactic: Revise Program to Deliver Sales If You Want Partner Loyalty
Vendors want to believe their products and programs are competitive. But channels quickly net the costs (and risk) to find and close customers for each vendor's solution versus competitors'. They are eternally loyal to real user demand, orders, real cost of sale advantage, and real margin opportunity.
Any partner worth their salt has been a member of 50-100 major partner programs. They have seen what vendors call leads, what passes for pre-sales support, training, SPIFs, rebates, and every other program component. Partners live by discerning correctly the lowest cost, highest margin opportunities, net any real cost of disloyalty.
Throughout the 1990's partner programs emphasized partner support appropriate to fulfilling buoyant market demand. In the face of adversity, a contracting or stagnant market, the building blocks of many vendor programs - - technical training & certification, marcom, MDF, headcount, support and logistics - - become less significant to partner loyalty than securing orders.
In the face of adversity, what partners really want from vendors' programs is pull-oriented business development:
- Reallocation of partner program investment from fulfillment support to demand creation
- Investments in partner business acumen to help them outpace competitors
- A vendor relationship model focused on capturing latent demand
- Channel account managers able to jointly close deals
Loyalty flows from ink on P.O.s.
Check out my the discussion about strategic program design on the Channel Ventures site for more thurough disscusion of the issue as well as strategic questions and an overview of the design process.
Channel program design is not mimicking or plagiarizing your competitors' offering. Successful, programs are operating plans that compellingly extend the channel strategy to the partner while reducing the existing sales and marketing expense. Program design projects consist of the following steps:
Strategy review, draft program development, program validation and final program design. Compelling value propositions are built around the market opportunity, not the certification requirements.
Scott Karren, The Channel Pro
Vendors want to believe their products and programs are competitive. But channels quickly net the costs (and risk) to find and close customers for each vendor's solution versus competitors'. They are eternally loyal to real user demand, orders, real cost of sale advantage, and real margin opportunity.
Any partner worth their salt has been a member of 50-100 major partner programs. They have seen what vendors call leads, what passes for pre-sales support, training, SPIFs, rebates, and every other program component. Partners live by discerning correctly the lowest cost, highest margin opportunities, net any real cost of disloyalty.
Throughout the 1990's partner programs emphasized partner support appropriate to fulfilling buoyant market demand. In the face of adversity, a contracting or stagnant market, the building blocks of many vendor programs - - technical training & certification, marcom, MDF, headcount, support and logistics - - become less significant to partner loyalty than securing orders.
In the face of adversity, what partners really want from vendors' programs is pull-oriented business development:
- Reallocation of partner program investment from fulfillment support to demand creation
- Investments in partner business acumen to help them outpace competitors
- A vendor relationship model focused on capturing latent demand
- Channel account managers able to jointly close deals
Loyalty flows from ink on P.O.s.
Check out my the discussion about strategic program design on the Channel Ventures site for more thurough disscusion of the issue as well as strategic questions and an overview of the design process.
Channel program design is not mimicking or plagiarizing your competitors' offering. Successful, programs are operating plans that compellingly extend the channel strategy to the partner while reducing the existing sales and marketing expense. Program design projects consist of the following steps:
Strategy review, draft program development, program validation and final program design. Compelling value propositions are built around the market opportunity, not the certification requirements.
Scott Karren, The Channel Pro
