Channel leaders are in constant competition for partner mind share. There are only so many hours in a day or days in a quarter that a partner will actively sell your products. For those that sell other solutions, there may be an expanded time frame when your products are not top of mind. So how can you enable the partner to keep your solutions at the forefront with the right buyers and deliver the right value proposition to the buyer?
Best-in-class channel enablement programs ensure their partners have a clear understanding of that value proposition. Everyone in their channel knows what challenges that are top of mind for their buyers that their solution can help solve. Perhaps even more importantly, they know how they can deliver that solution better than the competition.
Each channel partner needs to be able to answer the following essential questions as it relates to your solution:
- What problems do we solve for our customers?
- How do we specifically solve these problems with your solution?
- How do we do it different than the competition?
- What is our proof?
If your partners don’t have a consistent answer to these questions, they’re wasting valuable time with important buyers. Chances are their sales process is longer, causing the cost of sale to increase and therefore, reducing the overall profitability of the partnership. Furthermore, your forecast suffers as you continue to lose revenue from a potential new customer. Think of the value to the buyer, and frankly to your bottom line, if each partner salesperson could answer those questions consistently.
It is critical that channel partners are situationally fluent in front of a client.
How to increase your channel partner’s sales productivity
Your channel partners need to execute effective discovery and then in a consistent way deliver a message back to the client that describe our solutions to customers’ problems in a way that (1) has meaning to them, (2) demonstrates differentiation and (3) enables them to charge a premium for our products and services.
Use your channel partners as a strategic way to extend your value message, increasing your capacity and improving your overall sales productivity numbers.
