(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)

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!**

 

(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!

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! 

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.

(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 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!

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. 

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. 

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.