Selling through Channels: Partners and Resellers

Two Key Challenges of Channel Sales

Visibility

• How much visibility do we have to the sales opportunities being handled by our selling partners and resellers?
• How do we increase our visibility and get beyond just an opportunity name and forecasted amount with a closure date?
• How do we get visibility to the quality of how sales opportunities are being handled by the channel?

Quality Control

• How can we measure the quality of how well selling partners and resellers handle sales opportunities?
• How do we help our selling partners and resellers improve their odds of winning each key sales opportunity?

Visibility

To gain greater visibility to sales opportunities, partners and resellers must be willing to provide information about those opportunities. PrivateSalesCoach works on five common-sense principles, which substantially improve visibility to opportunities.

Common-Sense Principles		PrivateSalesCoach
“As a reseller or partner, when it comes to my sales opportunities, I will provide information and visibility only if…”
The process is fast The process is easy The process requires little regular attention The process is non-invasive The pay off for this effort is clear to me as a partner or reseller		Ten minutes or less Answer simple questions Once-a-month cadence; just a few key opportunities Private—on demand—on the rep’s schedule Using PrivateSalesCoach is in the partner’s or reseller’s best interest. The advice and insight from PrivateSalesCoach provides partners and resellers: a tremendous competitive advantage improved odds of winning specific opportunities help for their sales execution across their entire opportunity portfolio

The process of gaining visibility cannot be an end in and of itself. Attempts at greater visibility that are not a natural part of the sales process quickly become pure reporting tasks. They quickly become “food for the Gods.” The quickly get circumvented. They quickly become useless.

Challenge		PrivateSalesCoach
Another reporting chore, another reporting appendage, will get killed quickly by the channel.		The visibility gained through PrivateSalesCoach is a byproduct of the sales process, not a “food for the Gods” reporting task. Partners and resellers run only key opportunities through PrivateSalesCoach once a month to gain insights about how they might improve their odds of winning. This becomes a natural part of a high-quality sales process, providing sales professionals and sales teams with clear benefits for their efforts. The visibility gained through qualitative reports is a natural—but significant—outcome of a thoughtful approach to managing and executing sales opportunities.

It is one challenge to gain visibility to sales forecasts and lists of opportunities in play by the channel; it is still quite another and more profound challenge to gain visibility to the quality of how well those opportunities are being handled.

Challenge		PrivateSalesCoach
Today, the common method by which suppliers gain visibility to the quality of how channel opportunities are being handled is through the hands-on engagement of channel managers and other employees in specific channel sales opportunities. This approach is labor intensive, expensive, inconsistent in its results and leaves many gaps of visibility.		Each month (or whatever cadence is established), suppliers automatically receive qualitative assessments of each key opportunity. PrivateSalesCoach provides Flight Checks—single-picture qualitative assessments—with the team’s strengths and vulnerabilities on each opportunity. The cost savings for this level of qualitative visibility without labor-intensive, hands-on channel manager's engagement is staggering. Additionally, if suppliers want to engage channel managers in specific sales opportunities, the Flight Check serves as the "labs" or MRIs of opportunities. These "labs" make channel managers more efficient and enable them to provide deeper and more insightful support for the opportunities.

Quality Control

Gaining greater visibility to the qualitative aspects of channel opportunities and the ability to consistently calibrate how these opportunities are being handled by partners and resellers are breakthroughs with tremendous benefits. Still, these are only the first steps to controlling the quality of sales execution in the channel. Our visibility and insights need to lead to action, which improves our execution.

PrivateSalesCoach
In addition to the Flight Check, which gives an assessment of the team’s strengths and vulnerabilities on a specific opportunity, PrivateSalesCoach provides two other elements which impact the quality of sales execution.

Opportunity-Specific Insights for Each Opportunity Run through PrivateSalesCoach:

• Flight Check: single picture of strengths and vulnerabilities
• Strategy Summary: brief strategy suggestions in five key selling areas
• Next Steps: substantive recommendations in each of the five key selling areas for the next steps the team should take to improve their odds of winning

PrivateSalesCoach substantially improves the quality control of channel sales opportunities by ensuring that every key opportunity has a Flight Check, Strategy Discussion and Next-Steps plan.

Channel managers and the executive team can use the PrivateSalesCoach tools as a platform to add their insights, wisdom and context to the situation. This approach takes the quality control to an even higher level.