5 Giant Steps For Planning Your 2020 Channel Development

In Q4, most vendors are probably building their 2020 channel plans as they review 2019 to figure out what to improve next year. A Channel Manager's job is truly very difficult. Literally, hundreds of moving parts. With the changing channel landscape and resource shortfalls, it can feel like mission impossible 365 days a year! With so many channel development activities to choose, what will be the right mix? It's real easy to get lost in the channel forest.

As "they" say, to eat an elephant you need to do it one bite at a time. Sounds easy, but have you ever tried eating an elephant? :o)

While most channel partners have gone through massive disruptions in their business model, many vendors are still lagging behind. Hopefully these 5 steps will help some channel managers to build a better 2020 channel playbook, without resorting heavy drinking :o)

Here are my 5:

1. What's really inside your channel partner network? You must understand what's really inside your current channel partner base and sort them into 3 main buckets. Successful, Somewhat Successful and Just Not Sure. The Successful group is fairly easy to nurture to grow, but do not leave them alone to go wild and don't hand over all of your resources to them. Somewhat Successful is the group that you will want to figure out what is really holding them back and plan to fix that. Just Not Sure means that you either recruited the wrong partner or did a poor job of on-boarding them. Initially, you can sort by sales volume, but that is definitely not the only criteria. Look for strategic benefits. Regional representation. Look internally to see if it is something that you or your team missed. This will require some deep diving and discussions with the partners. Thinking without a box may unleash more success than you ever thought possible.
2. Building the right-fit target channel partner audience. It's logical to plan to reach and qualify more of the right-fit partners based on your current success, but don't automatically shutout everyone else. As the market changes, you may be surprised how yesterday's misfits can be tomorrows champions. Your challenge is to build a list of the right prospects. Before you go off and just start filtering on LinkedIn and spamming for leads, look at more effective and creative options. There are clever ways to continually build a proper target list and put into your drip campaign. Focus on creating high-value content that educates and motivates people, then continually amplify (through news media, events and social networks) to your target audience. Eventually, a steady stream of prospects will be attracted to you. Flip from selling to helping. It actually works!
3. Get proper advice that is current. Spend some time with your peers and other channel experts to pick their brains to see what you can leverage. It is amazing what you can learn from others. It is amazing what you can learn by "following" your competitors or watching their presentations. It is amazing with partners will tell you if you ask them what made them buy from your competitor. As the saying goes, "it takes a wise man to learn from their mistakes, but it takes a wiser man to learn from the mistakes of others" (I am not saying to blindly copy what others are doing as what works for them may not work for you)! Constantly improving your channel playbook to build and empower the next generation of channel partners is critical. One good way to learn is to attend The Channel Manager Summit.
4. What do channel partners really need. Unfortunately you need to stop guessing by properly surveying your channel partners to figure out what they really need to actually accelerate business with you. You may also need an independent source to conduct the survey as doing this in-house may not yield the right data. That said, you just cannot give partners anything and everything that they want. The challenge is to do a common but customizable set of things that can be scaled to other channel partners. Doing too many one-offs will eventually grind you down. Focus on how to help partners learn enough about your solution and help them to prospect their customers and community. One very important skill to transfer is to teach them how to really fish. Putting a worm on a hook and dropping the line in the lake may be considered technically fishing, but real fishermen knows that's not how to catch fish!
5. Don't become complacent. Do not rely on a partner portal, web site or a marketing automation tool to get the job done. The old saying still prevails "garbage in- garbage out". You just cannot automate your way to channel success. At least not until AI becomes savvy enough to take over the steering. Every partner has a real persona and the trick is to figure out the key to unlocking that superpower. This may sound hard, but is not. A deep dive discussion with the partner can usually uncover most of the secrets to driving success. With the proper followup and actions, success will follow. All that you need to do in rinse and repeat. This is still a people to people business so ensure that your people (channel reps) are up to speed in doing the right thing! Same goes through for management as they also need to be on top of their game to lead their tribe.

Of course there are other steps to building the ultimate channel partner ecosystem, but that is where you may need to dig deeper within or hire some professional help. If you can honestly say that you have these 5 steps under control, then you should have an awesome 2020!

Check out this short video on a possible path to accelerate success your 2020.

Ask about our Channel Marketing-as-a-Servcie. It is the "all-inclusive buffet" of everything you need to reach your channel goals. Just ask for an information kit.