As the head of channel revenue, you have a target to hit. Your partners have end customer pain to solve for. Seems like this should be easy. It is often not.

While collaborating between vendors & partners, sometimes goals become misaligned. One of the common reasons that this happens is the failure of an organization to properly align incentives. It is important that partners make enough profit to continue to grow and push your product in the market.

In order to make sure your products are staying top of mind with your partners, it is important for any organization to validate that their rebates and incentives are driving the proper behavior amongst the sellers in the field. A great way to negatively impact your channel revenue is by not correctly aligning your margins with the market.

1. Don’t forget about the reps

Your partners likely work with many other vendors, and the sales reps at those partners have their own go-to vendors. It is easy to forget about the sales reps at your partners, so whenever allowed make sure to properly incentivize the reps actually selling your products.

A key cornerstone of a successful partner program is one that has proactively removed as many barriers as possible. Think of it like a website that makes it too difficult to find pricing, a visitor bounces. Why would a sales rep who wants to know more about how to make money with you, stay? Put yourself in the actual sales rep’s shoes, and you may find some things that are creating unnecessary challenges.

2. Restricted Control

A channel sales partner should be thought of as an outsourced sales team. Since the partners work independently, there is limited (direct) control over them.

In order to keep your partners motivated, it is important to develop incentive programs that motivate partners to close more deals and stay up to date with market trends. Even though partners act as a bridge and fill the gap between you and the end customer, it is important to not only focus on the demand of the partners but also look at greater demands from the market as well.

3. Channel Conflict

In the current competitive market, it is important to monitor issues like pricing fluctuations, adherence to SLAs, delivery-related issues, and problems related to product features to help avoid channel conflict. These are core components of partner management strategies. The possibility for channel conflict also pops its ugly head up when an organization has recruited too many partners in a specific region of the world, leading to saturation and unnecessary competition.

4. Changing Buyer Behavior

In today’s day and age, buyers are more empowered than ever before. They will rarely rely on the word of the partner without doing their own due diligence.

The buyer will complete their own research before investigating local buying options. The major challenge is fully understanding the nuances of that behavior specific to a target vertical or market. Leveraging partners to conduct surveys and feedback sessions are a great way to leverage your channel for insights your organization might not otherwise have.

Choose Channels Wisely, and Stick to the Rules

It is important to address the challenges mentioned above head-on in order to effectively scale sales through your various partners.

While these challenges exist, so does a solution! Vartopia helps to resolve all your Channel Sales problems. Contact us for a demo.

PRM Dev

PRM Dev is an author, blogger, and designer living in a suburb of Washington, DC. When he’s not designing, blogging, or writing, Ferguson can be found with his head in a book or pinning like a madman.