I was recently part of a panel of experts, gathered to advise an agency about updating the channel program for their client. The client wanted to get their channel partners to adopt digital marketing, and the agency asked questions about how to get the partners to make the move, including an incentive of MDF and possibly taking away MDF if the partner didn’t make the move. We were halfway into our time when I could no longer hold back and had to ask “Why is the vendor wanting partners to make this move? What are the benefits to the partner? How will it improve their sales, or ROI?” From the response, it seemed to me that the vendor didn’t have this point of view at all. The vendor had an agenda and wanted the partners to simply go along.

My experience is that channel partners come in quite a variety of business types. Some are run by sales people, work directly with only a handful of customers and they do no “marketing”. Some have a person who spends up to half-time on marketing and they want marketing content provided for them. Some send a newsletter to their customers once  quarter and that’s all the marketing they do. Some have quite sophisticated marketing teams, sending email campaigns and offering joint marketing programs to their vendors.

Nowhere in the discussion with this agency did they talk about how the vendor learned what their channel partners wanted. Or how they segmented their partners as to who might benefit most from moving to digital marketing. Or who, among their channel partners, had the capability to move to digital marketing. I’d call this a classic rookie mistake but it became clear the vendor was a big company who’s been in business for decades. Whatever caused their tunnel vision, focusing only on what they want, I predict they won’t get their desired results.

How do you listen to your channel partners? Do you survey them? Have them complete a scorecard to rate you, as a partner? Have quarterly account reviews? I strongly believe if you don’t have a regular way to engage them about how the business is going, and how you can best help them increase it, you’re leaving money on the table.

One of my strengths is seeing a solution or way to steer progress to get the best outcome. One of the most frustrating things for me used to be have the client then blithely assure me “Oh no, we won’t make that mistake. We’re smarter than that.” Or “Oh no, we won’t take that path…” and then watch them indeed take that path, right off the cliff. The outcome that I could see in front of them, getting closer, had seen other clients fall into, had done my best to advise them against, in the most positive way possible highlighting the benefits of a different path and still – march, march, march, aaaaiiiiggghhhhh….boom. Poof. (Little puff of dust. Like when Wile E. Coyote hits bottom.)

Travelling for the holidays, I struck up a conversation with the guy in line behind me. As we were waiting to board, I found out that he was also a contractor, a forensic accountant, working to ensure that non-profits were meeting the required accounting standards. Our conversation turned to the difficulties of advising clients and getting them to actually take the advice. He told of a client installing a big ERP system well before they were ready to use such a system, against his advice. What followed was the predictable (to us) outcome of big money spent, lots of employees near-terminally disrupted and the complete system re-do within a couple years. I’ve also seen similar things in reverse – knowing that client needed to be using their systems in a different way and not being able to get them to make the organizational changes needed for months and months while costly mistakes (that the system would prevent) just kept piling up.

It seemed to both of us, as we discussed this, that most people simply cannot learn something before they’re ready to. Even when they’re presented with cost justifications, pie charts, reasons why to do or not to do X, they often stick with what they know. Over the years I’ve become quite ready to resign my membership in the ‘I told you so club’ and have recently done just that. I’ve learned how to offer my deepest knowledge, voice my thoughts from a place of experience, coach for successful outcomes and then … let it go. I’m happy to be in this calm place where I’ve offered my best to the client and been perfectly OK with whatever path they’ve chosen. Even if they go ‘poof!’.

I was at my first meeting with a new client last week. We were brainstorming ideas for their blog when the CEO told the story of a recent WHOA moment and I just had to capture it.

My client, FixStream, provides an advanced operational analytics and visualization platform for IT. Think of it as ‘Google Maps’ for the network and data centers. One of the super cool things they provide is a dynamic map of business process, down to all the applications and every piece of infrastructure through the network, data centers (!) and VMs. Trust me, this is ground breaking and so needed by IT.

During the brainstorming, Sameer, the CEO, was describing a recent partner engagement with their sales reps. He had set up a WebEx to show the reps what the product could do for their customers. He wasn’t getting much response from the reps, and he eventually asked how many were on the WebEx from their computer. Turned out, only 4 or 5 were, everyone else had just dialed in through the phone (no visuals). “OK, to those of you on the computer, let me show you what our product can do.” He started the demo and 20 seconds in there was a unanimous “WHOA!” from the guys who could see it. Immediately, the other reps were asking ‘What? What is it? What did you see?” The guys who had seen the demo started describing it, and the general tone turned to one of excitement and purpose as they started talking about how this could help their customers, and where they were going to take it in. Turned the whole meeting around!

I can picture the video we’ll create to show this. More on that later.

Meanwhile, what’s been your most recent WHOA moment?

Saw this report about sales collateral for B2B buyers – according to Netline’s ‘The Content Connection to Vendor Selection’ there is no ‘magic bullet’ content that reaches everyone.

Not surprising that the same survey or case study that catches the attention of the CIO isn’t going to resonate with the Director of Demand Generation, or the VP of Engineering. Or that the CIO is even going to share the information with others in the buying chain. The advice is to go old school: audit the performance of your collateral, map it to the sales cycle and to your customer’s purchase cycle. Understand the personas involved in the purchase decision and take them into account while creating your collateral.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of your channel partners. How can you help them develop the type of content needed by their customers, through the purchase cycle? A joint collateral mapping and development project will get you more information about their customer’s purchasing behavior and help strengthen your relationship. If you can also get information on use of that collateral, even better. A partner portal that allows you to track what’s accessed, by partner, can provide valuable insight to what’s working, and help drive your budget investment.

Are your partners using your collateral? What’s working best for them?

Resellers have the reach into the customers. That makes a reseller valuable to you. To build a profitable relationship, you want to make yourself valuable to them.

Understand that resellers today are under tremendous economic pressure – their customers insist on the lowest possible prices, keeping margins razor thin. (The first thing a customer will do is check the price on Amazon or CDW.) A rule of thumb is that a reseller needs to have services comprise 30% of their revenues, or they’ll be out of business within 3 years.

When recruiting a reseller, describe how your product will augment the products that they’re carrying. Create that value proposition aimed towards the reseller, and then create one aimed towards their customer. How will adding your product to their line card augment sales of products they already carry? How will it be an easy upsell to their installed base of customers? If your product provides a service component that ties in with the other products they sell, that will be a strength and reason for them to add your product to their line. If their technical staff can use existing skills and knowledge with your product, that will also be helpful.

To enable your resellers, do you have sales training that they can access online? Provide sales materials that their reps can get to on their phone as they’re walking into a customer meeting, or as they’re calling a customer. Is the technical training online, and easily watchable in 20 minute chunks?

Work with the resellers reps and create a value proposition that they can use with their customers. It may vary from your corporate value proposition, based on the customers your reseller works with. It’s best to keep the communication in plain language – address the customer’s pain points and the solution provided without acronyms, if possible. Avoid marketing jargon as well! Even the term ‘value proposition’ is marketing jargon.

Putting yourself in their shoes, so to speak, understanding how they do business every day, and how they approach their customers will pay off for you in a solid relationship with your reseller partner.

Frequently, I’m engaged by clients who have just decided to sell their products or service through a reseller channel. They may be newly launching into the market, or perhaps they were selling directly and want to extend their reach much more broadly into the market, and faster.

Problem is, often the execs think that once a reseller signs the partner agreement that sales will immediately begin. Yes, that can happen if your product is setting the market on fire in its niche. Security products that protect networks against Advanced Malware are a recent example – they are hot and selling well, and resellers are flocking into those partner programs.

More typically, your product will find a place in the market but will need to be explained, demonstrated, justified and proven in the customers’ network. You need to engage the reseller owner or VP to sign the partner agreement. You need to engage the sales reps to make sales happen.

Think of bringing a reseller on board like dating – there are a few steps you take when getting to know each other, to build the relationship. Once the relationship is established, you continue to show up, to keep it good. No regular communications (newsletters, webinars), failing to initiate lead generation programs, never going out into the field with the reseller reps is like signing up for a dating service and then never answering your phone. Newbie mistake!