69

QUESTIONS

your CHANNEL PARTNER BRAIN

Breakthrough Business Solutions

If you sell entirely or partially through a distribution channel and by distribution channel I mean distributors, channel partners, resellers, system integrators, value added resellers --it comes with its own set of challenges. One of the big challenge is of course getting the Channel Partners attention. Most of the successful distributors carry many different product lines and therefore inevitably, a principals success hinges on its ability to break through all the clutter, demonstrate their superiority and, over time, grow a partners share-of-mind (and share-of-wallet).Tall order But not impossible . Breaking through though is rarely the result of a big budget, a new product announcement or higher margin to the channel partner. Usually, its a matter of thinking a certain way about Channel Partners and follow- through execution. The list below is meant to stimulate the Channel partner portion of the brain. Dont just answer the questions! Rather carefully consider your answers. Have you made unrealistic assumptions? Will your own sales and marketing team members answer each question in the same way? If you and your team arent on the same page, how do you expect your Channel Partners to follow your lead?

1. What are your channel partners biggest challenges? Where have you incorporated this understanding into your internal and channel training materials? 2. Can you describe your PERFECT Channel Partner? 3. Your WORST Channel Partner? 4. Can you describe your PERFECT customer? How have you communicated this to your Channel Partners? What format? When? 5. Your WORST customer? How have you communicated this to your Channel Partners? What format? When? 6. What forms of motivation works best for your Channel Partners? Cash? Travel? Point programs? One-time awards? 7. How are you currently recognizing your Channel Partners achievements? Do you have a formal plan or is it rather ad hoc? 8. Can you write down the names of your top 10 Channel Partner sales executives? Have you met them? 9. What form of training works best? In-person, online, train-thetrainer? 10. What are the specific steps a Channel Partner needs to follow (from beginning to end) to find, qualify, propose and close new business? 11. What is the incentive for a Channel Partner to close business for any of the lines they sell? 12. How does your product enable a Channel Partner to close more business for other lines they sell? In other words, do your

products enable the channel partner to sell his or her portfolio of products, or just yours? 13. What does a Channel Partner get from you? The intangible and the tangible? If you added it all up, would you be a buyer of your products and services if you were a Channel Partner? Why/why not? 14. Do you expect your Channel Partners to prospect for new business? Is this a realistic expectation? 15. How many employees can name the Channel Partners responsible for 80% of your revenue over the last 12 months? 16. When any of your executives travel, do they make a point of visiting Channel Partners? If so, how are you capturing the notes from their meetings? 17. How much risk is involved in the selling of your products? How can you lower it to zero? 18. What questions do Channel Partners get most often from customers? How do these questions differ from the questions you get directly from customers? 19. If you had all the money, time and talent available to you, would you sell through Channel Partners? 20. Whats the best reason for a customer to NOT do business with you or your Channel Partners? 21. What can you teach your Channel Partners to do that would help them solve a chronic problem for their customers that may or may not involve the sale of your products? 22. Are there other services, providers, products that you can recommend to your Channel Partners? 23. Is there conventional wisdom in your industry that is just plain wrong? 24. What things is your company NOT good at? Do your Channel Partners understand these limitations? 25. What one thing could any Channel Partner do (specifically) to make money with your product today? Skip the its a long sales cyclethey get paid when the deal closes. What can they do today to put cash in their wallets? 26. If your answer to the above was nothing, go back to the drawing board and find an activity youd be willing to pay them to do, and that by doing it, a channel partner would have wired the deal for a

close (even if the actual delivery is months away)? 27. Whats your most embarrassing failure story involving a Channel Partner? What have you done to make sure it doesnt happen again? 28. What lies are told in your industry? 29. What do you find yourself complaining about most? 30. Look through Channel Partner emails for the last 6 months. Do you see any patterns? Any great stories? Any complaints? 31. Other than e-mail, what other forms of regular communication do you have with your Channel Partners? 32. Have you written a white paper? Free report? Checklist? Guide? Instruction manual? How are you getting them into the hands of your Channel Partners? 33. For each of the above, are you supplying the materials to your Channel Partners with your Channel Partners logo and contact information instead of or in addition to your own? 34. If you were to survey your Channel Partners, what would you ask them? 35. Do you use auto responder e-mails to follow up as a part of your nurture marketing plan? Do you allow your Channel Partners to set up a similar nurture sequence on their own website? 36. Have you ever fired a Channel Partner? Why? How many need to be fired today so you can free up time to pursue and support other Channel Partners? 37. What are your Channel Partners idiosyncrasies? 38. What is the boldest challenge you could make to your Channel Partners? 39. What are the characteristics that separate the winner channel partners from others? 40. When your Channel Partners get together with other Channel Partners (e.g., at industry events), what do you want your Channel Partners to say about you to the others? 41. How do you want your Channel Partners to respond or react to the latest industry news? 42. What negative about your company is actually a positive thing about your firm? 43. How has being a Channel Partner allowed your channel Partners to

save money, make money, improve their balance sheet, retain more customers, lose fewer customers and improve customer satisfaction? 44. Do you have special procedures, policies or people that make you unique? 45. What are your business goals for this year? Next year? Five years? How many Channel Partners know them? 46. Whats the most outrageous guarantee you can make? 47. What are the three main reasons your product is so expensive? So inexpensive? 48. Can you create a gold level status for your Channel Partners? What would this level provide that the other level doesnt? 49. What do your competitors say about your product/service? 50. Whats the best thing you can say about your toughest competitor? 51. Whats the most imperfect thing about your product/service? 52. When you have to resolve a conflict with a Channel Partner, what are the steps you follow? Is there a pattern to these conflicts that could be eliminated with clearer instructions? 53. What deal size are your Channel Partners able to close without your intervention? What can you do to increase this threshold by 20%? 54. What are the top 5 marketing campaigns youve created for your Channel Partners? What are the metrics? 55. What percentage of your Channel Partners can give a 30-second elevator pitch on your products? Could you run a contest to increase the number who can do this? 56. What is the most popular resource on your Channel Partner portal? Why? (You do have a Partner Portal, correct?) 57. When Channel Partners add you to their visiting card, what one thing are they now able to do that they werent before? 58. What one rule in your Partner program is most annoying to your Channel Partners? 59. If you doubled the co-op reimbursement rate, what marketing activity would your Channel Partners most likely do? 60. What would you have to do so Channel Partner could see one additional prospect each week? 61. What is the staff turnover rate within your channel? What can you do to lower it?

62. How many steps are in your sales cycle (or the customer buying cycle)? What can you do to eliminate one step? 63. If proposals are a part of the sales process, how can you streamline the creation of proposals? 64. How many hours a day do your Channel Partners and their sales reps actually spend selling? How can you be the agent of change to increase it by 20%? 65. If you asked your Channel Partners this question, how would they respond? As a supplier to you, what one thing should we STOP doing, START doing, CONTINUE doing? 66. If you were to segment your customers into 3 or 4 types what would they be? 67. If you could get just ONE idea through your Channel Partners head what would it be? 68. Whats the most common reason that customers DELAY doing business with you? 69. If you had to send an email message every day for 30 days to your Channel Partners, what would you write about? But ideas and questions arent enough. Your Partner Channel program must fire on all 4 cylinders: 1. 2. 3. 4. Continuously assess your Channel Partners. Recruit the right Channel Partners. Win Channel Partner mindshare. Create Sales through Channel Partners

Marketing Solutions from Breakthrough Business Solutions

Helping Companies Grow their Business

Lead Attraction

Sales Force training

Breakthrough Business Solutions

Lead Nurturing

Sales force outsourcing

Lead Conversion

P-205, Sector-21, Noida Mob 9811417742

Email: arunpujari@breakthroughsolutions.co.in Blog: makeyourmarketingsweat.com/blog

1 Lead Attraction : We use an accurate database of the target market and combine it with telemarketing , email marketing , direct mailing and increasingly certain aspects of online marketing, where relevant , to attract necessary number of leads . 2 Lead Nurturing: Using the concept of Education based Marketing we ensure systematic proper follow up of all the leads so that the buyer becomes predisposed to buy only from you. This includes a variety of methods including white papers, position papers, pod casts and webinars. When the prospect is ready , he calls up 3 Lead conversion: We identify the various gaps in the marketing and sales process, and plug those gaps, so that the sales team is able to close more business. 4 Sales force Outsourcing : For a launch of a new product/ service or sales expansion of existing product / service , sales force can be recruited /provided and trained to achieve the clients objectives 5 Sales Force Training: Everything being equal, a trained sales force will bring in more business than an untrained sales force. We help in studying the gaps and providing the relevant sales training to the sales force, to make it more productive.

To know more how we can work together, please call at 9811417742 or email at arunpujari@breakthroughsolutions.co.in