B2B Marketing for Channel Partner & Distributor Program Success

For B2B companies, selling through channel partners, distributors, or resellers is the engine that drives revenue for their business model. But that engine is usually sputtering along at a fraction of its true potential.?

In fact, 27% of companies surveyed say that only one out of four channel partners meets or exceeds expectations. Another 23% say they don’t even KNOW how their channel partners are performing. That’s astonishing.

How Can a Channel Partner Marketing Program Help You Fix This Problem?

Here are my top 3 pieces of advice if you want to solve your channel partner problem.

#1 Treat Your Channel Partners As Your Most Important Audience

As a B2B company, you need to view your channel partners as your primary buyer persona, not as an afterthought.?

Here are 6 key ways to become a preferred partner for your distributors and resellers:

1. Understand their organizational goals. For example, are they trying to improve customer retention? Closing ratios? Volume??
2. Know the messaging that will resonate with your channel partners (why they should choose and prioritize YOUR products to focus on selling)
3. Learn how their sales team is incentivized to sell YOUR products. If it doesn’t help them hit their numbers or get their foot in the door with more customers, your product won’t be important to them.
4. Uncover how to train, reinforce, and reward your channel partners and their sales teams while building relationship along the way. This will help you stay top of mind.
5. Create a path of least resistance so that it is EASY for them to sell more of what you offer. Provide assets and messaging that will help them engage and persuade their end customer.?
6. Engage in brand building activities to prime the market to buy and start generating demand for your product, accelerating sales for your channel partners.

Want to See Our Deep Dive on B2B Channel Partner Marketing? Watch This.

#2 Create a “Campaign in a Box” to Give Your Channel Partners

Having a set of co-branded assets ready to go is a dream come true for distributors and resellers. Here are some of the items I like to build for my B2B clients to give to their channel partners.

• Copy for a web page so they can plug you into their website
• A documented persona for the ideal end customer along with the messaging choreography to use
• A co-branded one-pager?
• A short, co-branded pitch deck
• A pre-written email series for their marketing department
• A pre-written set of scripts for the sales team to personalize for one-on-one outreach on email and LinkedIn
• A sales cheat sheet that helps the sales team have good conversations and handle Q&A
• An EXCITING and high value digital asset (education, tool, or other resource) that helps open doors

#3 Take Responsibility for Your Own Marketing?

Even though most of your sales may come through channel partners, that does NOT mean you don’t need to do marketing for brand awareness, demand gen, and lead generation as well.?

Why Spend on Brand Awareness and Demand Gen??

You want your channel partners to succeed, so WARM that market up for them. Their sales people shouldn’t be the ones responsible for introducing your brand to your target market. You should be doing it. This primes your market to buy, helps sales close deals faster, and enables you to charge more which means more profitability for you and your channel partners. Also, you don’t want your channel partners to eclipse your brand. End clients should know YOUR brand name and not just the name of the distributor.

Watch this episode to learn more best practices for demand generation.

Why Spend on Lead Generation??

Being able to generate leads and close deals on your own has several benefits.

• You can prove to potential channel partners that your product is sellable (and that you know HOW to help them sell more).?
• You can distribute additional leads to your existing channel partners to build good will and reward high performance.?
• You will gain invaluable industry insight along the way to improve your product, your programs, and your revenue potential.

Are You Ready to Optimize Channel Partner Performance?

When you implement these best practices, you can expect to see better performance from your existing partners and new opportunities to expand your program to new sellers.

Want to discuss channel partner marketing with us? Reach out to Dacia Coffey to book a time to talk.