Want to Improve Your Partner Sales Support? Ask these 5 Questions
Suppliers with a go-to-market strategy that includes indirect sales partners spend hours of time and millions of dollars to enable those partners to sell more. And often, partner programs give partner sales reps access to information and content via an online portal or content repository.
But, traditional partner portals were not built around the complexities of today’s sales environment. Instead of one-size-fits-all content management systems of the past, those traditional methods have become more like one-size-fits-nobody. Partners today require a more personalized experience with materials to educate, engage, and, ultimately, drive more revenue.
It’s important to remember that channel partners sell from multiple vendors. And simply put, the best partners, like the best suppliers, embrace modern sales processes and marketing methodologies.
Want to improve your partner sales support? Ask yourself these five questions.
1. Is your on-boarding process quick and efficient?
First impressions go a long way with new partners. And your organization’s first impressions almost exclusively depend on its onboarding processes.
That’s why it’s essential to utilize the right tools to authorize and equip new channel partners with effective resources and tools that allow them to sell your products and services.
The best partner platforms provide more than just access to resources. They allow channel partners to interface with your organization, providing robust, easy-to-use, but entirely communication tools that help build relationships.
2. Are you able to ramp-up new sales partners quickly and effectively?
Channel partners experience turnover on their sales teams. It’s unavoidable.
That’s why you need a platform that helps your partners train new hires — both quickly and effectively — and ensures that they feel comfortable with both your sales processes and your organization’s culture.You should be able to quickly engage with new hires, offer effective training processes, and optimize their productivity — right off the bat.
3. Are you measuring your relationships, and the results from them, early and often?
Maintaining and measuring relationships with your reps should be the bread and butter of partner sales support. And the importance of accurate and frequent measurement manifests itself in two ways:
- Measuring relationships builds trust and transparency, which in turn increases flexibility and accountability.
- Measuring relationships allows you to respond swiftly — especially when partners are underperforming.
Being flexible in making adjustments improves performance. And flexibility and trust is only possible when you know exactly what’s happening at any given time.
4. Are you taking the time to truly understand your partners?
Gaining insight into partner behavior can help you get new partners up and running. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you exceeding expectations and going above and beyond to understand the business of your partners?
- What do top partners do that other partners don’t know about?
- Do you understand your partner’s internal and external processes?
- How can you recreate the performance of top partners?
Not only does learning from top performing partners benefit your own organization, it also builds trust. And, as we just mentioned, trust helps improve conversion rates.
5. Are you investing time in providing a seamless user experience?
These days, sales partners are more tech-savvy than ever before. The modern partner demandseffective, intuitive platforms.
The best partner sales support platforms are mindful of responsive design, and provide a seamless user experience. They understand that partners are constantly on-the-go, and provide sleek platforms that scale to their devices. Additionally, these platforms provide central access points to content across organizations and clearly outline what content is being used and how.
As we mentioned earlier, partners are often selling for multiple vendors. They prioritize the vendor that removes the most friction from getting the job done. Otherwise, they’ll be searching elsewhere.
Matt Hensler is currently the Vice President of Customer Success for Allbound, an innovative SaaS platform that supports and streamlines the way companies grow through indirect channel sales partners. You can follow him on Twitter @matthensler
