Why use Channel Partners? Channel partners are a great way to build business relationships for many different reasons. For the manufacturer, a channel partner can help bring a new product to market and increase visibility of a brand to boost sales. For the channel partner, it helps open the doors to new business with a lower cost of entry and a smaller risk factor than creating their own technology or merging/acquiring to obtain the technology for that service offering. Challenges of doing business with Channel Partners For those of us who do business through channel partners, finding out exactly what happened to leads that are sent to the channel is always a challenge. How many of those leads did your partners follow up with? How many turned into sales? What's the ROI for each program that generated those leads? If you're fortunate enough to have a channel sales rep helping your partners follow up with and close leads, you're doing a better job than most. Still, many leads fall through the cracks. Why? Because sales is a numbers game and warm/cool leads are on the losing team. Each partner rep may work with dozens of channel partners each of whom may work hundreds of leads. And when a rep is working to close a deal, he's not focused on the other leads. Solving the Challenges Lots of companies invested heavily in CRM systems only to find out that the sales team viewed them more like â€big brother’ than tools to help close sales. Reps frequently write things like 'Called 3 times and couldn't reach them,' or 'No opportunity,' prematurely marking them dead. Management might not understand why, but in the reps’ perspective, it makes sense: they only have so much time, and working on proposals, configurations, presentations and briefings takes time. They'd much rather be working on an immediate deal than on a lead that might close in 6 months. So what's the answer? From my experience, combining what I call a â€lead driver’ with a quality lead management system can increase the number of A-level leads passed to channel sales reps, thus increasing the number of deals closed. First, let’s focus on the lead driver. The primary role of a lead driver is to follow the lead, whether this position is internally filled or outsourced. Following and managing the leads through the channel has to be this individual's sole responsibility, so that they have time to manage and track the volume of leads circulating in the channel. The lead driver makes sure the leads are being worked. As they work with partners, if a partner hasn't followed up on a lead within a specified period of time, the lead driver reassigns it to another partner (Lead Management systems like LeadMaster automate this task making it possible for lead drivers to manage a large volume of leads). Thus, the lead driver follows the lead until it is either closed, lost to the competition or has been determined that it never was a lead. By raising the visibility of leads that weren't sales ready, lead drivers can help improve the overall lead scoring methodology. Moreover, as sales reps focus only on sales ready leads while the rest are sent to lead nurturing, the lead driver helps drive not only revenue and sales efficiencybut also lead quality. As the second part of the equation, for this process to go smoothly, all sales leads must be passed through a single lead management system like LeadMaster. This provides those with authorized access real-time updates of any and all leads; it helps marketing know the effectiveness and the ROI of their lead generation programs; it minimizes outdated information in your database; and the channel manager can finally track which partners are following up on leads and which aren’t. Thus, the problem of tracking ROI and channel efficiency is solved with a dedicated â€lead driver,†and a single lead management system that you and your channel share. But this is not the only benefit of having a unified lead management system. This approach can also benefit your partner sales reps.Here's an example. When a partner rep leaves the company and a new rep is hired, the lead driver gives them a call, tells them about the leads they’ll be working and walks them through the lead management system. By having up-to-date information about their leads in a system that is easy-to-use, the new rep can come up to speed quickly. Consider implementing a sales driver for your own channel. With a small initial investment, you’ll be sure to increase sales revenue.
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