Six ways to make your channel partners the center of ... - Elastic Grid

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It's true. We're all guilty of putting ourselves at the center of our own universe. Sometimes that's a good thing and ot
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Put yourself in your partners’ shoes

It’s true. We’re all guilty of putting ourselves at the center of our own universe. Sometimes that’s a good thing and other times it’s not-think of poor old Galileo trying to convince the Church that the sun doesn’t revolve around us on Earth! He paid dearly for seeing things differently, and it took the Church until 1992 to formally admit their mistake. It’s easy to laugh now. But as channel marketers in the enlightened 21st Century, are we just as blindly egocentric as Galileo’s medieval clergy? Or, can we improve performance by placing our focus more squarely on often ignored channel partners?

What are the stumbling blocks your partners face when running a campaign?

Why focus on channel partners? Well for starters, increased channel marketing budgets put us under pressure to produce greater ROI. In real terms, this means generating more and bigger sales via our partners. It follows that if you place your partners at the center of YOUR universe, with well-supported and simplified sales tasks, they have a far better chance of returning stellar sales figures for you.

Very often they experience: a. Multiple vendors vying for their attention–you have to make sure your campaign takes priority b. Not having what they need, for their own education as well as sales collateral, to campaign effectively c. Lack of time, resources, and often, no dedicated marketing department d. Difficulty generating qualified leads e. Not knowing how to run more sophisticated marketing programs f. Lack of user-friendly tools and platforms that are built with their needs in mind. Now imagine how much easier it would be to concentrate on achieving leads and sales if these time and energy-sapping problems disappeared. Your partners’ sales figures could skyrocket! (Well, you can reasonably expect them to improve.)

“They have a far better chance of returning stellar sales figures for you.”

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The six-point checklist for simplifying your partners’ lives and boosting sales Let’s say it again; if you want your partners to generate demand and close sales like never before, you have to put THEM at the center of YOUR universe. Difficult, we know, but it’s the only way to ensure you supply all the resources and tools they need to excel in their work. We’ve put together a universe-changing, six-point checklist to help you.

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Provide a user-friendly sales and marketing platform for your partners

Get support from a global team of expert marketing advisers

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No one works in a vacuum and your partners are no exception. To perform optimally, they need help and support from more than a platform. With limited resources and even less time, your partners require the support of real humans who can simplify processes for them. So give them a team of experts who can really help: • Maximize their lead generating potential through campaign education and training on your tools and programs • Execute campaigns effectively with best practice guidelines and tips • Deliver this support wherever your partners are on planet Earth. Think how great it would be if these experts could lend you a hand too. After all, you’re also under the pump when it comes to time and resources. So use this team of marketing experts to help: • Increase campaign adoption rates through global campaign awareness programs

Ideally, you want to use a marketing platform that seamlessly and cost-effectively delivers several benefits to your partners. You want a platform that:

• Work with your internal teams to create and execute specific marketing programs for your partners • Provide you with detailed reporting for better visibility around campaign performance and ROI.

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• Addresses the needs of all your partner types

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• Has a multi-language interface • Has real-time reporting for partners across all touch-points and channels. • Allows partners to easily upload and manage contact databases

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• Provides both inbound (social media) and outbound (email) functionality • Gives partners the ability to customize/co-brand, execute and optimize demand generation campaigns, globally • Is password-protected with user authentication • And, most importantly, is easy-to-use.

“Your partners require real humans who can simplify processes for them.”

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“Follow proven methodologies for driving partner campaign adoption and sales success.”

Ensure your partners focus on the right message

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Everything your partners might need to sell well should be in the one easy-to-access place–a one-stop-selling shop, if you like. They need to: • Learn about your solution: how it works, the value proposition, which companies use it, its ROI etc. • Learn how to market and sell your solution: How to guide a lead through the entire buying cycle; and then, convince leads with a range of easily accessed collateral (sales scripts/guides, TCO calculators, product videos, banners, ads, articles, whitepapers etc.). • Ensure they maximize their trailing revenue.

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Give your partners great content Great content drives great results. Your partners are usually not content experts so simplify things–and control your messages–by giving them compelling content across all your lead generation and sales assets.

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The content you create should follow proven methodologies for driving partner campaign adoption and sales success. It needs to include: • Campaigns with personalized multi-touch nurture points. Typically, your partners don’t have the level of expertise to make “contextual” decisions on their own, so tailor a lead-nurture program to cover all stages of the buying cycle (from thought leadership through to product-specific solutions and benefits, and decision validation).

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• Well-crafted eDMs, websites, animations, social media copy, banners and blog posts that encourage leads to move further along the buying cycle.

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This one-stop-shop should allow you to constantly create and maintain marketing assets and also highlight your current campaigns and marketing activity. Ideally, you would be able to track interactions and downloads so you can review what materials your partners are using, and which might need promotion, updating or removal.

• Strategically placed customer personalization in the email templates, the micro-site, as well as in content related to each step of the buying cycle. This helps the customer relate to the content, and helps generate a better lead for the channel partner. • Sales enablement content that educates the sales staff on your products and sales strategies.

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Give your partners campaigns designed to achieve results If a partner doesn’t believe a campaign will produce results, why would they choose to run it? Supply them with campaigns designed to succeed and you’re ensuring yours are the campaigns adopted and pursued with greatest energy and focus.

Centralize all your sales and marketing tools and resources in one user-friendly place x

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To achieve success for every campaign requires B2B marketing team expertise (whether internal or outsourced) in:

Your partners will find it helpful to have a demand generation platform that can integrate third-party marketing tools into a “single-pane” view. This allows them access to all their campaigns and tools from the one place.

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• Third-party tools might include:

• Campaign Strategy

• Marketing Development Fund Portals for requesting/tracking MDF

• Design • Front-end Development • Back-end Development • Quality Assurance. Then, for every campaign you must ensure your team:

• Live Webinar Platforms to promote your existing webinar content • Social Media Content Syndication to progress customer conversations • Salesforce.com integration for closed-loop lead management and reporting.

• Defines the concept • Briefs design and development effectively • Designs responsively • Designs for click-through (especially with emails) • Designs with one CTA to drive action/results • Designs marketing campaigns that support buying cycle lead generation.

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Simplify your B2B marketing. Choose a universe-changing channel marketing platform Choosing a platform that places your partners’ needs at its center is imperative—for their success, and yours. So, what’s the best way to find the ideal platform that addresses your partners’ needs? Choose a platform that your partners find familiar and easy-touse. A little research into what other suppliers are using will help you discover which platforms are producing good results. Offering partners an easy-to-use platform that integrates collateral from all of their suppliers in the one place is the ideal solution. This simplifies their job by giving them access to comprehensive sales and marketing resources for all of their solution offerings, including supplier-specific and alliance plays.

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Join the world’s largest B2B IT partner network – Elastic Grid With over 3,800 channel partners and 18+ vendors, Elastic Grid is the world’s largest B2B IT partner network and represents the best and most valuable channel marketing platform (based on net new leads and estimated revenue pipeline). Since launching in 2009, our easy-to-use, cloud-based B2B sales and enablement platform has generated: • 115,000+ net new leads • 20 million+ emails • USD$1 billion+ in pipeline revenue for our clients’ partners. How are we achieving such strong results for our clients, time and time again? By following the six-point checklist outlined above and putting partner enablement at the center of OUR universe. Because ultimately, if partners find your tools too difficult to use or they don’t believe in your campaigns, then you’re not going to get the best results. It’s a simple equation.

Testimonials “We don’t need to design a campaign from scratch, saving us a lot of time and effort. Within a couple of minutes, we can launch new campaigns among our potential and existing customers.” Amazon Web Services Partner on Elastic Grid

“It’s a one stop campaign shop that we can utilize for professional marketing messaging. The tool enables us to stay top of mind with customers and prospects. The campaigns also provide us with valuable scripts and tools for follow up and lead generation.” VMware Partner on Elastic Grid

Your partners are not IT-focused? No problem. Elastic Grid is all about getting measurable results as efficiently as possible, in whichever universe you and your partners operate. Contact Elastic Grid to discuss your B2B Sales and Marketing requirements and determine whether we can help you achieve your goals.

“... He’s an extension of our marketing department...”

“He has been one of the most helpful and responsive people I’ve worked with in this industry. It’s amazing how many times I’ve called and he actually picks up the phone! He’s an extension of our marketing department.” NetApp Partner on Elastic Grid’s Partner Concierge Service

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