The "Blueprint" To Grow Your Channel Sales!

Continuing the series?"Exceeding your number in 2022!" In the first post, we discussed compensation plans and need to do something different next year to exceed your number. A number of options were discussed for growing channel sales, but ultimately, the most efficient option is to transition your underperforming passive partners into active demand creators. The first article defined the "The Plan!" Transitioning your top ten passive (underperforming) partners in your territory to active sellers. Today's post provides the "Blueprint!"

Introduction:?Almost everything we purchase, build or consume comes with instructions. Packaged food comes with cooking instructions, technology products come with user manuals, even clothing comes with instructions on how to properly wash. Every company recognizes the value of instructions to guide their customers to achieve a successful outcome. However, for most technology sales functions there is rarely a recipe to follow to create the desired outcome, "new sales!" But, what if channel sales were equipped with a Blueprint (instructions) to help partners create new demand? Imagine the impact on your numbers in 2022, if you could transition your underperforming passive partners and improve your top active partners demand creation performance next year.

The central question I asked in the first post in our series was: "What are you going to do differently in 2022 to achieve your number?" One opportunity for change is adopting a formal demand creation process to help your partners create new sales. In this post, I will share the Channel Force Demand Creation Framework as the "Blueprint" to transition passive partners to active sellers, resulting in new demand for any product or service. The content of this post is from my class "Generating Demand Through The Channel." If you would like a deeper dive than this post you can take the online (on-demand) class at https://channelforce.podia.com/generating-demand-through-the-channel.

The Blueprint:?The Channel Force Demand Creation Enablement model is depicted as a Pyramid. The starting point for demand creation and the center of the Pyramid is a solution specific sales strategy defining the plan for how to create new sales. This includes how to market, develop the market and sell the solution. All messaging, market development activities and sales plays are all aligned to support the sales strategy. Channel Sales is responsible for aligning the partner community to execute the strategy. Channel Account Managers tie the process together organizing, educating and equipping partners to execute a structured sales creation process. Here's what the model looks like:

Demand Creation Enablement Blueprint

The above illustration outlines our Enablement Blueprint for transitioning underperforming passive partners to active demand creators.?The Demand Creation Enablement Blueprint?is designed to engage partners in every aspect of the demand creation process creating ownership and accountability for generating new sales. Partners are now expected to engage in Marketing, Market Development and Selling, not just fulfilling demand created by the vendor. Let's explore each element of our five phase model starting with Strategy.

I. Strategy:?A solutions sales strategy is the focal point for an effective demand creation model. In today's channel sales environment, It's not enough to rely on solution overviews and sales certification training to generate partner sales activity. Partners must also be educated and equipped to support your solutions selling strategy. A selling strategy organizes your partners to target high probability sales opportunities based on identified market needs and common selling techniques. In our model we want our partners to mine their base of customers to:

• Upgrade?older products to newer versions.
• Upsell?a new capabilities.
• Consume Market Share?targeting weaker competitor solutions.
• Cross-Sell?additional solutions with their customer base.

A selling strategy is central to your sales enablement. Here is what I want you to do! For each of your underperforming partners, pick a selling strategy that fits their existing base of customers and focus your sales enablement on organizing, educating and equipping your partner to execute the strategy. For example, if a partner has a large existing base of an End-Of-Life (EOL) solutions, you could run an upgrade sales play to pursue the opportunity. Another example would be upselling an additional license or product to your current install-base of customers. In either case partners need to be focused on your solutions sales strategy to identify accounts and proactively position your solution. Channel teams must enable partners to execute the selling strategy starting with Marketing!

II. Marketing-?Marketing is often thought of as a vendor led activity building awareness for a solution in order to create inbound leads. While this is true, one of the biggest mistakes channels make is failing to effectively utilize partners to market solutions to their install-base of customers. In our Blueprint, we want partners executing both email and call campaigns with their customers to generate attendance to monthly market development events. From a high level, Partner Sales Managers will invite their customers to demand creation events (Webinar) to learn how your solution addresses common priority issues in the market. Partner Sellers are equipped with email templates and conversation starters to help drive attendance to market development events.

III. Market Development-?Market Development is key to the success of the model. In many ways, I am surprised that companies don't create a consistent market development presence using partners to drive attendance to events. The idea is for Vendors to create a monthly webinar or demand creation event to build awareness of a market issue and message the value of the solution to solve the challenge, as well as, define a path forward. Market Development events provide a development offer to attendees as both an incentive to attend the event and a tool to help attendees experience the value of the solution. This includes trial licenses or free products etcetera for attending. One important key for creating market momentum for your solution is to consistently run market development events every month. Shared market development has a number of benefits for both the vendor and the partner.

1) The Vendor benefits from direct messaging with the target market and instant feedback from potential customers.

2) The Partner benefits from what amounts to an apprentice program learning from the vendor expert how to message solution value and address common questions asked from the audience. The webinar helps create better partner sellers.

3) Successful market development pipelines the leads back to partners creating momentum for the events as partners experience the benefits of the webinars to create new leads.

In many cases partners are offered deal registration benefits for customers they align with the event. The event provides an easy follow-up for the partner to execute a packaged sales play.

IV. Selling-?Ideally, Partner's are equipped with packaged Sales Plays (Upgrade, Upsell, Consume & Cross-Sell) to generate tactical sales opportunities. Sales Plays are used as follow-up with attendees of your market development events. The goal for sales plays is to develop leads into new sales. Sales plays consist of:

1) An?Identified Issue?your solution solves.

2)?Reach?emails & call scripts defining the challenge, opportunity for improvement, pathway forward and expected outcome!

3) Influence?Incentives?using promotions and offers to create engagement.

4)?Development?resources to support each stage of the sales cycle to include overcoming common objections and proof of value (POV) that your solution addresses the identified need and creates the desired outcome.

5.?Expansion Plan?defining how to maximize each sale and setup future sales.

V. Channel Enablement-?Finally, sales enablement is crucial to the success of the model. Channel Managers must transition from product enablement and solution overviews to a balanced approach to demand creation training incorporating sales strategy enablement. Enablement links the process together organizing, educating and equipping partners to execute the demand creation process.

What Does This Mean To Me:?This article is a high level overview of our Demand Creation Blueprint designed to help you transition your passive (underperforming) partners to active sellers. Our framework provides a blueprint to use to guide your demand creation enablement. The model is a great visual to define the the process needed to create active sellers. As you think through how to apply this model to your channel, you will need to develop the content to support each function of the model. The good news is many mature companies already have a significant amount of marketing content that can easily be adapted and applied. As mentioned, our online class "Generating Demand Through The Channel" provides a much deeper dive and includes email and sales play templates as part of the course. Finally, there is significant revenue potential as you move your channel partners from passive fulfillment partners to active value-aligned demand creators. The 'energy' required for this transformational channel process is enabling your partner to execute a structured channel demand creation process.?If you adopt, resource, enable and execute the model properly, you will absolutely grow your channel sales in 2022. I hope you found the post useful. The next post in the series is the "The Process", how we equip the model and the process you should follow to execute the plan. Stay tuned!

I am always available to discuss, just hit me up on Linkedin!

Craig

Sponsorship:?This post was sponsored by Channel Force Inc On-Demand Channel Sales Training. To learn more about our Channel Sale Acceleration Training. Please visit our training page at channelforce.podia.com

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