Recruiting new channel partners is a necessary task in order to maintain a truly effective channel marketing community. The fit, quality and resources of a company will have a significant impact on their ability to drive sales for your organization. In order to recruit the best partners, you need to take a strategic approach with a stringent vetting process while offering true value to your potential partners.
Simply providing sales and marketing content to your channel partners is not enough, they need strategy and direction. Many partners lack the bandwidth to create a plan based on the materials they receive and often times valuable content assets go unused. In order to curb this and maximize the usage of your materials, a few key steps are necessary.
In many cases companies spend the majority of their resources on larger channel partners as they often have the reach and bandwidth to sustain a large volume of sales. While this may be true, there is a major opportunity in focusing on your small to mid-sized partners. In many cases these types of companies will make up the majority of your channel community. Focusing a larger amount of resources toward these partners can help to engage them, allowing you to maximize your channel revenue.
Channel marketing has become essential for B2B technology companies looking to increase their reach and awareness. Playing an active role in the marketing initiatives of your channel partners is the best way to ensure consistent messaging and ROI on your market development funds. Keeping an eye on the latest B2B marketing trends will help you to build and maintain an efficient and profitable channel partner community.
Channel partners can bring an organization to new levels by catapulting sales in markets and regions that would otherwise remain untapped through direct sales efforts. However, managing channel partners and measuring their success can be a challenge. The best way to approach each of these tasks is to simplify your objectives. Here we have got some quick bullet points to help you get the most out of your channel partner relationships.