Channel Marketing Series: Collaboration Technologies
by Joe Orlando, Director of Sales
04/05/2007
I hope to provide tips and tools to help you understand the ROI potential generated from a successful Channel Marketing Strategy. Channel Marketing is an indirect means of offering your products and services to the end-user.
For example, take organizations like Microsoft and IBM. Both companies have extensive partner channels that generate sales opportunities for their products and services. These include Value Added Resellers (VAR), consulting firms, and integration shops (ISV). The incentives for these partners are the ability to sell larger opportunities, ability to utilize the larger organizations sales team to help close, volume discounts on software, and access to training.
But before we get to the strategy of large partner networks, we should look at the foundation of how these channels are managed. How do organizations that wish to build a partner network engage and empower their channel? The first step should be the creation of an Extranet or Portal Web Site.
Collaboration Technologies: Extranets and Portals
Speed of communications is a measurable value of extranet and portal technology. Portals provide fast and secure web-based methods to improve relationships with key customers and facilitate communications. They also offer an efficient way to manage suppliers, vendors, training, resellers and partners. A well-organized and well-built web portal is far more efficient at managing these process than a manual system.
Many organizations depend on portals for sales activities. Portals improve collaboration, increase the speed of delivery of marketing support, facilitate training, and provide up to date resources and tools to help partners sell products and services.
A portal can be the best source of information for your partners, delivered through a self-service platform. Partner portals can provide sales and marketing material, training and certification programs, best practices, and the ability to schedule resources. Portals that serve content based on user profiles deliver product and service information immediately to the right audience.
Another major benefit to creating an online partner portal is the ability to keep information up to date in a real time environment. Many of the online portal technologies have some elements of content and or document management. These tools facilitate keeping information current for the partner channel.
Imagine a partner network that houses hundreds of companies, each with a team of sales people. How quickly can an organization provide updated information for their partners in a paper world? Not quickly at all.
Compare that to an online partner management system. An update is made to a document, it is then published to the Partner Portal. The changed document could be highlighted on the partner dashboard; and/ or an email is fired off to the members of the partner network informing them of the new document.
Portals and extranets are an essential tool for effective channel marketing. They provide the foundation that allows organizations to manage information, process, training and support to their partner network.
