Here are 3 things I wish I knew when I landed my Channel Marketing job 15 years ago.  Maybe it will save you a little time in your career: 

1.  Partners are not "pure" anything.  They are rarely just SIs, Distis, Resellers, ISVs, MSPs, Hosters, etc.  Tech vendors tend to want to assign handy designations to partners, but the bottom line is that they are "technology opportunists" - if they see a buying market for something, they will learn it and do it - whether that means building an app, hosting a datacenter or creating a service.  Most of your channel partners will evolve into several different types over their lifetime.  Simplify your designations and don't be too rigid in using them. 
Instead, talk about 4 scenarios with partners based on what they do, not who they are.  Example: 
                -"when you offer services"...
                -"when you host solutions for your clients"
                -"when you resell products:  HW/SW"
                -"when you build apps (custom or packaged)"

2.  ROI matters:  When I was green, I pictured partners reading every word that came from tech vendors like Microsoft and HP and making plans to embrace every initiative.  Instead, we are all clamoring for the valuable attention of these experts who juggle 8-12 other vendors they represent.  No, partners are not waiting with bated breath for your next mail, so you have to concisely step through the ROI: 

• How much of a shift are you asking from me?  Based on Where I am now, how far away (deletefrom that) is what you are asking me to do?   
• How long is it going to take and what's the opportunity cost of sending my skilled people out of the office to ramp up? (think new product launch)
• What's the real deal size and how many customers care about this right now?  (think sales, services and pull-through)
• How long will this market be around?  (think Y2K)
• Does this opportunity displace any of my existing business? (think Cloud)

3. Don't take yourself too seriously.  A lot of vendors write web copy or materials to partners using what I call their “Big Voice” (“ahem…Today, COMPANY is proud to announce that the partner program will evolve to 3 new levels”).  Better to be approachable.  Partners are like a mix of your close friends and distant relatives.  They are about what you care about -- happy customers.  If you are on that road together and you mess up a little, it's okay, they understand your imperfections a few times (e.g. Vista) as long as you right it (Win7) and keep them informed.  Admit your mistakes, be humble and you can continue down the path, smiling together.

If you need more tips about the full spectrum of partner program management from recruitment to engagement to loyalty, give us a call. 

-Kris

[image credit:  Steve Carter]

Did you know that Interoperability is the #1 customer purchase decision criteria for technology?  It’s also ranked in the top 3 “most favorable messages” from tech vendors.  It’s so important yet few vendors talk much about it.    The fact is:  • You want to sell your Gadget A to customers • Customers want Gadget A to work with their Trinket B • Problem is, you don’t know much about Trinket B (so you just talk more about Gadget A)    • But your channel partners (who deal with mixed-vendor environments all the time) do know about Trinket B and many more related technologies.  They are paying attention to what makes their job easier in heterogenous technologies.

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Partners have great insight and will tell you which vendors and environments you best fit.  Ask them!

CHALLENGE:  Next month, book a slot on your calendar to do a brainstorm (with some channel partners) about the “top 10 technologies we blend well with”. 
Then, go to those vendors and ask them to do a joint project together to tell your story about how you work well together.

Interoperability is important.  Take advantage of the partners in your channel who can speak “customer-ese” about your product in the context of other products.  Help them by giving them insight about what your product does to get along with other products, what standards it complies with, and INFORM YOUR CHANNEL about the great “better together” story you can tell! 

I’d love to hear how it goes. 

If you need help, give us a call.

What I like about CRN’s Annual Report Card is exactly what makes it a tough tablet to swallow:  Their criteria are usually right.  They know their stuff. The ARC Awards (an annual assessment of large tech channel programs based on their value to partners) has been around long enough that they’ve really honed in on what partners value most, so if you pay close attention to the report card criteria, you will know exactly what it takes to shine in the eyes of your partners.  The three major ARC categories are: Product Innovation Support Partnership But the nuances within these categories are where it matters most.  If you pay close attention, I’ll bet you have at least one moment of “holy cow, we didn’t think of that in our program!” or “boy, we really missed the mark on this with our new plans.”  It's okay, just be brave enough to adjust.  And, if you don't have time to deliver on those plans this year, go ahead, test that transparency trait you've been meaning to try and communicate with your partners about what you're planning to adjust (e.g. blog).  They understand that you can't turn on a dime.   Top 10 ARC Awards Companies:    1. EMC   2. EMC   3. Cisco   4. HP   5. Cisco   6. Cisco   7. Xerox   8. HP   9. Fortinet 10. Juniper Networks Even if you aren’t a technology giant, learn from the criteria on this list and maybe one day you will be.  Call us if you need help.  425.746.1572  (kris@emminc.com)         PS:  If you're a Value-Adding-Reseller (VAR), you might be interested in applying to be recognized.  Applications are available now for CRN' 2010 VAR 500. Deadline is Feb 19, 2010.  Apply here.

Are you looking for a fresh way to reward your top partners in the coming new year?  Look no further – the Extra Mile Marketing Concierge package is just for you!

A convenient 5-hour starter block membership can be purchased for only $995.  Your partners can call at their convenience to gain marketing insight and expert advice from our marketing concierge desk to help grow their business – and yours too!

We’ve worked with over 5,000 businesses from startups through large enterprise companies and are now offering marketing best practices from those businesses for you to tap into at a discounted rate!
We can cover:
•    Marketing or business plan review
•    Campaign plan set up/structure
•    Website or landing page analysis
•    Event content or presentation review
•    Annual communication calendar set up
•    Finding and using MDF and co-op funding from vendors

For more information contact Lauren Jansson at 425.746.1572 or by email at lauren@emminc.com To pay by credit card, please visit our web page at www.extramilemarketing.com/concierge or contact us directly to discuss a custom Statement of Work (to pay by PO).

I’ll cut to the punch line:  Partners and customers don’t much care what your brand or designation is, it’s what you do with it. 

How do I know this?  

• First, I was on the spending-end of a quarter-million dollar branding exercise at Microsoft in 2001
• Second, we (EMM) have been conducting a series of Microsoft partner research lately (about 300 partners in the past few weeks) and we’ve received a lot of unsolicited input from partners around their branding concerns.

Based on the above information I’d say these three trade-offs need to be considered:  

1.  Bandwidth vs. transition:  One thing that’s often overlooked is the time, money and effort it takes to move from your current brand to the new one.   I recall years after the introduction of the Microsoft Certified Partner brand, I still ran across web sites where partners were using the old “Microsoft Solution Provider” designation. 

Old logo, 1997

Remember, you’ll be asking your partners to re-brand themselves and make an investment by replacing their signage, collateral, window clings, proposal templates, letterhead, folders, fax headers and business cards. Most partners spend $10,000 a year on ALL of their marketing and have no full-time marketing staff. Your tradeoff question is this: Do you want your partners focused on shuffling their brand around or selling your solutions?

New logo, 2001

Personally, I’d rather a partner spend $1,000 on hosting a customer event than paying a designer to change the logo on all of their collateral.  That’s the real trade-off that’s happening out there with partners.  The flock of birds you envision rapidly changing course right along with you and your brand (du jour) is a fallacy.   

2. Building awareness vs. inherent awareness:  Whether you tier your program branding Smurf, SuperSmurf and UltraSmurf what really matters is how you promote the designation with customers.  Several vendor programs try to get fancy and offer “Expert, Elite, Alliance, Premium, etc” (try translating that into Russian) but, when we completed our mega-spendy branding research we landed on Gold as the top tier designation. Thanks to our Greek friends, the Olympics have long established three familiar metals as a system that is now inherently understood as good/better/best.  On top of that, it translated meaningfully worldwide. 
Consider this:  Government RFPs often designate a Gold Certified Partner as a requirement to respond to the bid.  How long do you suppose it will take to educate the US Government on the new designations and which ones they should/shouldn’t include in their RFP?

Make no mistake, it takes years and millions of dollars to make a meaningful brand as any realistic marketer would tell you.  Most partner programs aren’t funded like a product group who could pull off a brand introduction campaign.   

Your trade-off question is this:  Do I have the investment to introduce a new brand or does my brand need to have some inherent meaning that customers will be able to figure out even if they weren’t exposed to a brand campaign? 

3.  Detail vs. interest:   Yes, customers do need to know in what area the partner has expertise.  But not necessarily right up front in the brand.  Microsoft and other vendors are packing a lot of additional information into a brand and in doing so, become less and less interesting.   The details should be unfolded or you risk losing the impact of the overall brand -- consider how a partner with multiple designations is supposed to represent themselves on a business card. 

Imagine that you have a partner using the designation on their web site.  Ideally, the customer should be able to click on the brand and learn more about what area the partner has earned their designation in and what that brand means by having the logo link to the vendor web site that explains the designation.  You just don’t need to include all of that detail within the overall designation. 

Let’s take an offline scenario:  Customers might learn from a business letter that the partner has a designation.  The partner then should have ready-made copy that they can use explaining their area of expertise and might include a report or letter from the vendor that proclaims and validates the details of their designation.  I’d suggest you designate the word “Specialist” as the only word that is used in the brand itself.  It will invite the question: “Specialist in what?” Then create ways to unfold that information out using supplemental information available in the context of the brand (web site, confirmation letters and pre-made copy). 

Don’t tell the whole story inside of one brand.  This was something that I had to learn and I thank the CMG team who had the discipline to apply it and school me. 

Your trade-off question here is:  Do you want to manage hundreds of iterations of brands to include specific detail or do you want to have the brand “Specialist” draw sufficient customer interest to seek out more information about the brand? 

A specific call-out to Microsoft who is revamping their branding:  I think after you go down this path of transitioning the brand, you might find:

a) Partners will be resistant to change because they don’t see the value in investing to swap out the brand (again). 
b) You’ve over-engineered the competency designations so that you’ll be in a constant tangle of how to organize and orient those designations over time.
c) The only thing that matters is how much you invest in promoting the designation.  So, imagine the possibility if you re-assign the re-branding budget and invest it in brand AWARENESS-BUILDING of the current brand system.  It’s not too late to turn back! 

In closing, here are a few unsolicited partner quotes from the past few weeks of interviews: 

“The most valuable benefit is the designation - it’s being able to say that we are “certified”. We’re more reputable to perspective customers.”

"[I joined because] we wanted to obtain Gold level, for the badge of honor.  "
 
"[We joined for] the status of having label with MS – gold partner status."

 

Q: Is my program bloated?

A: Most are. You're not alone. What we have to remember is, in the eye of your partner, all programs, offers and opportunities are coming from one single company.

 

I recently read "Understanding the Post-Recession Consumer" in the Harvard Business Review about how the trends in consumer behavior will change post recession. Basically, after 15 years of solid growth, we're feeling bloated and stressed about having so much choice. We're beginning to demand simplicity and even our most affluent counterparts are looking for thrifty options like used goods and products based on traditional values.

 

How does this translate to our partner channel? Well, we're all people. Consumers are consumers whether they are consuming for their business or their personal life. So, it's important to consider how these trends will impact the channel programs and the behavior of our partners.

 

We must SIMPLIFY:

o    Offers: Work together internally to streamline offers making them simpler to leverage.

o    Programs: Consolidate program opportunities into higher value, less fragmented engagements.

o    Communication: Provide account managers who understand the partner business so partners can pick up the phone and talk to a live person easily getting the answer they need. IBM and SAP are doing this today even for their breadth partners; programs with the easiest engagement models will win.

o    Packaging: Tackle licensing complexity so partners can sell solutions versus products.

 

We must be THRIFTY:

o    Introduce trade-up and recycle benefits.

o    Focus on building partner circles of trust and peer-groups where partners can go-to-market together rather than duplicate their efforts - more marketing, better spending, better customer value!

o    Partner with associations to streamline communications; make your offers relevant to the membership base to increase adoption.

 

I've already seen the shift in my own experiences and it feels good to consume less and make smarter choices. There is no excuse, with the technology we have today we can segment our audiences, custom tailor our messages and search for complementary offers and programs with ease. The big bloat is over…let's get back to what's important.

 

I recall my days in the Microsoft Partner Program and the growing privacy restrictions that virtually choked direct communication from Microsoft to its customers.  For a while, if a customer opted-out of any of the multitude of Microsoft newsletters (and there were many), they were removed from all Microsoft newsletters and it was virtually impossible to get them back once they unsubscribed.  Phone communications were pretty much forbidden.  Any contact with customers was highly restricted by a multitude of privacy rules, standards and privacy laws – no wonder customers were feeling out of touch with Microsoft.  You may suffer this same confinement.

Enter your partner channel. 

Typically managed from a revenue-generating sales division of a vendor organization, the partner channel is not just a revenue source, but also a safe haven for your customer communications.  They are often a welcomed touch by customers seeking local expertise and most importantly, much less restricted.

So how can you deliver messages through partners?  Make is super-duper-easy and relevant.  Partners are always looking for something to talk about with customers; so give them good, interesting and relevant content.  Assemble a flexible newsletter using syndicated content from a good technology news source.  (We tend to prefer Penton Media, they are among the largest and have a multitude of technology angles within their editorial.  They do a great job with custom editorial projects too).  This isn’t the only source, but it might help you get started.

Assemble the content into a predictable cadence and format.  E.g. “The first Monday of the month, we send our partners newsletter fodder…” and give partners simple ways to deliver.  Don’t ask them to spend much time and be prescriptive on how they can set it up on their own or how to blend it with their existing newsletter.  I like to ask partners to include 4 types of content:

• Personal connection to the customer (what is this email, and how is the sender connected to the recipient?  You are getting this because…)
• A technology pulse or trend that you update:  security watches, new technology available, new ways of using technology, new releases on the horizon
• Real-life example of how your clients are benefitting from your solutions - with permission of course
• Special deals of the month:  Where are the hot buys, special offers, etc.  You can find these on your favorite vendors’ web sites.  Don’t over engineer it, just copy and paste them in. 

Great content is really compelling to partners.  Use it as a way to help them be your safe haven for communications to customers.

Call us if you need any help.

You may be familiar with your local mattress chain (for our area it’s Sleep Country USA) selling mis-matched mattress sets.  “You can save a bundle if you don’t care about color!” Really now, how many mismatched sets could there possibly be in the grand supply of mattresses?  This is a game of perception management.   You are led to believe that giving up something insignificant (like a sheet-covered mattress color) will earn you savings.

The beauty is that everyone is happy and no one gets hurt.  You can choose not to buy a mismatched set and pay a premium price if you wish.

Let’s apply this to your channel partners.  If you are looking for a promotional offer to extend through your partners without having to lower your price or cause channel conflict then think about ways of managing perception within your standardized offer. 

For example: 

Offer a trade-up incentive (where you can displace your competitor and the partner deploys your solution in their place).  The perception is that your customer has earned the savings of a discounted offer because they have given you something in return (a crummy old technology). 

But what you’ve really purchased is the displacement itself.  You can take apply this logic to many scenarios. 

What can you ask of the customer that earns their saving, where they put some skin in the game and the partner is there to administer the transaction for you?  The possibilities are endless. 

Call us if you need help,
-Kris

(Passenger 2 Partner)

I don’t mean in the delivery sense, I mean turn your passenger experience into partner happiness.

When’s the last time you made a purchase that was even partially based on a handful of reviews you read?

When’s the last time you heard a story from a friend on how awful or awesome the service was at a local restaurant or automotive shop?

Chances are you’re influenced by the reviews and referrals of others more often than you realize.  I recently read a short article by Triangle B2B Magazine, who is part of a neat LinkedIn community group called Channel Management Experts (login to view the group).

You should take a few minutes to read the article and the 5 lessons about business they learned from flying on Virgin Air.

If you don’t have time, here’s the bottom line: People will talk about their interaction with you, but only you can influence what it is they remember and relate to others.  Personal recommendations usually carry more weight than mass marketing.  Always give the control back to the customer (or in your case, channel/partner), having options for personalization or customization is key.  All in all, happy customers (partners) will prove to be the best marketing investment you can make, so roll out the red carpet, and show how much you really care – a little can go a long way.

Do you agree? Let me know! We're interested in your feedback...

(He Said/She Said)

Do you sometimes feel like you’re unsure of what channel partners might be saying ‘behind your back’?

Vendors/Manufacturers interact with their channel in various ways:

• Partner Account Managers
• Partner events
• Certification programs
• MDF programs
• Competitions/incentives

All those relationships lead to various conversations and feedback.  But is it the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

• How do Vendors/Manufacturers get uncensored, valuable, usable feedback, without tricking channel partners into giving up their stance/opinions on products/services?
• Where are you looking for feedback, beyond internal programs and operations?
• Who is keeping track and funneling everything into a central repository?  How are they analyzing the feedback?  What are they doing with the results?

If you’re not already asking yourself the above questions, chances are there’s a lot of information and feedback from your channel out there, waiting to be collected.  Information that could shape the future of your channel program, and reinforce your relationships with your partners by letting them know “We’re listening!”  And we all know that strengthening those bonds will lead to more trust, and deeper belief in your products. I think you know where I’m going with this…..

We’ve been capturing this type of information for the past 6 years continuously, even as we speak.  If you’re interested in knowing where to start, or how to focus into the right places, give us a shout.