Channel Partner Relationships: The Key to Sales Success

Strong relationships with your channel partners are essential for mutual success in today's competitive market. But how do you measure and strengthen these relationships? New research from BI WORLDWIDE and KANTAR sheds light on the key drivers of channel partner loyalty and engagement, offering valuable insights to brands looking to optimise their channel partnerships.

The Importance of Channel Partner Relationships and Key Metric for Measuring

Engaged and motivated channel partners are a brand's gateway to building long-term customer relationships and unlocking new revenue streams. Understanding their ambitions and aspirations is the first step towards cultivating strong and profitable partnerships.

While sales activity is the most obvious metric, other factors like end customer acquisition, referral activity, co-marketing engagement, and training participation offer a more comprehensive view of brand engagement.

Introducing the Channel Affection Matrix

BI WORLDWIDE and KANTAR's first-of-its-kind research led to the development of the Channel Affection Matrix, a unique tool designed to measure the strength of brand-channel partner relationships.

The matrix evaluates relationships based on two factors: 'performance' (extreme satisfaction with the brand) and 'preference' (likelihood of continuing with and recommending the brand).

Here is how it works:

The ‘performance’ and ‘preference’ scores are derived from their correlation with eight engagement drivers – Operational Excellence, Rewards & Incentives, Recognition, Learning, Brand Affinity, Communication, Well-being, and Events

Are Your Channel Partners Engaged, Trapped, Unattached, or Vulnerable?

Based on these score the partner is pace into one of the of the four quadrants:

• Engaged: Satisfied and recommend the brand (driven by both 'performance' and 'preference').
• Trapped: Not satisfied but recommend the brand (driven by 'preference').
• Unattached: Satisfied but don't recommend the brand (driven by 'performance').
• Vulnerable: Neither satisfied nor recommend the brand.

Each quadrant requires different strategies to improve the relationship.

Strategies for Strengthening Channel Partner Relationships

Through greater understanding of the drivers of engagement and how they correlate with performance and preference, we can begin to work on strategies to move the engagement needle.

The IBC (Invest, Build, Consider) Solution Framework, developed by BI WORLDWIDE, offers brand-specific solutions for maximising channel partner engagement. It identifies key engagement drivers that brands should invest in, build upon, or consider, based on their unique Channel Affection Matrix.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the key drivers of channel partner loyalty and engagement is crucial for sales success.
• The Channel Affection Matrix is a powerful tool for measuring and improving channel partner relationships.
• Tailored strategies based on the IBC Solution Framework can help brands strengthen their partnerships and drive growth.

Understanding your channel partner landscape is critical to effective programme design, and in turn optimised channel performance. Using the eight drivers of engagement, our Channel Affection Matrix helps design targeted, multi-layered incentive and loyalty programmes that reward channel partners not just on what they ‘do’ but also on how they ‘feel’ for both short and long-term success.

Check out the full blog post at BI WORLDWIDE EMEA and get in touch to learn more about how we approach reward and recognition solution design to maximise channel partner engagement and loyalty.

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BI WORLDWIDE we are in the business?of inspiration. We know how important it is for our clients to inspire people and deliver results.

As a global performance improvement agency, we specialise in Employee Engagement Programmes, Sales & Channel Incentive Solutions and Event Management Services. To learn more visit our BI WORLDWIDE EMEA website today.