Channel Sales: Say what??(2/2)

#EnterpriseSalesUnplugged — a Paua Ventures Series on how to crack Enterprise Sales as a Start-up. From operators for operators. Actionable front-line stories. No BS. 🤞

This is the second part on Channel Partner Sales — if you have read part one already: jump ahead and skip the intro to this article

Should you consider selling via channel partners as an Enterprise Software Founder? Hell yes!! There are plenty of rocketship-ventures out there that do exactly that. Yep: of course there are down sides with channel vs. direct. If done right, however, channel sales can become the most scalable sales channel of them all. Read on if you want to learn more — unplugged!

Welcome to #EnterpriseSalesUnplugged. To kick things off, Felix moderated a panel spinning all around Channel Partner Sales & Enablement. Below you will find the key take aways. The gentlemen who participated know what they are talking about:

• Mirko (Founder and CEO of Instana): Raised USD 60M from investors like Accel before he sold Instana to IBM in 2020. Additionally, he co-founded the Codecentric AG with ~400 employees. Instana utilizes channel partners as resellers, Codecentric acts as a channel partner itself.
• Max (Co-Founder Actyx): A Munich based start-up from the Paua-Family. Offering an operating system that enables the digital factory by facilitating data exchange on the shopfloor. Actyx partners with IT/OT Systemintegrators that sell & integrate the solution in the market.
• Robert (Founder & CEO FireStart): A Vienna & Linz based Paua Portfolio start-up. Offering a Business Process Management and Workflow Automation tool. Go-to-market: Exclusively with IT Systemintegrators.

Channel sales is all about identifying, targeting and converting your Partners — and to then enable them to go hunting for you. That’s why this enterprise sales strategy falls into the “Spears” section of the framework we discussed in the #EnterpriseSalesUnplugged intro article.

How do you motivate and enable channel partners?

📂 Ressources: Provide a stellar onboarding experience to new partners. When you train the trainer, make sure to get it right. Also, it‘s best practice to set-up a partner portal (check-out Showpad) to provide your partners with excellent, prospect ready material — that is: Sales teaser docs, product specs, customer testimonials, case studies, email templates, call scripts, objection handling sheets, solution templates, etc. etc.

📞Communication cadence: Validating joint revenue forecasts is a process of continuous improvement that must be taken seriously. It’s key to have regular touchpoints with your partners in order to enhance the business planning. To facilitate this, create proximity and engagement with slack rooms, bi-weekly “office hours” or Facebook/LI groups beyond just a recurring meeting cadence.

🏆Partner Tiers: Encourage your partners to grow their business with you by rewarding desired behavior. For example, you can offer advanced marketing support to “Super Partners” — feature their success stories in your email newsletters or provide strategic consulting to their projects. Offer certificates and badges for completed trainings.

What are the key metrics — a Channel Sales KPI 101

👁‍🗨Partner Recruiting: Nope, it’s not HR that takes over here. To get your channel machine running, you must develop & continuously improve your “partner pipeline”. In order to grow your total # of partners, it’s important to measure the time and cost associated with both recruiting and onboarding new partners. As we dislike “leaky buckets”, also keep an eye on your partner attrition rate.

🤑Partner sales: Now for the fun part, there are loads of metrics to monitor — ideally in close alignment with your partners. These include: The total number and value of deals registered by a partner. The avg. value per deal or the won/loss rate per partner. Also, the deal velocity on partner level as well as the % of partner with deals registered are insightful KPIs.

🎯 Partner effectiveness: Last but not least, you should proactively take action to enable your partners. So, reach out to those partners that are not using the provided sales & marketing collateral. Which partners have not leveraged provided training materials? What is the deal retention and upsell rate per partner? Measure a partner NPS and compare partner sales CAC with direct sales CAC (the later one should be…? Yes, it should be higher)

We’d love to hear your feedback on this series. Are you building an Enterprise Software start-up? What are the challenges you face? Reach out to us! We’d love to chat, potentially include you in this series or invest in your company 💲

📞→ felix@pauaventures.com ←📞

Thanks for the great discussion on this topic to Max, Mirko and Robert! Thanks to You for sharing your thoughts, sharing this post or just providing a (couple) Claps on this one! :-)