Change The Channel

3 things I wish I knew when I landed my Channel Marketing job 15 years ago

2010-08-03T19:18:00Z

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

Interoperability and your channel partners

2010-03-26T18:13:00Z

[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.

.
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.

Use the ARC Awards to stay on the right path

2010-01-29T18:46:00Z

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.

Announcing The Extra Mile Marketing Concierge Desk

2009-12-04T20:18:00Z

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).

Three trade-offs to consider around your partner program brand(s)

2009-11-17T00:34:00Z

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."

Thriftiness and Desire for Simplicity Will Shape Channel Behavior

2009-10-23T16:01:00Z

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.

Partners as a Safe Haven for Vendors

2009-10-12T23:17:00Z

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.

Mismatched Mattress Sets, the Art of Perception and Partners

2009-09-12T04:52:00Z

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

P2P

2009-09-09T21:07:00Z

(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...

HS/SS

2009-09-09T21:02:00Z

(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.

DYKAWD?

2009-08-14T16:15:00Z

(Do You Know Anyone Who Does?)

Often we’re asked by colleagues and clients alike, “Do you know anyone that does….. (insert need here)?” And many times they’re surprised to hear that our answer is, “Why, yes! We do that!”

This tells us something very valuable: even if you think your friends and clients know what you do, often they have forgotten or only understand a snippet of your role, or what your company does.

Take 5 minutes, white board what you do, and who you serve. Has this changed in the past 12 months? Even if it’s the same, chances are your contacts need a refresher! Here is our client refresher email as an example:

*****

Hi [insert client name],

I can’t believe how quickly the summer seems to be rushing by; we are already preparing for Fall!

The Extra Mile team just finished our annual offsite planning meeting, during which we discussed how we’ve changed over the past year. So, I figured now is a good time to send you a quick update and let you know a few things that have been changed or added to our team:

Our four major pillars of work (and a few of specifics in each area) are:

Strategy
- Annual marketing plans
- Strategic Planning sessions
- Social marketing development
Consulting
- Marketing funding reviews
- Partner Consultations
- On-site temporary placement of marketing personnel
Execution
- Lead Generation campaigns
- Partner to Partner peer learning campaigns
- Case studies - written, video, audio
- Digital campaigns - Websites/web materials/landing pages
- Social Marketing execution
- Events
Training
- Web/teleconference training
- Marketing templates and How To Guides
- Live training courses – employee and partner

As we continue to work on being more thoughtful and strategic within our own team, we want to pass what we learn onto our clients. If you’d like to hear more about what we can do to make things more effective or easier on you, let us know!

I hope you’re enjoying the weather, and look forward to connecting with you soon,

[your name here]

*****

SW&TTP
(Short, Sweet, & To The Point)

Bridging a Fiscal Year: Rip and Replace vs. Migration

2009-08-07T22:39:00Z

Q: I created a program that is so much better for partners. How come I can't get any uptake?

A: It's not the new program it's that the program is new!

*Photo Credit Kate Fallucca
http://bit.ly/206FPF

June 30 marked the end of the fiscal year for many. With this comes re-organizations, new budgets, new strategies, and new owners for old programs.

Inheriting someone else's program can be a huge burden - it's tough to execute on someone else's vision and often times the measurements aren't clear cut so evaluation of how successful a program is becomes difficult.

There are two schools of thought those of us in technology should relate to:

· Rip and Replace: the act of ending one thing and starting fresh with another.

· Migration: the act of phasing out one thing as another comes online.

I favor migration. Although I believe it to be more tedious on the shoulders of the program owner, it's typically better long term and definitely better for the audience.

We recently surveyed partners and found out that on average, partners are managing nine (9) vendor programs. That's nine certification programs, nine marketing programs, nine account managers, nine technical information streams, nine different sets of offers and incentives. All on top of running a business (finances, HR, sales, strategy). Every time a vendor brings a new program online, partners need to take the time to stop and learn about it.

While launching a new program may seem like it's going to be the next great thing, the reality is, new programs ask a lot of partners.

As you begin to build your strategy for the coming year you'll come up with all kinds of great ideas for improving partner effectiveness. Before getting too excited about creating the next great thing, take time to look at the past and build a transition plan to ease the change and pave a smooth path for the partner.

**Struggling with what should stay or what should go? Don't be hard on yourself - how could you know if you're not in their business? There's nothing wrong with asking! Rarely do we see the question asked of the "program consumers" (usually partners) "What should stay and what should go?" We can help with this kind of research – just give us a buzz!**

SIFL

2009-08-06T22:22:00Z

(Save It For Later)

Last month, Kris over on Channel Surfing, posted on “What to do while you're waiting for your budget.” It was a great post for this time of year, when (as she mentioned) many tech channel managers are idly sitting and waiting to hear if they are getting all, or any, of their requested budget for the new fiscal year.

I highly recommend you read her post, and then read the below idea:

1. You’ve got your “Good,” “Better,” and “Best” scenarios drafted out.
2. You hear back from the higher powers that be, and now know what scenario you’ll be working with.
3. If you only get budget for the “Good” or “Better” scenario this year, save the other scenarios for later!

This fiscal year is a great opportunity to ask yourself and your team: “What would it take to incorporate one to two items from the next scenario up (ie. “Better” or “Best”) into this same budget for next year?” Whiteboard your ideas. Then, take a look at your answers and see if you can work towards setting the stage to make that a reality for the next fiscal year. No time like the present to prepare for the future!

The Balancing Act: All Art and No Science Makes Programs That Don't Perform

2009-08-04T21:18:00Z

Q: I had the best idea to make my partners more successful. What happened?

A: Creative ideas are only half of the equation - success requires a careful balance of art and science.

The key to a competitive edge is the perfect balance of art and science. Creativity is critical to coloring outside of the lines (aka - doing something your competition hasn't thought of). Logic is critical to making sure your creative solution makes sense and will get you to your goal.

Unfortunately, many of us suffer from Latch-and-Run Syndrome. We spend a great deal of time digging into the data and learning about our audience and one day a really creative idea pops into our head. Without thinking twice, we Latch onto it and Run with it - never stopping to be objective and look at the science or process of the program.

While it's good to strike while the iron is hot (excitement surrounding an idea really gets people passionate), taking a minute to build in the science will balance your program and lower your risk. A few simple steps include:

Set measureable goals: What are the X's I want to acheive?
- X Participants
- $X in Revenue
- X Partner-led Events Executed
Build a process: What needs to take place in order to make this happen?
- What do I need to do?
- What am I asking others to do?
- How do we:
  - Start?
  - Run?
  - Finish?
Set milestones: When will I review progress? When is it OK to make changes to my strategy?
- What milestones will I have?
  - Time
  - Activity
- What flags should I look for?
  - Performance: What are my go or no-go indicators? (No-go is where you have the option to shift your strategy)
  - Participation: Is my message clear? Have I communicated this enough through the right channels?

We take the time to create a strategy upfront for a reason - up front we're spending the time to think clearly through information and balancing our creativity with logic. Once we're in the throws of execution, it's easy to want to make changes and react to new ideas if our program seems to be anything short of amazing. DON'T BE TEMPTED. Success comes in one of two ways:

Lucky break: one wildly successful program
- Pros: you're a hero, your peers think you're brilliant, the success feels awesome
- Cons: it really is a lucky break,it's often a one-time thing and you can't recreate it
Balanced art & science: many programs that meet or slightly exceed the set targets
- Pros: you consistently hit objectives,you are seen as smart and reliable by your managers, overtime you make a significant impact to the bottom line, your partners like working with you because they know your programs produce results (lower risk for them)
- Cons: you get impatient with repetition, you don't get the rush that comes from wild success

Once you have your process in place - don't veer from the plan unless you hit a no-go indicator at one of your scheduled milestones. Tuck your great ideas away for the next generation of your program and stick to your strategy. Then watch the gap between you and your competition grow!

Sell big with your customer support staff

2009-08-03T17:49:00Z

Barry Judge (BestBuy CMO) is undergoing a guaranteed-to-work experiment: To put his army of BestBuy blueshirts front-and-center with customers. You’ve probably seen the ads (in case you’ve been TiVo’ing so much that you’ve missed it, you can see the ads at the link above).

If you are a partner, you don’t have to be a multi-billion dollar company to take a few pages out of Barry’s book and give some visibility on your web site or in your sales calls to your architects, engineers and support people. Simple things: Take their pictures, post them on your site and caption their accomplishments (certifications/tests, satisfaction) and prove to them how seriously you take customer satisfaction.

If you are a vendor, you could make a very popular campaign to help partners showcase their great tech support. (It’s also a fantastic way to get away from hard-selling your own products and letting your leading partners tell their story first). If you feel compelled to bring your product into the mix, tell the story of how these great (tested/certified) experts have been brought up to speed on your newly launched GizmoTech and are ready to serve them (with you to back them).

Customers love to know that you’ll take good care of them and that you’re not just good salespeople, but good service people too.
I’m sure we’ll see big things from Barry’s experiment, and I think you would too.

Call us if you need help.

DIYD

2009-07-31T20:04:00Z

(Do It Yourself Dashboard)

Recently, Angie of The Learning Channel, turned me on to an article written earlier this month about something interesting the Obama administration is doing – publicly showing real time information about the federal IT portfolio.

The article, titled “Obama administration rolls out 'IT Dashboard'” by Martina Stewart (probably no relation to Martha…..) explains:

“Using charts and graphs, the new dashboard displays IT information by federal agency or department. Users can also share or embed the charts on their own Web sites or blogs or on social sites including Facebook, Twitter, and delicious.”

What a great idea! How could creating your own dashboard apply to you and your channel? Consider your MDF (marketing development funds) programs. The instant benefit to your channel partners is real time information about MDF and related programs they can engage in, which helps their and your ROI alike! The dashboard can then connect to individual program pages or contacts for the partners to get started. Of course there are more applications than just MDF programs, but start small, and asking for “What else would partners like to see in real time?” It’s a great way to expand this concept while keeping your channel partners in mind.

Check out the US Government IT Dashboard here.

WANC
(What a Novel Concept)

What I learned from 2,712 partner sites

2009-07-30T03:38:00Z

What did you do on your summer vacation? Me, I reviewed (together with Lori and Lauren) nearly 3,000 technology partner web sites for two separate clients who wanted to know more about the partners in their program and those who, maybe should be in their program.

When things got a little tedious, I’d call upon my imagination and pretend that I was a buying customer visiting their site for the first time—“Would I buy from this company?”

If I were a customer visiting these web sites, here is my impression of what I might see:

If the site has 3 different ways to navigate, it makes me think that you may tend to arrive at solutions to make everyone happy vs deciding on one direction.
If you stray from standard navigation language (if “About us” is “Our gig”), it makes me think you’ll force new (and maybe unnecessary) components on my project that may not make sense. Let’s just agree now: Everyone needs to have “About us”, “Contact”, “Our products/services”, “Our Partners” and “Testimonials” in their nav. (more on testimonials below).
If the site contains and enormous amount of text, I think you’ll talk too much and too long.
If you use Flash as your intro page and I have to wait until I can get to the information that I am seeking, well, it makes me mad and quite frankly, I’m not impressed by your fancy. (Might it beself-serving?)
If you convert text to graphics on your site (to excess), you limit a healthy amount of copy/pasting (sharing information) that customers might find useful from your site (like directions to your location). Also, remember that web translators* cannot translate your site if you make everything a gif or jpg image and you may not get new business in other countries.
If you don’t have customer testimonials on your site, you may have no experience at all and I’m not sure that I’d feel confident that you know what you are doing. DON’T OMIT testimonials with real names from your site!!!

There’s much more, but maybe worthy of another post. Afterall, 2,712 experiences is enough to either make you smarter, crazy or both - but it sure helps to identify trends and personalities.

What this means for channel managers: It’s healthy to conduct a site review of some of your top partners. Get to know them. You can learn a lot from simply visiting their web site. And, if you can provide some healthy tips on how to improve their site, you can mutually benefit by drawing more customers to them. Your interest in them will go a long way to building loyalty. People love people who love them.

Call us if you need help understanding more about your partners.

And, if you request a partner web review project, please bring eyedrops!

Maybe it's just because they LIKE you!

2009-07-06T19:32:00Z

Seth Godin wrote a profound perspective today. One that we inherently know but don't acknowledge much: That people make emotional decisions. On a more basic level, they make decisions based on chemicals in the brain that define emotion, perspective and judgment. Then, AFTER the fact, they justify their decision and apply logical reasons for what they did.

Apply this to your partner program. You probably focus a lot of your attention on proving the logic of why to join your program: What's the margin, the membership fee, the stats, the ROI when maybe, just MAYBE, your partners are signing up with you because you're cool, they like your philosophy, your logo, you donated to their cause, a friend talked about your company or maybe they had coffee with one of your most fantastic employees at a seminar. Maybe, they just LIKE you and they want to be a little piece of your world.

You may not know exactly what it is you did but don't overlook those little things that you do with or around partners that might make a likeable impression.

Generally those are: You're not a afraid to lead, you're humble at the right times and confident at the others. You know your competition and know you're not necessarily always going to win, but you have a love of the game. You talk with your customers, respond to blogs and make positive changes based on what you're told. These are the likeable traits that might just be winning you partners.

That, and a good ROI.

PS: One of our campaigns that ranked high on the "likeability" scale and was talked about for months and many different countries adopted it. www.wevegottaguy.com where we invited improv troupe to make a point.

Call us if you need help.

What to do while you're waiting for your budget

2009-06-25T17:24:00Z

Many tech channel managers are sitting in an uncomfortable place right now.
If you're in a fiscal year, budgets are not fully allocated yet and you're stuck waiting in limbo not sure how much you'll get this year.

Why not take advantage of this time to pull together your "Good-Better-Best" scenarios?

Paint a picture of what you'd like to do this year and START with the BETTER scenario. Starting with BETTER gives you a balanced position that can be easily bumped up with extra funding or lowered in scale to account for cost-cutting steps you'd take to your get to "good" scenario.

Let's say this year you are tasked with recruiting a new breed of partner into your programs:

Your "better" scenario might include a success-story-based approach where you gather interesting stories using video, audio and written accounts from new-breed partners already in that new space, then extend that message with the traditional media you already use today and offer an incentive to those who qualify by a certain date.

If you were asked to cut your budget, you might lose the video and just go with audio and written stories that are easy to capture by phone.

If you were given more budget than you expected, you might add a reach into non-traditional media (such as social media) and even sponsor some conferences (or un-conferences).

Better yet, make your extra allocation of budget "performance-based" and challenge your agencies to tap into extra funding if they exceed your goals.

And, don't forget to ask agencies like us for ideas, we like to get involved in your early stages of planning so we can understand your business all the more and serve you better.

When we do this approach with our clients, there is a great synergy and results are notably more impressive.

Call us if you need help.

Spring Weeding: Set-up for Maximizing Your ROI

2009-06-03T21:50:00Z

Q: Why is it, no matter how much we invest, it never seems to be enough?

A: It's not how much you invest as much as it is how and where you invest that leads to the highest ROI.

As spring rolls into summer I find it increasingly hard to keep up with the weeds. They're in my lawn, in my garden, and as they grow they steal the nutrients from the soil; they're many in number, tough and require all of my limited resources to deal with them…meanwhile, the grass, flowers and veggies in my garden get neglected and as a result will never reach their full potential.

I find this a fitting analogy for the programs we build to improve our partner and customer relationships. If you think of your audience as your garden, and your programs, budget and resources as your soil, does it make you realize you may have some weeding to do? Can you differentiate between the weeds and the rest? Could a shift in your attention and resources make a bigger impact to your results if your best were performing at their best?

We recently interviewed 20+ top vendors for the HTG Peer Groups to compile a report on their programs. Throughout the process we uncovered some interesting data - one significantly relevant to this concept of "weeding" is displayed in the graph here:

Spending as a % of Annual Budget

This shows, of the overall budget being spent, 60% is going to Recruitment, 30% is going to Engagement, and 10% is going to Retention. With this distribution, do you think the best are performing at their potential?

There may be multiple arguments as to how to draw conclusions from this, but at the end of the day, if you’re spending the bulk of your budget to engage and retain your best partners, enabling them to perform at their potential -- even IF recruitment is expensive you’ll need to do far less of it. Your ROI will increase as the bulk of the money you spend is more directly related to money being made.

For many of you, the fiscal year is rolling over and you're getting a fresh and renewed start. It's spring for you too! Take a good hard look at your data and determine who in your audience has helped you, who has held you back, and who might not be a big producer today but has what it takes to do something for you later. If you don't have the historical data or qualifying information to do this, now is the time to include it for tracking in your programs going forward.

Change The Channel

3 things I wish I knew when I landed my Channel Marketing job 15 years ago

Interoperability and your channel partners

Use the ARC Awards to stay on the right path

Announcing The Extra Mile Marketing Concierge Desk

Three trade-offs to consider around your partner program brand(s)

Thriftiness and Desire for Simplicity Will Shape Channel Behavior

Partners as a Safe Haven for Vendors

Mismatched Mattress Sets, the Art of Perception and Partners

P2P

HS/SS

DYKAWD?

Bridging a Fiscal Year: Rip and Replace vs. Migration

Q: I created a program that is so much better for partners. How come I can't get any uptake? A: It's not the new program it's that the program is new!

Q: I created a program that is so much better for partners. How come I can't get any uptake? A: It's not the new program it's that the program is new!

Q: I created a program that is so much better for partners. How come I can't get any uptake?

SIFL

The Balancing Act: All Art and No Science Makes Programs That Don't Perform

Sell big with your customer support staff

DIYD

What I learned from 2,712 partner sites

Maybe it's just because they LIKE you!

What to do while you're waiting for your budget

Spring Weeding: Set-up for Maximizing Your ROI

Q: I created a program that is so much better for partners. How come I can't get any uptake?

A: It's not the new program it's that the program is new!

Q: I created a program that is so much better for partners. How come I can't get any uptake?

A: It's not the new program it's that the program is new!