Mindshare: How to Drive Channel Partner Sales

Mindshare: How to Drive Channel Partner Sales

Posted by Todd Grant on Tue, Mar 19, 2013 @ 03:15 PM

The same strategies your company uses for motivating its direct sales force do not necessarily apply to the members of your indirect sales network. You can?t dismiss an underperforming salesperson who works for one of your dealer partners like you can a member of your own team, for example. The challenge you face when you want to increase indirect sales is this: Considering the members of your indirect sales channel network (and potential members of your indirect sales network) have the option of selling several brands? products, how do you motivate the members of your indirect sales network to sell your company?s products rather than your competitors??

Every brand a dealer represents occupies a slice of the limited amount of time, energy, and thought that dealer has available for selling. To increase indirect sales, your company?s goal should be to grab as big of a slice of the pie as possible. In channel management terms, this is referred to as mindshare. It can also be thought of as brand alignment. How can you secure for your brand the maximum level of attention from your dealers and steer it towards selling your products and generating valuable relationships with the customers who buy your products? The formula is simple: gain mindshare and increase indirect sales.

Engagement: The Key to Increasing Mindshare and Increasing Sales

How do you gain mindshare? Here, there is some crossover with the concepts you use for managing direct employees. Several recent studies have shown that employees who feel supported and personally connected to the company for which they work or its products deliver better results. One Gallup study, released in 2010, reported finding a strong relationship between a company?s business performance and the level of engagement among its employees. The principle of engagement can be used just as effectively to increase indirect sales by your company?s channel partners.

How Do You Know an Indirect Sales Partner is Engaged With Your Brand?

When your channel partners are engaged with your brand, they:

• Sell your products better and more often.
• Understand your products and way of doing business.
• Feel supported in their selling efforts.
• Feel empowered to communicate with your company and collaborate on improved sales processes.

Supporting your partners is vitally necessary for increased indirect sales. Dealers, resellers, and VARs naturally choose to do business with companies that are easy to do business with. They will dedicate more mindshare to the companies that give them fewer problems and, even better, help them solve their problems. Supportive channel partner relationships are two-way streets; both sides of the partnership benefit from increased sales.

How to Increase Indirect Sales Partner Engagement

Here are some critical areas to focus on to improve your company?s level of engagement with its indirect sales channel partners, and therefore mindshare and sales:

• Collaboration
• Onboarding
• Conflict management
• Market development funds (MDFs)
• Communications
• Training and certification

To learn more about why each of these six areas matters for channel partner engagement, and how to optimize them for increased indirect sales, read our white paper, ?Best Practice Guide: How to Increase Channel Partner Sales.? This free guide discusses the challenges and benefits of marketing products and services through the indirect sales channel and presents strategy for unifying the channel sales best practices within the single framework of a partner relationship management (PRM) system.

Source: http://www.logicbay.com/blog/bid/96381/Mindshare-How-to-Drive-Channel-Partner-Sales

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