We’ve got some big news: Zift Solutions has just announced our intent to merge with Relayware. What exactly does that mean? Quite a lot.  

Synchronizing People, Processes & Technology

First off, it means we’ve signed a strategic agreement with Relayware to merge our teams, technology and resources. Together, we’ll synchronize the people, processes and technology today’s channel leaders need to drive more revenue and growth. And, as a combined entity, we can and will deliver the first and only end-to-end Enterprise Channel Management platform through Channel as a Service.

Why now?

I’ve spoken for some time about the pressing need for integrated technology to keep up with rapid fire changes in the channel and vital importance of powerful Partner Relationship Management (PRM) tools.  Channel organizations just don’t have the time or inclination to pull together all of the parts and pieces required to manage all of the sales, marketing and operational tasks involved in optimizing an entire channel ecosystem. Channel as a Service (CHaaS) is already proving to be truly transformational in aligning and integrating everything needed to maximize profitability and productivity across the channel. With Relayware, we’re taking the next step in fulfilling our complete vision for CHaaS. No one has more expansive PRM capabilities than Relayware and we’re bringing their features and functionality into the fold of Channel as a Service.

Why Relayware?

Known for their leading-edge Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solutions, Relayware is a perfect match for Zift Solutions customers, partners and prospects. Both companies have always been entirely focused on the channel — and we both see Channel as a Service as the future of the channel. We recognize the pressure channel organizations are under to drive higher performance while simplifying and streamlining supplier-partner relationships. And, we’re united in our mission to deliver easy, integrated solutions that provide everything needed to build and grow a profitable channel partner program.  

We’re already integrating Relayware’s popular and proven PRM solutions into CHaaS, which will greatly extend the planning, sales, marketing and operational capabilities as well as ROI for our our joint customers. (Who are thrilled about this move, as you’ll see here). But this merger isn’t just about technology. Relayware and Zift Solutions have a depth of channel expertise that will undoubtedly prove valuable to accelerating channel growth and profitability for customers and their channel partners.

A Unified Vision for the Future

We’ll have a lot more to say about the benefits this merger can and will deliver to our customers and the channel at large in the coming months. For now, I hope you’ll take a moment to visit this landing page to learn more about the merger and consider joining us for an informational webinar on Tuesday, August 1 to take a deeper dive into our unified vision for the future of our combined companies and channel technology with Enterprise Channel Management.

The post Changing the Channel: Zift is Merging with Relayware appeared first on Zift Solutions.

At a recent event, I overheard a supplier talking about demand creation and lead development. They were adamant that Content Syndication does not generate leads for their channel partners. And, of course, they were right – in part.

Content Syndication isn’t designed to generate new leads. It helps new leads stick when they make their way to your partners. Moreover, the marketing and sales paradigm has shifted. There is simply no ONE marketing tactic that is ever going to create pipeline for channel partners. You’re taking your partners, prospects and customers on a journey – and multiple, integrated marketing tactics are required to move them through the sales cycle.

Content Syndication Can’t Do It Alone

No one is going to make a significant business purchase without first checking the seller’s website. (Would you?) When a prospect visits the website of your channel partners, he or she should find engaging content that aligns with their interests and positions your partners as a credible source of information on the products and services they are selling. That’s why content syndication matters (and converts 50% more leads when it’s dynamic). But if the right, relevant content isn’t there – or doesn’t align with a prospect’s interests – the buyer may drop out altogether.

Even if a partner’s website is on point, the journey doesn’t end there. Partners must nurture new prospects and even current customers to capture and keep their attention. As a supplier, it’s your job to empower partners to nurture leads and motivate buyers. For that, Content Syndication alone won’t cut it.

In the past, sales professionals connected very early in the buying cycle  and would work a deal through to close. Just one touch could get a prospect interested and then the sales person stepped in to answer questions, provide educational materials and guide the entire sales process. But with today’s self-directed buyers, multi-tactic marketing is essential, which can and should entail everything from emails, newsletters and blogs to digital advertising, events, social media syndication and more. And you’ll also need shared analytics to really see what’s working and what isn’t.

The Quest for Success

Clearly, the journey to channel success is paved with  much more than acquiring net new leads. It takes multiple strategic moves. To that end, I liken a supplier’s responsibility to their channel partners to giving directions to friends heading out on a long road trip.

Let’s say your friends want to get to the beach. You need to share more than the first turn to the highway on-ramp. Otherwise, the folks you’re guiding won’t really have any idea where they are going. Incomplete directions won’t deliver them to their destination. But one wrong turn doesn’t make the rest of your directions invalid either. They may encounter detours and delays along the way. But, ideally, you can get them where they’re going with clear-cut instructions, a detailed map or even an integrated GPS system.

A fully-integrated system that automates sales, marketing and operational processes is exactly what Zift is building with Channel as a Service. We want suppliers to have everything they need to help channel partners capture and nurture leads all the way through the sales cycle, so that you’re both more productive and more profitable. We know you need more than just Channel Marketing and Management (CMM) to plan programs and campaigns, recruit the right partners, enable them, generate leads, transact sales, and manage Marketing Development Funds (MDF).

Channel expert Tim Harmon of Nuvello noted in his blog that even the addition of integrated Partner Relationship Management (PRM) to Zift’s best-of-breed CMM can’t carry the weight of Channel as a Service on its own. We couldn’t agree more. Building out our vision of Channel as a Service is a journey for Zift as well. CMM and PRM are great starting points, but we know full well that Channel as a Service requires Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Configure Price & Quote (CPQ) tools. We’re excited to show everyone what’s around the next corner as we continue our quest to expand CHaaS and deliver everything you need to build and grow a more profitable partner program.

It’s like the old song says, “One is the loneliest number.” One marketing tactic is never going to be enough. Resource-strapped partners can’t make it all on their own – and, as a supplier, you shouldn’t  have to either. Stay tuned for updates on what’s next with Zift CHaaS, and I can assure you that you won’t have to go it alone.

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Sure, the idea of partner communities is great. Community is a positive word that everyone wants to foster. Sometimes an online conversation provides new ideas and opportunities to learn more, but chitter chatter doesn’t move the needle.

Of course, there are anecdotal examples of partners synching up and sharing workflows online, but it’s just not going to happen at scale without solutions designed for the channel. Real working partner ecosystems are fostered by putting tools, integrated technology and support in place to meet the very real challenges of delivering channel revenue.

No One Needs Another Water Cooler

Focusing on synergistic communities is exactly the type of behavior that can lead to disappointing, even disastrous, channel program performance. Partners have tasks they need to get done. They have leads to follow up on and deals to close. They have money to make – and they need real help – not just another online water cooler.

Suppliers and their partners need easy-to-use applications that cover everything from planning, recruitment, enablement, demand generation, order transaction, and life cycle management. Moreover, these applications need to integrate with each other as well as the systems suppliers and partners already have in place.

You can’t just jumble a bunch of gears together, then expect a first-class engine to pop out of it. It takes sophisticated engineering to build a channel engine that works. If you want to boost the performance of your channel partners, then you need fully-integrated solutions, with strong back-end technology and support/services specifically designed and aligned for channel partners.

Rather than slightly tweaked SFA or CRM tools, generic social gathering spots and community facilitation, look for solutions that are engineered for partners. They should make it easy to recruit, onboard and segment the right partners for the right solutions. They should deliver leads and incentives within workflows as well as the right messages and tools to close more deals. And, most of all, they should go well beyond fostering conversations, and actually help channel partners drive performance, revenue and ROI.

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Why More? Why Now?

As channel programs have grown in size and stature, they require more functionality. Obviously, they have to hit revenue goals. But doing so isn’t a one and done task. B2B organizations need to recruit, retain, and train the right partners. They have to automate multi-tactic marketing for those partners. They are tasked with generating and distributing leads and publishing content. They have to enable and incent sales teams. And, of course, they have to manage and make sense of all of the data they are collecting. All of this functionality calls for new technology — and it’s appearing.

Savvy channel leaders are looking to the software realm to manage all of these functions. During the past few years, I’ve seen the initial excitement of channel leaders as they explore all of the new technologies that are arriving on the scene. What is now known as the field of ChanTech is exploding. There is absolutely a lot to be excited about as new and innovative solutions that are designed to solve real channel challenges appear seemingly overnight.

However, I’ve also witnessed too many suppliers and partners struggle to make all of these new solutions work together — and work with and within their established systems and infrastructure. Integration is what provides the best results, but integration is complex, time consuming and clearly standing in the way of real channel program success, particularly for resource-strapped organizations that are already feeling stretched. That’s why Zift is stepping up to solve the integration challenge.

Zift Channel as a Service Lifts the Integration Burden

Today, Zift is introducing Channel as a Service: An easy-to-use, fully integrated software platform that automates the complete spectrum of activities required for sales, marketing and operational processes, so that channel programs can deliver better results.

We know that integration has been a major stumbling block for channel programs and we have the vision, know-how and resources to solve that challenge. With Channel as a Service, we’re extending our best-of-breed Channel Marketing and Management (CMM) solutions. We’re lifting the burden of integration by ensuring that all of the new functionality you require works seamlessly with the the systems, applications and infrastructure you already have in place.

It’s our intention to deliver everything channel organizations need to build and grow more profitable channel partner programs. This is our ultimate mission at Zift. Based on what we’re already hearing from our customers and industry experts, the response to this expanded vision and Channel as a Service has been overwhelmingly positive. I can assure you that Channel as a Service comes from listening to our customers, hearing what channel leaders desire — and stepping up to deliver on the bigger picture.

Learn More

I invite you to learn more about Channel as a Service and read the full press release here. And be sure to subscribe to the Channel Chatter blog to stay current as we debut more details about the full spectrum of Channel as a Service in the coming weeks.

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Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional game, but it just isn’t a sport I follow closely. But like most, I was recently caught up in all things Olympics. As I watched the gold medal game in men’s basketball, I got to thinking about how the phrase, “Dream Team,” has become part of our vernacular since 1992 (the original Dream Team for all the millennials out there).

We all have our own Dream Teams in mind. A list of people knocking around in our heads that we want beside us working toward a common goal – whether it be in business, philanthropy or, even, basketball.

I am fortunate to work every day at Zift with people who were always on my list. From the leadership team to the developers who work on our product, to the dedicated team focused on customer success. I’m honored, and humbled, to have some of the sharpest and most talented people in their craft beside me on our journey to becoming the leading channel marketing and management (CMM) provider.

And now there’s one more.

Jordan. Johnson. Bird. Gonzalez.

Earlier today, we announced that Laz Gonzalez, one of the most well-known and respected industry analysts and channel marketing and management thought leaders, has joined Zift as our Chief Strategy Officer.

This team. Our team.

But as I reflect on the Dream Team we’re building, it’s really not about us. When the original Dream Team first took the court in ‘92 it was thrilling for them but it was exciting in a different way for an entire nation back home.

In my mind, the same is true here. It’s for everyone who touches the Zift platform or interacts with any Zifter on a daily basis.

This team is really for them.

Laz will shape and share our strategy as Zift continues to grow. But he will also bring his knowledge from working with leading channel programs around the world direct to our customers. He understands that it takes more than software to succeed at channel marketing. He gets what it really takes to transform channel programs into high performing marketing machines. He knows it takes the right blend of technology and services. This insight is something no other CMM vendor has or can share with their customers.

Why did Laz chose Zift over any other vendor? (Honestly, I want to shout his reasons from the rooftops.) I know from our many conversations. But it’s not my place to speak for him and I know you will be hearing directly from the man himself soon. What I can tell you is his move confirms that we are definitely on the right track.

And as our customers take their place on the podium, the Zift team will be cheering the loudest.

The post Building a Channel Dream Team appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Marketers know this as well as anyone, if not better. You take an idea about a product and design, write, and innovate messaging that gets people to act out a desired behavior.

I found myself acting this weekend. I was roaming the North Hills of Raleigh with my son using high throughput, real-time geospatial querying and indexing techniques to interact with real and virtual objects in the physical world.

I admit it. I love Pokémon Go.

But not just because it’s a neat thing to do with my son. I found myself thinking about what marketers – especially channel marketers who put their brands in the hands of thousands of partners and dealers around the world – could learn from this phenomenon.

Beyond the best way to automate lead distribution or the latest dos and don’ts of digital advertising, sometimes it’s important to step back (or forward if that’s the way the Pokémon are headed). There are some big lessons and “good to remembers” that the Pokémon Go experience offers such a diverse marketing ecosystem as the channel. Here are some of them:

Constantly experiment

Try leveraging an unexpected delivery with a tried and true tactic. Take a good idea and combine it with different technology. Remember, sky writing a message over a crowd was once a “new” thing. And one day, geocaching treasure hunts related to your product or service will be old news. So try new, fail, improve, and try again.

Know your audience, but don’t be afraid to expand it

I’m sure the developers of Pokémon Go had a key demographic in mind as they were building the app. And I would bet that I wasn’t in it. I could also sit here and tell you about the million (+1) things I could have been spending my time doing over the weekend. Today, the Pokémon brand is forefront in the minds of all ages and professions. Gamers and non-gamers alike. Which brings me to my next point….

If your brand isn’t social, you’re doing it wrong

Social – as I was reminded when I met a dozen new people chasing down a Jigglypuff – isn’t “just” about keeping your Facebook or Twitter account active. As reported on The Guardian, “In just seven days since the game was released in the US, Australia and New Zealand, Pokémon Go has now almost certainly exceeded Twitter’s 65 million American users, and the game’s servers have repeatedly crashed under the strain of its popularity.” That’s a lot of Pokémon Go-getters.
Social today is also about content that allows consumers to connect. Not just with your brand, but with each other. Your consumers want to feel part of something bigger. They want to feel the community of your product. They want to be on the same team, and if not, they love the friendly competition (just ask my development team about their Pokemon quests.)

How we use marketing to get attention can change in an instant

It took years of hard work, ingenuity, and let’s not forget, money, for a software developer out of San Francisco to turn Pokémon Go from concept into reality. Years. Work. Money. And on its release, it swept across nations seemingly overnight and changed what we want out of our digital applications forever. Sure, we may not know the full effect just yet (we’re too busy finding the closest Pokéstop right now anyway). But be prepared for a new way of advertising, marketing, communicating to consumers that maybe you – or your budget- didn’t anticipate.

You can’t do it all on your own

Raise your hand if you knew the name “Niantic Labs” before July 6, 2016. Anyone?
Niantic Labs is a spinoff from Google, who created the game along with the Pokémon Company, an equity affiliate in which Nintendo owns 32%. So why do so many of the conversations I’ve had about Pokémon Go come back to Nintendo and how they are loving life right now. Today is definitely better than yesterday, but the truth is Nintendo stands to likely make the least from the success. Nintendo owns brand rights to the Pokémon franchise but was not responsible for the game development nor does it get a share of the revenue from in app purchases (those winners are Google and Apple.) What Nintendo is getting is some serious brand buzz that will only help them in the future. It’s like the most complicated channel partner program ever, and brands are winning by association. Remember that next time you interact with a partner or dealer, or any organization in your channel.

Of course, all of these things can’t be done well without the best technology. They can’t be done without excellent content. And they can’t be done without smart marketing. This weekend reminded me of this, and the Zift team will continue to work hard every day to design, write, and innovate channel marketing and management technology so our customers can focus on being the next big thing.

And if anyone has any tips for catching Charizard, leave them in the comments below. Asking for a friend.

The post What Channel Marketers Can Learn from Pokémon Go appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Now, the time has come to demonstrate return on these investments.

Of course, this is much easier said than done, which is why Zift has always been focused on enhancing visibility and analytics to our customers and end-users. We know that measurement is essential. You must have the ability to see and share what’s working – and recognize what’s not to make adjustments and avoid wasting valuable resources.

Digging Into Partner Data to Determine ROCI

Most channel professionals can calculate Return on Channel Investment (ROCI) at a high level, such as their annual channel revenue. However, digging through the mountain of available partner data to determine ROCI at the more granular channel program level is another story entirely. But that’s what leadership is demanding. They want to see exactly how investments in their channel partners and supporting channel programs are panning out.

B2B channel marketing professionals are going to have to step up and articulate exactly how their partner investments are paying off in order to get buy-in to purchase new solutions, launch new campaigns or continue investing in specific partners and channel programs. Forrester Analyst Tim Harmon dives into the ROCI conundrum and lays out a clear plan for determining and articulating ROCI in his report, Realizing Return on Channel Investments: Create a System of Insight to Unravel Program Dependency Chains. (Zift is currently offering the report as a complimentary download.)

Key points Tim discusses in the report include:

• The corporate progression of accountability (the call to justify, better gauge and allocated investments) on the channel’s function
• Why calculating gross ROCI is no longer enough
• The ROCI “black box” – a collection of channel programs that constitute the channel engine, including certification, incentive programs, through-channel marketing, opportunity management and more
• How channel programs are linked as dependency chains and develop a system of insight to unravel them

I encourage you to get the report, and then let us know in the comments section if you’re feeling under the gun to measure and report on ROCI – and what you’re doing to justify channel investments.

[forrester-roci-optin]

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After breakfast and a little networking, I welcomed attendees, noting that today’s B2B buyer is making decisions well before they make contact with sales professionals – and current changes within the channel are quite similar in impact to the paradigm shift cloud computing caused within the technology industry. And we were just getting started. The morning continued with lively discussion on these hot channel topics:

The Digital Evolution

Ben Wood, Director of Channel Sales Americas for Google was joined on stage by Diarmid Thomson, Head of Industry – Tech B2B for Google, for “The Digital Evolution: Trends to Drive your 2016 Marketing.” Ben and Diarmid discussed how B2B researchers and IT decision maker behaviors are continuing to evolve. These two dynamic presenters shared insights into today’s B2B purchase path and customer journey, including the role digital marketing plays today.

High-Performance AdWords & MDF

Brad Peterson, Senior VP of Business Development for MatchCraft, stepped up to the mic to discuss how to build a high performing and scalable AdWords program. Brad shared insight on how high-performance Google AdWords campaigns can be set up, how to use advanced algorithms to lower the cost per conversion, and how setting up “brackets” can make sure partners don’t bid up keywords by bidding against each other (or by bidding against the OEM).

A Bird’s Eye View of the Channel

Zift’s very own Scott England, VP of Alliances and Strategic Relationships embodied the excitement and spirit of the event with his presentation, “The View from Zift: Perspective and Roadmap.” Tapping into Zift’s bird’s eye view of channel marketing and management, Scott shared some of the global changes in the marketplace, including the consolidation of MarTech and AdTech, and the shift from point solutions to platforms. Scott also provided a sneak peek into what’s coming in the Zift product roadmap over the next 12-18 months. (We will share more on that soon!)

The HPE Channel Marketing Automation Journey

Mike Gallagher, Senior Director of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) then walked us through HPE’s own channel solutions story, sharing lessons learned and tough decisions made throughout the way. He included key data from several HPE partners and the success they have seen using Zift. Mike then opened the floor to a discussion and exchange of ideas and solutions regarding some the current challenges familiar to many channel organizations, including adapting to the increasingly inbound buyer.

Key Takeaway

The main takeaway from the event was that Google offered great possibilities to significantly improve lead generation for channel partner communities, but these advantages require sophistication to unlock. Specifically, this requires ad buying algorithms (e.g. those provided by MatchCraft), and then an environment that makes these powerful capabilities accessible. For channel partners, a great way to easily take advantage is to leverage the turn-key integration built directly into the Zift Solutions platform.

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In a few short years, we’ve built a strong foundation, established ourselves as the premier Channel Marketing and Management (CMM) leader and are committed to delivering value to our users while creating a profitable, productive and socially responsible workplace for our team. Last year, Zift enjoyed success on multiple fronts, including:

• Growing financial strength with a 74% increase in revenue, our largest 4th quarter ever, and $14M in Series B financing.
• The acquisition of SharedVue to create the most experienced and largest CMM provider in the marketplace today, with more partner users than any other provider.
• New customers including the addition of Abila, GENBAND, NetApp, SimpliVity, Samsung Electronics and Xerox among many others.
• Industry recognition from analysts and marketplace leaders, including being recognized by SiriusDecisions as the top CMM vendor and earning the highest score among all vendors in the Technology category in The Forrester Wave™: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platform Q3 2015.
• An evolving corporate culture that is focused on achieving work-life balance for our employees (the number of which grew by 81% in 2015), and highly values community involvement as evidenced by Zift joining Pledge 1%, a corporate philanthropy movement dedicated to making the community a key stakeholder in every business.

DRIVING SUCCESS FOR CUSTOMERS

What we’re most excited about and focused on as we move into 2016 is Zift’s ability to drive results for our users. Our customers are already benefitting from more extensive service offerings and support resources following the SharedVue acquisition. Plus, our Research and Development (R&D) team has doubled in size, so we can innovate and deliver the advanced features and functionality the Zift Platform is known for even faster.

Our ecosystem is constantly expanding and we’re committed to ensuring seamless integration for Zift users, either via our Embedded Access Applications (EAAs), like our Hootsuite™ App, or direct connections with the SFA, CRM, PRM and MDF systems, social media platforms, sales enablement programs and data platforms you are already using.

Zift’s ability to significantly enhance results has never been more apparent. In 2015, our users reported:

• 421% increase in leads created
• 219% increase in social accounts connected
• 158% increase in social shares/retweets
• 150% increase in social likes
• 140% increase in campaigns created

Results like these are driving more and more channel organizations to Zift Solutions and customers like Samsung and SimpliVity are leading the charge toward CMM as a proven path to increasing partner engagement and profits. Zift is a critical component in the Samsung Team of Empowered Partners (STEP) channel program and Samsung Business Academy, which received great press from CRN, as well as The VAR Guy. Zift is also a key feature in SimpliVity’s push to help partners harness hyper-convergence demand, highlighted in a recent article on ARN.

In a year from now when I share my 2016 wrap-up, I have no doubt there will be more success stories like these as Zift continues to prove its solutions and services are absolutely essential to channel success.

The post Building Momentum Into 2016 and Beyond appeared first on Zift Solutions.

My first reaction was to go on the offensive. Or is it defensive? Either way, I wanted to argue the point. After all, Zift is my baby. And that’s calling my baby a beast. But as I started thinking about it, I became fixated on the phrase itself. And gorillas. How did these magnificent (and endangered) creatures get associated with being not so magnificent in business? I realize that the intention is to malign Zift (or any other “gorilla” company) as a 500-pound brute beast that can’t possibly provide the same manner of care for its customers as so-called “boutique” offerings in the market. Clearly, they don’t know much about Zift – or gorillas.

Gorillas are strong, but they are also built to maintain balance and support their size. With tens of thousands of active partner users around the globe, we have the largest partner community and offer the most comprehensive Channel Marketing Automation (CMA) platform available today. I’ll take this in the strength column. The suppliers we work with are also among the largest channel marketing organizations in the world.

It’s a fact that our partners and suppliers are often not looking for a boutique approach to CMA. They require more sophistication and power in their channel marketing technology, not to mention deeper industry expertise. But that doesn’t mean we back away from providing the personal service required to deliver success for our clients. We’ve earned a reputation for being an incredibly powerful platform while preserving a personal touch with our customers in terms of support, education and guidance, regardless of the size of their business or partner community. Far from inhibiting us, the size and strength we’ve worked hard to achieve empowers the highest levels of care for our customers. Our recent acquisitions and steady growth are indeed helping us provide unparalleled Through Partner Marketing Automation (TPMA) capabilities, fueling innovation with a deeper research and development team, and fostering lower costs and faster time to value. However, one of the most exciting aspects of our continued growth trajectory is our ability to provide even more services and support to our customers. Few can meet the standards set by our enhanced global support team or tailored Managed, Professional and Concierge Services.

Gorillas are also extremely protective of their families (where a lot of their tough rep comes from), and I am proud to have Zift follow this example by stepping above and beyond to support the communities in which we work. To formalize this commitment, Zift has recently joined the Pledge 1%, a corporate philanthropy movement dedicated to making the community a key stakeholder in every business. Zift is pledging 1% of its equity, employee time and product to charitable pursuits. We’ll also be launching our own Pledge 1% in the Raleigh-Durham area to encourage other local NC-based companies to take the pledge themselves. This is an initiative where you better believe I will continue to beat my chest.

Back in 2006 when we created this company, the goal was to make channel marketing easier and more effective for organizations of all sizes. If ten years later, we are being referred to as the “big guy” in the space, I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. We take our role as being one that many smaller organizations aspire to be a compliment and privilege.

So if someone thinks we’re a gorilla, I’m fine with it. After all, I think most people would be happy to have a gorilla backing them up.

The post Gorilla in the Marketplace appeared first on Zift Solutions.

This is a topic of growing and significant importance. We hear from so many channel organizations that improving the partner experience is a top priority for them. However, I find that very few actually know what they need to do in order to achieve their goals.

Partners Are Just As Important As Customers

Any organization doing business in the channel must pay careful attention to the partner experience. As Laz notes in our presentation, “The channel is the engine of growth for so many companies. While the customer has long been considered King, today’s partners are just as important. If you don’t think so, look at your bottom-line revenue numbers. If your partners are not satisfied with the way that you’re communicating with them, supporting them, you’ll see a direct impact on the revenue they’re generating for your organization.”

With that in mind, Laz and I set out with several objectives that we wanted to deliver to webinar attendees, including:

• Sharing a clear definition of the partner experience and why it’s important to channel organizations
• Identifying shifts in the channel landscape that undermine partner engagement
• Highlighting SiriusDecisions’ framework for mapping the journey to partner experience excellence
• Outlining the differences between Channel Marketing & Management (CMM) tools and Marketing Automation (MA)
• Exploring the vital role technology plays in empowering partners and profitability

The webinar is now available on-demand for those of you who missed it. Watch The 5 Key Ingredients for a Positive & Profitable Partner Experience and let us know what you’re doing to support your partners in the comments section below.

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We at Zift have recently gone through a related exercise as we acquired SharedVue from The Channel Company.

The acquisition greatly expanded the number of suppliers coordinating their marketing through the Zift platform. It also provides much greater exposure of the benefits that Zift provides by allowing The Channel Company to extend their traditional offering with Zift’s unique capabilities such as Dynamic Content Syndication, Lead Distribution Management and Embedded Access Apps.

Conceptually, it was easy to see how everyone would benefit from the acquisition. However, it actually turned out to be quite challenging to create the framework that allowed all the parties involved to work together effectively. This is where getting advice from a true expert was critical. In our case, the guidance and advice we needed came from a team at our lawyers, Wyrick Robbins, and specifically from their lead on our deal, David Creekman. David was able to use his experience to establish a deal structure that sidestepped many potential pitfalls, and allowed us to navigate through several prospective roadblocks. Getting our deal structure right from the start unlocked the synergies of this acquisition, and allowed us to greatly increase the value we provide to our clients.

Likewise, as we move forward with the largest community of technology vendors and channel partners using Zift Solutions, I am hopeful that we can provide the expert advice and guidance our customers need on how best to make multi-vendor, vertical marketing come together to drive success.

Header image courtesy of Estée Janssens on Unsplash and Studyclerk. 

The post Marketing Win-Wins Take Careful Planning and Expert Advice appeared first on Zift Solutions.

A division of The Channel Company and an established Partner Marketing Provider, SharedVue is the second competitor that Zift has acquired in the past year in our quest to become the premiere Through Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) provider in the growing channel marketing arena.  As the channel community’s trusted authority for growth and innovation, The Channel Company has also joined forces with Zift to integrate SharedVue functionality and promote the enhanced Zift platform moving forward.

Industry Perspective and Positives

Addressing the acquisition in the September 2015 blog post entitled Through-Channel Marketing Automation — An Emerging Market Consolidating?, Forrester Research Principal Analyst Tim Harmon wrote, “We see this as a positive — a positive for Zift (increased market share); a positive for SharedVue (a more focused product R&D ownership); a positive for SharedVue’s customers (who will migrate over time to a more capable Zift TCMA platform); and a positive for the TCMA market.”

I couldn’t agree more. The new acquisition of SharedVue makes Zift the largest Channel Marketing and Management (CMM) solutions provider, serving the largest community of channel partners around the globe. With more than 30,000 partners in our community, engagement becomes that much easier for vendors as so many partners are already familiar with and using the Zift Platform – and partners can use Zift to support multiple vendors.

Keeping Your Best Interests in Mind as We Move Forward

Our combined teams are already working together to evaluate which SharedVue features will be integrated into the Zift Solutions Platform. Our Research and Development (R&D) team has also doubled in size, positioning us for continued innovation and maximum responsiveness to customer needs. Best of all, our customers are equally excited about the impact of our SharedVue acquisition.

“It’s exciting and I’m personally looking forward to see, learn and understand how this will evolve for Qlik. The timing is just right. It sets us all in good stead for best-in-class partner marketing automation,” said Natasha Mutepuka, Director of Marketing Programs for Qlik, a leading visual analytics vendor, in a congratulatory note.

We thank all of our customers and partners for their encouragement and support. We’re looking out for your best interests as we continue to grow and re-invest in Zift and will keep you posted as we move forward. In the meantime, you can learn more about the acquisition itself in this FAQ.

The post The Power of Change: Zift’s Forward Momentum and SharedVue Acquisition appeared first on Zift Solutions.

A Bigger Piece of the Pie

Dominos, Pizza Hut and other national pizza chains are taking significant market share from local and independent pizza shops by using mobile online ordering applications. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for customers to connect with them and order online. Following their lead, channel organizations can grab a bigger slice of the channel revenue pie by employing our High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #6: Work where your partners work.

The Future Calls for a New Approach; and The Future is Now

We’ve discussed the False Promises of Partner Portals here in Channel Chatter, which underscore the need for a new approach. Instead of pouring more money into portals (70 percent of which are predicted to fail and less than a third of end-users actually use), it’s time for channel organizations to consider Embedded Access Applications (EAAs).

EAAs let you deliver content, digital marketing tools and marketing automation capabilities direct within the CRM, SFA and marketing automation systems partners already using every day, which:

• Simplifies Channel Marketing: Everything partners need to manage and run multi-tactic campaigns is available within their familiar environment.
• Saves Time & Reduces Costs: Leverage established infrastructure and eliminate the need for partners to leave their current systems to utilize your leads and marketing efforts.
• Strengthens Sight Lines: Suppliers and partners can easily see and track marketing, prospecting and lead nurturing activities across the entire sales cycle, without adding extra steps for reporting.
• Drives Opportunities and Lead Follow-up: Provide leads, deep prospecting data and the details partners need to kick off the sales process and nurture leads within their established systems.

Achieving Results that Elude Others

EAAs are just one piece of the channel marketing puzzle. To finally eliminate those familiar channel marketing challenges that seem so hard to shake and achieve unprecedented results, be sure to employ each of the six secrets we’ve uncovered in this series:

• Segment and target partners based on potential, capabilities and commitment
• Support multi-tactic campaigns that employ an array of marketing strategies
• Evangelize modern, inbound marketing tactics
• Refocusing efforts on current customers
• Using account-based marketing and analytics to measure success
• Injecting marketing and sales tools directly into the systems partners already use and enjoy

Dig deeper into the details of each secret by reading Zift’s latest eBook: Unlocking the 6 Secrets of High Performance Channel Marketing.

The post High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #6: Work Where Your Partners Work appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The Forrester Wave™: Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms, Q3 2015 identifies Zift among 14 significant vendors within the emerging TCMA market and notes, “What sets Zift apart in the TCMA vendor landscape is a commitment to transparently integrating its TCMA solutions into the partner’s application landscape … This lowers the barrier to action and drives partner engagement above the average.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. We believe that the report validates Zift’s stance on the importance and impact of providing the marketing tools and resources channel partners need directly within the systems they use every day and it recognizes Zift “for having a deep integration capability involving partners’ applications.”

What Were The Takeaways?

We believe that, aside from identifying Zift as a Strong Performer overall, the Forrester Wave Report emphasized a best practice that Zift has long promoted: The importance of knowing your partners and tailoring the tools you provide to them based on their capabilities.

The authors state that when using this research to evaluate TCMA vendors you should:

Adjust for your channel partners’ marketing proclivities and proficiencies. The latitudinal range of execution capability varies greatly by TCMA vendor. Some vendors’ products lean toward DIY power marketers; others toward the do-it-for-me (DIFM) neophytes or the on-behalf-of (OBO) luddites. Look closely at the scale explanations. They provide insight into the execution options available for partners.”

As part of our profile they point out that:

Zift’s offering provides a comprehensive range of email marketing tactics, from single email blasts to multi-touch, automated drip and nurture marketing, cobranded print marketing (for use at events, in sales literature, or in direct mail), online advertising (AdWords, retargeting, social), social media marketing, and syndicated website content of all types, from banner ads to full server-side widgets to embed product showcases.

We’re incredibly proud to be included in this new report and proud of our ability to provide an array of tools and tactics that can be expressly tailored to meet unique channel partner needs. To learn more, read the complete Zift Solutions’ press release regarding the new Forrester Wave report.

The post Independent Research Firm gives Zift highest score in Technology category and cites “Deep Integration Capabilities Involving Partners’ Applications” appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Build a Culture of Account-Based Marketing

Consultant, educator and author Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in channel marketing. Enabling partner demand creation and empowering channel success take more than providing sales collateral and marketing assets to partners. To truly succeed, you must employ our channel marketing secret #5: Count on measurement. That means establishing a strong culture of account-based marketing and providing an end-to-end structure that fosters visibility and trust while measuring results.

Overcoming Trust Barriers and Enhancing Visibility

Many channel suppliers have now closed the analytics gap and overcome familiar trust barriers with partners by using Through Partner Marketing Automation (TPMA). In the past, these vendors had a one-sided view of statistics and numerical results – and partners were reluctant to share their data.

With TPMA, vendors can easily establish an end-to-end infrastructure that protects partner data, enables partner demand creation and enhances visibility and measurement on both sides of the channel and across the entire sales pipeline.

Keep a Finger on the Pulse

Today, HPE Software is able to keep their finger on the pulse of partner activities and partners can protect the data they want to shield from them while still accelerating the sales cycle. Structure is key to enabling measurement and the impact of TPMA on HPE Partner ResultsPositive is impressive. By connecting TPMA directly into ResultsPostive’s CRM system and enabling a more holistic, integrated approach to channel marketing efforts, ResultsPositive:

• Captured 48 to 1 ROI
• Delivered more than $325K in Sales Pipeline within 9 week
• Increased CRM usages by 60 percent
• Shortened lead lifecycle time by 25 percent

You can read the full case study here.

Clearly, counting on measurement works for both suppliers and their channel partners. To learn more about measuring results and refining tactics to meet key goals, read Zift’s latest eBook: Unlocking the 6 Secrets of High Performance Channel Marketing.

The post High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #5: Count on Measurement appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Shifting Focus

Net-new leads are far from the Holy Grail. Yet, the bulk of many channel partners’ attention and energy is intensely focused on bumping up the number of net-new leads they acquire. It’s time to refocus their attention. Doing so means employing our High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #4: Provide Campaigns to Existing Base.

New vs. Old: Silver vs. Gold

The refrain of a classic campfire song comes to mind here: “Make new friends, but keep the old; One is silver and the other gold.” Of course, new customers are great. They are also expensive. Research shows that is it 600-700 percent more costly to acquire a new customer than keep existing customers. Plus, 85 percent of channel sales in technology are made to existing clients.

Cash in on Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Opportunities

Cash in on powerful cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and capture more channel revenue overall by nurturing established relationships and directing campaigns toward existing customers. For the best results, segment, score and prioritize current customers by their propensity to buy, then demonstrate the added value of available products and services. Information provided to current customers should take their pre-involvement with the company and level of education into account. Established customers require a deeper level of information and acknowledgement that you appreciate their continued business.

To learn more about nurturing customers and how to achieve better results from channel partners overall, read Zift’s latest eBook: Unlocking the 6 Secrets of High Performance Channel Marketing.

The post High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #4: Provide Campaigns to Existing Base appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Maintain Forward Momentum

The marketing landscape has become so cluttered and complex that many channel partners are stuck. Utterly overwhelmed, they are either stunned into inaction or rely on over-utilized tactics such as single-touch emails, cold calling and direct mail. Help them maintain forward momentum by employing our High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #3: Evangelize modern marketing.

Rebalance the Marketing Mix

By providing and promoting marketing programs to partners that employ a mix of modern tactics and a multi-touch approach, your partners are better positioned to build a bigger pipeline and generate net new leads. There’s a whole new world of digital marketing tools to engage prospects, nurture customers and create an end-to-end sales narrative. But to keep them from becoming overwhelmed by options, you may need to show partners exactly how to rebalance their familiar mix. The good news is that empowering partners to utilize more modern tactics like social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising does not require too much effort or even cost.

No Experts Required

Channel partners don’t need to be transformed into modern marketing experts to boost results. You just need to break them out of old routines. That means being more prescriptive in your approach and providing automated tools like Social Media Syndication to make it easy to broaden their skillset and expand their market reach.

To learn how you can achieve better results and make it easier for partners to engage customers using modern digital marketing tactics, read Zift’s latest eBook: Unlocking the 6 Secrets of High Performance Channel Marketing.

The post High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #3: Evangelize Modern Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Let’s be Honest

How often do you pick up the phone to call a sales person directly?

Rarely.

The answer is the same for contemporary buyers. They are, for the most part, self-directed and self-empowered as they seek out information about the products and services they desire. They are also a diverse group, with unique interests and methods of searching for and absorbing information. That’s exactly why you can’t use identical tactics for every marketing campaign.

The Needle Has Shifted

In the past, marketing led the way only during the very initial phase of the sales process. Today, experts agree that marketing and sales now must work much more closely together across the sales cycle to educate and capture buyers’ attention.

The best way to get out in front of today’s buyers is by employing a wide array of marketing tactics. Zift’s VP of Marketing, David Buffaloe, recently dissected a Zift deal of our own in How Many Tactics Does it Take to Secure a Deal and a 2014 MarketingProfs Survey of over 1,200 B2B companies found that:

• 15+ tactics is the standard for best-in-class organizations
• 13 tactics deliver just average results
• 10 or less tactics are least effective

Mix it Up

The message is clear: Mix up your marketing tactics to garner the best results. By creating and deploying campaigns that utilize a variety of digital marketing techniques, you have the best shot at winning and keeping the interest and business of contemporary buyers.

To learn more about the vital importance of multi-tactic marketing and uncover all six channel marketing success secrets, read Zift’s latest eBook: Unlocking the 6 Secrets of High Performance Channel Marketing.

The post High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #2: Support Multi-Tactic Campaigns appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Refocus Your Attention

While many channel programs are focused on segmenting leads, you’ll see better channel program results by focusing your attention on segmenting markets, customers and partners themselves.

We all know that all channel partners are not created equal. Some have strong track records, established buyer relationships and practiced resources who know exactly how to nurture customers and drive sales. At the same time, less experienced partners may struggle to connect with buyers, remain unable to set themselves apart in the marketplace or stay on message and brand-compliant.

Take Aim

To increase sales opportunities and foster growth among partners, targeting and segmenting partners based on their capabilities and commitment works best. Consider the following attributes as you segment partners:

• Available resources and experience levels
• Partner density for coverage and customers
• Capability to upsell or cross-sell products and services
• Achievement of certain levels of training and certification

Determine Capacity and Capabilities

Then, separate your channel partners into three distinct tiers using critical attributes:

• Proven Leaders: Strong track record of success, established customer relationships and most likely to succeed with buyers.
• Intermediate Successes: Moderate success rates with the potential to do and achieve much more.
• Inexperienced Partners: Few wins and require direct support to succeed.

Once you segment partners based on their capacity and capabilities, you’ll be better positioned to deliver appropriate levels of support, allocate resources appropriately and increase overall success rates.

To learn more about segmenting partners and unveil all six channel marketing success secrets, read Zift’s latest eBook: Unlocking the 6 Secrets of High Performance Channel Marketing.

The post High Performance Channel Marketing Secret #1: Classify Partners by Potential appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Building Effective Engagement with Enterprise Partners

Channel Focus North America has established a strong reputation for assembling industry thought leaders to talk about how they are combining radical new thinking and proven strategies to open up new channels, and successfully redefine existing channel sales and marketing methods. This year, I’m a featured speaker and was pleased to discuss Best Practices in Building Effective Engagement with Enterprise Partners. For those unable to join us, I wanted to share just a few key takeaways from my presentation and the conversation it generated, including:

1. Support modern marketing and sales: The buying process has changed. You must provide your partners with all of the sales and marketing tactics they need to drive success.
2. Limit requirements to go to external systems: Your partner portal is an additional system. Make it easy for partners by injecting the marketing content directly into the systems they already use each day.
3. Incentives on supporting tasks: Consider different types of incentive programs to ensure partner engagement
4. Share performance against peer groups: Partners are naturally competitive. Provide visibility into how partners are doing against other similar partners to drive adoption across your partner community.

Enabling Effective Through Partner Marketing

Zift also co-hosted a Foundation Training Session with alliance partner Channel Maven Consulting on Enabling Effective Through Partner Marketing. Our Vice President of Customer Success, Mark Schlief, was joined by Heather K. Margolis of Channel Maven Consulting. The training session centered on the following topics:

• State of channel partners today
• Partner maturity models
• Best practices for educating partners
• Growing importance of content
• How to build an audience instead of just a list
• Essential marketing tools for supporting partner success

After spending a week with so many bright, innovative thinkers, all of whom are focused on the future of the channel, I’m inspired and looking forward to getting back to the Zift home office to put this energy and a few new ideas to work for our customers.

I hope those of you who were able to join us in Miami will share your experiences in the comments section below and I would love to hear what all of our readers see as the most important focus areas for channel leaders now and into the future.

The post Focusing on the Future of the Channel appeared first on Zift Solutions.

While partner portals seemed to hold great promise for channel marketing and sales, low usage rates and overall ROI are pointing to a very different reality. Regardless of the amount of time, money and energy suppliers keep putting into them, 70% of portal solutions are predicted to fail and all-too-familiar channel marketing challenges still stand firmly in the way of success. We’ve recently developed a new Infographic that highlights the Reality of Partner Portals along with Zift’s approach, which up-ends the partner portal conundrum.

The Same Refrain – Core Challenges Remain

Like a bad cold, today’s channel marketing challenges may seem impossible to escape. Man partner portals are failing to help channel partners, already stretched thin with limited resources, to keep messaging current, align marketing and sales objectives, nurture leads and prospects, or keep everyone abreast of sales activities. The fact is, marketing to channel partners remains expensive, time consuming and increasingly difficult as partners choose to support multiple suppliers.

Forging a New Path with Forward-Thinking Solutions

After working with tens of thousands of channel sales and marketing organizations across the globe and staying on the cusp of industry trends and leadership, Zift Solutions sees a better way – and we’re forging a new path with tools that actually match the evolving needs of channel sales and marketers.

Cloud-Based TPMA & Embedded Access Apps

Zift first revolutionized channel marketing with cloud-based Through Partner Marketing Automation (TPMA) tools and is now looking forward to Embedded Access Apps (EAA), which allow partners to work within the established systems they already use every day.

Embedded Access Apps allow you to provide unmatched channel marketing automation capabilities, including campaign creation and deployment, automated lead distribution, social media and more, within the most popular CRM, SFA and inbound marketing and sales tools, such as Salesforce.com, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Constant Contact, Hubspot, Pardot and more. Instead of taking marketing materials, HTML and digital tools from a supplier and importing them into their system of choice, EAAs allow suppliers to push content, email templates, social media campaigns and marketing automation capabilities directly into the SFA, CRM or marketing automation systems on which their partners already rely. The result? Suppliers and partners can simplify channel marketing, reduce costs, increase opportunities and enhance visibility.

Not Ready to Make the Jump to EAAs? No Problem

While we at Zift like to utilize the best of the latest technologies, we also recognize not everyone is ready for Embedded Access Apps. Many channel partners still require a platform to manage and execute marketing campaigns. So, while we’re actively developing EAAs, our award-winning TPMA platform is not going anywhere. In fact, we’re continuing to invest in our cloud-based platform and recently enhanced our User Interface to deliver a next-generation user experience that improves campaign efficacy, fosters productivity and ensures brand compliance.

Powerful Proven Results

We’ve seen the results firsthand: Partners participate and succeed when we inject marketing and sales tools directly into the systems they currently utilize and enjoy. You choose the path that’s right for you and your partners. As you’ll see in the Infographic, either approach delivers impressive results. Suppliers using Zift Solutions are freeing themselves from disappointing partner portals, actively engaging their channel partners, drastically simplifying channel marketing and shattering industry performance averages.

Check out the new Infographic to learn more:

The post Overcoming the False Promises of Partner Portals [Infographic] appeared first on Zift Solutions.

What’s topping the trend list for channel marketing in 2015? The short answer is marketing infrastructure investments. I believe that forward-thinking channel partners will accelerate their investments in building out their own marketing infrastructures this year. Moreover, the most successful channel programs will recognize this shift, and provide direct support within the channel partners’ infrastructure.

Behind the Trend: Self-Empowered Buyers and a Shifting Sales Landscape

As we’ve previously discussed here in Channel Chatter, there has been a transformational shift in how buyers are making purchases today. In the past, prospects, would spend time early in their sales process with sales professionals to gain insight and jointly determine which solutions would benefit their organization best. Now, prospects are increasingly unlikely to make or take calls from sales people, preferring to do their own research independently. In fact, according to some sources buyers may be as much as 65% to 90% through their journey before reaching out.

A Strong Online Presence Requires a Stable Infrastructure

As channel partners are seeing traditional sales approaches become less effective, 2015 will be the year that many invest in a new approach. Now that a company’s introduction and sales story is no longer led by the sales team, it must be delivered through marketing. A strong online presence has never been more important to drive inbound marketing and connect with self-empowered buyers. And channel sales organizations require a stable infrastructure like that provided by marketing automation products (HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, etc.) to develop, manage and support their online presence.

What we’re seeing in the marketplace is that some channel partners are hesitant to visit and use a vendor’s portal to engage in collaborative marketing. They simply don’t want to leave the familiar environments on which they already rely. And why should they? Inbound marketing is most successful when one infrastructure delivers a complete view of prospects’ digital interactions. Many vendor portals lead to independent silos of information, which undermines collaboration along with successful channel marketing and sales.

Channel Success in 2015 and Beyond

Channel programs focused on success in 2015 and beyond are recognizing this dynamic, connecting into their channel partners’ marketing automation infrastructures, and delivering collaborative support by extending those environments to make channel partners more successful.

What other trends do you think we’ll see in 2015? Please share them here via comments. Also, if you missed these, here are two recent posts with links to SiriusDecisions Research Briefs that will also help you succeed in 2015:

Channel Marketing: Planning Assumptions for 2015
Channel Sales: Planning Assumptions for 2015

The post One Game-Changing Channel Marketing Trend For 2015 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Channel Sales: Planning Assumptions 2015 identifies the five key issues that should drive the agenda of channel sales leaders in the coming year, with critical focus on:

1) Technology: Just-in-Time Access to Sales Resources

Make sure that your partners have direct access to the most relevant content and sales tools wherever they are doing business. That means investing in truly integrated channel sales enablement tools – and delivering access to those tools via mobile platforms, including tablets and smartphones.

2) Interlock: Alignment to Partner Business Objectives

Channel sales programs must be aligned with partners’ business priorities. Get them in tune by surveying partners to better understand their primary business issues, take a proactive role in supporting partner end-goals and ramp up partner communications to create a more collaborative sales process.

3) Measurement: Growth Metrics Tied to Partner Specializations

Suppliers are digging deeper into numbers, measuring everything from partner FTE investments and trained resources to revenue and sales by customer type in an effort to determine whether partners are on track to achieve targets. In 2015, suppliers should key in on partner specializations, such as industry or product line, define specific criteria to qualify partners, and rank partners within specializations to better measure performance.

4) Organization/Structure: The Evolving Role of Channel Sales Operations

Consider establishing a channel sales operations role that reports to the head of channel sales and manages the day-to-day execution of partner programs. Tracking partner sales performance, managing partner onboarding and addressing channel conflict issues would also fall to the channel sales operations leader.

5) Cloud: New Paradigm Solutions for the Channel

Cloud offerings move into the mainstream in 2015 and channel sales leaders must determine whether current partners are ready and willing to sell new cloud solutions. Surveys and advisory meetings centered on cloud will help undercover partner training and education gaps that suppliers must address to promote the sale of cloud-based offerings.

Jumpstart your 2015 planning by downloading the full SiriusDecisions Research Brief: Channel Sales: Planning Assumptions 2015 and let us know your key focus areas for channel sales in 2015.

The post Planning for 2015? Focus on Partner and Supplier Sales Activity appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Marketing Moves Front and Center

In the past, channel partners were focused entirely on the sales process. However, due to significant changes in the way prospects educate themselves prior to purchasing, the initial steps in today’s sales process are now the responsibility of marketing. In order to support marketing efforts, channel partners require advanced marketing automation capabilities that allow them to use a variety of digital marketing techniques, including web, social media, paid online advertising, telemarketing, email and more, to educate and nurture prospects, and share their unique value in an integrated way.

Zift Solutions provides the strongest platform to support the success of channel partners, allowing OEMs and suppliers the unparalleled capacity to flexibly deliver best-in-class digital marketing capabilities to their channel partners. But even the best marketing automation tools alone aren’t enough.

Marketing Advocate Expands Our Expertise and Capabilities

A fellow Gartner “Cool Vendor” with 14 years of experience in supporting channel marketing, Marketing Advocate has a wealth of channel marketing knowledge to share with our organization and customers. By combining our teams, Zift will be able to provide an unmatched level of expertise along with expanded channel marketing automation capabilities and resources to execute turn-key campaigns for channel partners. We’ve already welcomed Marketing Advocate employees to Zift Solutions. All of our users will soon be able to leverage Marketing Advocate’s workflows and content on top of Zift’s leading platform to drive even better results.

We’ve developed a landing page to share more information about Zift’s acquisition of Marketing Advocate and the benefits it will bring to our customers. I encourage you to visit it here and contact us directly to learn more.

The post A New Era for Channel Sales and Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Rather than jumping straight into demand generation, follow these best practices to make the most of your lead generation investments and put an end to the leaky sales pipeline syndrome.

What’s Causing the Leaks?

The sad fact is, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert to sales. The most common cause for this poor performance? Lack of lead nurturing.

If your partners aren’t prepared to properly qualify and nurture leads, you’re wasting money on prospects that aren’t ready to buy. Instead of pouring more money into lead generation for a leaky sales pipeline, start shoring up your investments by ensuring that partners have engaging websites with targeted, relevant content along with the visibility to actively monitor site visitor activity and qualify leads.

Partners also require a solid social media presence complete with syndicated content to push fresh content to multiple social media sites and position themselves as experts in the marketplace. They’ll also need tools to help them properly qualify leads, such a telemarketing call scripts. Without proper qualification of leads, prospects fail to connect with prospects and the cost spent to create the lead is often wasted.

Put Nurturing Before Demand Generation

Once marketing and sales qualification strategies are in place, then you can move on to nurturing and lead generation. According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. A lack of nurturing leads can lead to a huge loss of potential revenue, so focus partner efforts on nurturing before net new demand generation.

Seal the Leaks to Seal More Deals

Partner support will increase the number of qualified leads your team can convert to sales, so be sure to give partners the tools they need to build their pipeline and avoid the leaking:

• Ensure partners have their tele-qualification roles defined with scripts to improve the effectiveness of outreach efforts.
• Support partner social media efforts and expand your reach with social media syndication.
• Provide content and technology to ensure partners are able to nurture leads and stay top of mind even when they are not yet ready to buy.
• Improve partners’ online presence with dynamic content syndication to ensure brand consistency, enhance visibility and capture detailed analytics about site visitors.
• If you are already generating leads for your partners, use automated lead distribution to quickly and easily distribute leads to partner sales teams and gain visibility into what is actually happening with shared leads.
• Offer demand generation elements, such as PPC/online advertising and email marketing to drive additional leads for the partners – but not until tele-qualification and nurturing efforts have been firmly established.

Has your sales pipeline sprung a leak? What are you doing to help partners seal pipeline leaks, qualify leads and nurture leads through to close?

The post Putting an End to the Leaky Pipe Syndrome appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Of course today’s channel partners know that they need engaging web content to target modern buyers. But actually keeping up with the constant demand for web content that connects with prospects, supports supplier branding and demonstrates their own expertise is another story entirely.

Rarely do busy channel partners have the time or resources to develop and maintain fresh website content that works. They also typically have very little insight into whether their content is connecting with site visitors or the analytics to measure what’s working – and what’s missing the mark.

Content Syndication powers partner perspectives by embedding syndicated supplier content directly into channel partner websites. Dynamic Content Syndication works best, boosting conversion rates by up to 50% as it automatically adjusts to the interests, online behavior and personal characteristics of website visitors. With time already a significant factor, integration is also essential for success. Partners shouldn’t have to seek out approved content or log into separate systems to access, download and make the content they need work within their websites.

Empower Partner Success

The latest eBook from Zift, Content Syndication: A 360-Degree View of the Channel, demonstrates the value of Dynamic Content Syndication across the channel and illustrates exactly how channel partners can use it to:

• Target modern buyers and increase conversion rates with embedded website content that adjusts automatically based on the site visitor’s industry, behavior, interests and more
• Capture deeper prospecting data and stay on top of supplier messaging and offers
• Easily personalize and customize content displays to highlight their unique value proposition
• Measure activity, respond to behavior of site visitors and modify marketing efforts to ensure the best possible ROI
• Generate more leads and drive sales by leveraging syndicated content for email, social media and pay-per-click campaigns

Read the eBook to find out how Content Syndication empowers partner success while strengthening supplier sight lines. You’ll get expert insight, best practices and real-world results from channel partners benefiting from Zift’s Dynamic Content Syndication solution today.

Want a (free) copy of our new content syndication eBook? See below:

Content Syndication: A 360-Degree View of the Channel

Find out how to lift the burden of content creation for your partners, boost conversion rates by 50% and enhance visibility across the sales cycle.

Download Free eBook

 

The post Powering Partner Perspectives with Content Syndication appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The simple fact is, poor websites and poor website content are immediate disqualifiers in the sales process. Yet most channel partners have limited time and often lack the expertise to develop content that attracts buyers and re-enforces supplier branding. Moreover, channel partners and their suppliers typically have little insight into how website content is consumed by visitors — and don’t have the analytic capabilities to measure results.

Address Content and Visibility Challenges Head On

Content Syndication is a proven, straight-forward marketing tactic that addresses these challenges head on with the automatic delivery of targeted, relevant website content into channel partner websites. Partners get the content and control they desire. Prospects get relevant and personalized content to propel them through the sales cycle faster. And suppliers can protect their brand, measure what’s working (and what’s not) and get a 360-degree view of the channel.

Our new eBook, Content Syndication: A 360-Degree View of the Channel, details best practices for Content Syndication and demonstrates the value of Dynamic Content Syndication, which automatically embeds and adjusts content based on a website visitor’s unique interests, online behavior and personal characteristics. Through this new valuable resource, you’ll learn how to:

• Boost conversion rates by 50% with dynamic content syndication
• Auto-adjust content to match prospect interests and behavior
• Maintain brand consistency across partner communities
• Actively track site visits, content consumption and results

Read the eBook to explore the need and value of Content Syndication and check back for follow-up blog posts that dig deeper into the specific benefits of content syndication for partners, the vital importance of integration with established CRM and SFA systems, as well as the real results channel partners are seeing with Dynamic Content Syndication.

Want a (free) copy of our new content syndication eBook? See below:

Content Syndication: A 360-Degree View of the Channel

Find out how to lift the burden of content creation for your partners, boost conversion rates by 50% and enhance visibility across the sales cycle.

Download Free eBook

 

The post Content Syndication: A 360-Degree View of the Channel appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Last week I participated in the Marketo Marketing Nation virtual event as part of a The Balancing Act: Making Global Marketing Work, with Charm Bianchini, Senior Director of Marketing at Marketo, Robin Daniels, Head of Enterprise Product and Industry Marketing for Box, and Uzair Dada, CEO of Iron Horse Interactive.  Part of Marketo’s engaging Road to Success series, our discussion was packed with insights channel marketers can use and centered on the opportunities, benefits and challenges of implementing a global marketing strategy across multiple markets.  For those of you that may have missed it, we discussed some of the best ways to serve diverse markets across multiple channels with global marketing resources, including:

• Which marketing components are best managed locally versus globally
• The vital importance of developing an understanding of local markets, regions and customs
• Best practices for measuring results and determining the success of global campaigns
• How to strike a balance while creating local, regional and global content
• Key insights for determining the right vehicles for campaign roll outs

One of the core challenges we explored was how to deliver relevant messages to local markets without fracturing your global unified voice.  While you do need a unified voice for effective global marketing, you still need to tailor your message to local territories. That local “hook” is often essential to connecting with a target audience to capture attention and drive sales.

The panelists noted that too much time is often spent trying to coordinate, modify and distribute appropriate content and messaging.  Content Syndication and Social Media Syndication tools can overcome these challenges by ensuring that a consistent message is delivered across all markets and channels while providing the flexibility to customize content and messaging for local markets.

To garner the best results, the panelists noted that content and social media syndication should be part of an integrated marketing strategy that is centrally built and managed, but can be easily executed on a global scale.  A common delivery and analytic structure is required to track campaigns and measure results and integration with established systems can boost success rates.

Learn more by listening to the entire event, which is not only chock full of global marketing insights, but also includes real-world examples of successful global campaigns.  LISTEN NOW.  Then share with us your thoughts on the importance of going global and any insights you may have learned in the process.

The post The Balancing Act: Making Global Marketing Work appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Click here to read part 1 – Rethinking Lead Distribution to Transform Opportunities into Real Revenue
Click here to read part 2 – How to Introduce and Optimize Automated Lead Distribution
Click here to read part 3 – Why Lead Nurturing is Essential to Channel Partner Success

Measuring results & tracking ROI are key to channel success

Automating lead distribution and providing deeper prospecting data that partners can use to nurture leads are essential to capturing more channel revenue. But success relies on more than getting leads to channel partners fast, and arming them with great prospecting data. Suppliers still need a clear line of sight into partner sales activities to measure results and track ROI.

To determine the most effective areas on which to spend time and money – and to close the loop between themselves and their partners, suppliers need to see:

• Leads provided to channel partners
• Which campaigns and activities actually generated leads
• Lead status updates and conversion rates
• Time and money spent generating and delivering leads to partners

This level of expanded detail along with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be available to suppliers at a glance, either via easy-to-generate reports or within suppliers’ established Marketing Automation (MA) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems. Critical data, such as partner name, lead status, a partner’s reasons for accepting or rejecting a lead should be at the supplier’s fingertips, within the systems they use most.

Automating updates and reporting saves time and delivers unmatched visibility suppliers can use to get a clear picture of what’s happening with leads. Activity across the lifecycle of a lead can be actively updated, monitored and shared between suppliers and their partners, enabling intelligent, collaborative conversations. And suppliers can stop playing the guessing game with their marketing dollars, and instead use analytics and quantitative feedback to adjust their marketing efforts for the highest returns.

Learn more about the powerful role visibility and analytics can and should play within lead distribution management in Zift’s latest eBook: The 4 Simple Steps to Drive Channel Sales with Rules-Based Lead Distribution.

4 Simple Steps to Drive Channel Sales with Rules-Based Lead Distribution

Find out how you can transform lead distribution and empower channel partner success with this insightful eBook!

Download Free eBook

 

The post Do You Have a Clear Line of Site Into Partner Lead Activity? (Part 4 of 4) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Why?

To connect with prospects and drive sales, channel partners need sales-qualified leads reliably delivered to the right people at the right time directly where they work. They also need direct visibility across the lifecycle of a lead in order to track lead activity and easily share updates and results with suppliers. This requires infrastructure and expertise that many channel partners just don’t have.

Current Solutions Just Don’t Cut It

The fact is, most channel partners use sub-optimal point solutions such as email, CRM systems and Excel to receive and manage leads. The manual processes required to use such tools for marketing and lead distribution are time consuming and error-prone. Deal Registration and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) systems are also limited. Adoption of these systems is poor and visibility remains problematic, which leaves channel partners without the tools, qualified leads and insight they need to succeed.

As we’ve seen these critical challenges first-hand at Zift Solutions, we’ve recently developed a new eBook that details a dramatically different approach to lead distribution and shares best practices along with tips for using Through Partner Marketing Automation (TPMA) to nurture leads that don’t go straight to close. You’ll learn how to

• Automate lead delivery with rules-based lead distribution
• Deliver leads directly into the systems channel partners use every day
• Improve the type and quality of lead data passed to partners
• Automate reporting and track ROI
• Incorporate best practices to establish a more collaborative and successful sales process

To transform opportunities into real revenue, read 4 Simple Steps to Drive Channel Sales with Rules-Based Lead Distribution. Then be sure to check back for follow-up blog posts, in which we’ll discuss individual steps in greater detail to help you optimize lead distribution and empower channel partners to close more deals.

4 Simple Steps to Drive Channel Sales with Rules-Based Lead Distribution

Find out how you can transform lead distribution and empower channel partner success with this insightful eBook!

Download Free eBook

 

The post Rethinking Lead Distribution to Transform Opportunities into Real Revenue (Part 1 of 4) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

How Have Channel Partners Reacted?

Due to the ongoing delivery structure of cloud services and SaaS, suppliers can secure long-term revenue streams and improve customer choice while expanding their portfolios with SaaS and cloud services. Yet, despite the growing market for both cloud and SaaS, many channel partners are resistant to selling these services. Why? According to Cloud Industry Forum, many feel that the market is not ready to embrace cloud services, with 53% of survey respondents citing security concerns, 44% a lack of market understanding, 42% customer desires for on-premise infrastructure, solutions and delivery and 33% indicating that there is too much to lose if cloud isn’t successful. Many channel partners worry about cannibalization of existing revenue, lower sales values and vendors creating a direct relationship with their customers.

They often have deep concerns regarding compensation, billing and margins along with increased competition from cloud resellers, vendors and XSPs. Moreover, cloud and SaaS require a higher-velocity, more direct approach to sales, which means that channel marketers and sales reps must be more active and engaged with prospects in order to close more business. In fact, a recent cloud computing survey conducted by Dell and Techaisle showed the 69% of SMBs prefer to procure their SaaS applications from a single trusted integration specialist or vendor.

How Can Suppliers Help Channel Partners Overcome These Barriers?

To overcome these barriers, channel partners require more support from suppliers as they shift from selling traditional on-premise solutions to subscription-based SaaS and cloud services. Suppliers must ease compensation concerns as they transition partners to SaaS and cloud with clear communication and even incentives. For example, VMware has offered cloud credits to help VARs transition their businesses and other suppliers are sure to follow suit. Suppliers should help their channel partners extend their ‘trusted advisor’ status into the cloud with more education, including training and certifications covering new products, business models and sales techniques. Educating and helping channel partners refine their sales techniques to present themselves as business consultants will ensure they are better positioned to take advantage of the upswing in cloud and SaaS.

What other plans do you have for 2014 to help your channel partners succeed? Let us know in the comments section below.

4 Simple Steps to Drive Channel Sales with Rules-Based Lead Distribution

Find out how you can transform lead distribution and empower channel partner success with this insightful eBook!

Download Free eBook

 

The post Navigating the Shift to SaaS and Cloud-Based Services appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Analytics are also essential in determining which efforts generate the best leads and ROI. However, as data is often siloed across multiple marketing channels, it’s difficult for many suppliers to determine which programs are working, need attention or should be discontinued. With the right analytics, you can easily monitor the effectiveness of your marketing programs, analyze results of specific campaigns and promotions, and tweak future programs to boost results.

Make it a Team Effort

Optimizing marketing campaigns requires dedication from both the supplier and channel partners along with direct visibility into pipeline data. An integrated analytics platform that combines supplier-side campaign information with results from participating partners can help everyone see if appropriate leads are getting into the pipeline and effectively measure ROI.

Take the time to measure and review metrics that matter by:

Using an Integrated Analytics Platform

Easily track the impact of the resources and materials you’ve provided, including whether marketing campaigns are being used, which are producing the best (and worst) results. Then focus efforts on the programs that provide superior ROI.

Getting a 360-Degree View

Industry analysts estimate that marketers spend an average of 25% of their marketing budget on digital marketing (sometimes as much as 50%), yet few have the tools to measure how well this tactic is performing. Get complete data visibility that illustrates partner engagement and whether funds are being used effectively with integrated analytics.

Tracking Key Performance Indicators

KPIs, including partner adoption, lead generation goals and campaign effectiveness, provide a great way to measure growth and performance. Be sure to keep track of KPIs and, when warranted, drill down into the details for a deeper understanding of what’s working and what’s not.

Leveraging Integrated Reporting Tools

Invest the time and resources to integrate with reporting tools such as CRMs and marketing automations systems. For the best results, your solutions should integrate seamlessly with your partners’ CRM and sales processes.

Learn More

This blog post is the fourth part in our series which aims to help suppliers take actionable steps towards successful channel partner marketing and help them work collaboratively to drive sales.

Click here to read part 1 – Times Have Changed: The Sales Environment Evolution
Click here to read part 2 – 3 Key Steps to Building Effective Marketing Campaigns
Click here to read part 3 – How to Secure Your Channel Partners’ Buy-In

To learn even more about optimizing campaigns to ensure channel marketing success by downloading Zift’s latest eBook: 3 Steps to Successful Channel Partner Marketing – Working Collaboratively to Drive Sales.

The post Deliver Continued Channel Success through Optimization (Part 4 of 4) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Here are a few simple steps you can take to secure partner engagement and buy-in to help them drive sales:

Simplify Campaigns

With limited (or no) marketing resources, channel partners are often overwhelmed trying to support multiple vendors and product lines. They need your help and support in order to drive awareness about your solutions and services and nurture leads. Through partner marketing automation solutions simplify marketing complexities and enable turnkey execution of coordinated co-branded campaigns that leverage a wide array of marketing tactics and activities.

Goal-driven marketing menus are another effective and easy way to lift the burden from channel partners, allowing you to communicate expectations, tactics, available content and expected results at a glance.

Drive Adoption

Suppliers not only have to invest resources to make it simple to use their campaigns, they must also actively promote what is available to channel partners. In fact, 20 to 30% of your total partnership support budget should be earmarked toward driving awareness and adoption of your marketing programs. To drive partner adoption, suppliers should:

• Personalize marketing programs to reflect channel partners’ brands
• Deliver the flexibility to incorporate partners’ knowledge and expertise
• Demonstrate the unique value channel partners bring to the table
• Address the unique pain points of channel partners’ target audience(s)

When you do so, you position yourself as an advocate and give partners confidence that their own messaging and value propositions will be incorporated into your campaigns. To further benefit channel partners and drive adoption, consider offering ongoing training and incentives, limiting reporting requirements and coordinating with Channel Account Managers and Partner Business Managers to promote efforts and gain feedback into what’s working and why.

Learn More

Learn more about securing partner buy-in and ensuring channel marketing success by downloading Zift’s latest eBook: 3 Steps to Success Channel Partner Marketing – Working Collaboratively to Drive Sales.

The post How to Secure Your Channel Partners’ Buy-In (Part 3 of 4) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Navigating these changes can be difficult, especially for channel partners who lack the resources and expertise to properly position your solutions and services. Building co-branded campaigns that leverage supplier-side materials and expertise to help channel partners close more deals fast is essential.

You can empower partners with effective marketing campaigns that optimize their ability to drive channel sales by following these three (3) critical steps:

Step 1: Develop a Multi-Tactic Strategy

As your direct line to the marketplace, channel partners need an effective marketing strategy and your help building integrated, multi-tactic campaigns that nurture engagement with qualified prospects. Without a multi-tactic marketing strategy that encompasses an optimized website, social media content, email outreach, newsletters, telemarketing and more, channel marketing efforts will fall flat. However, coordinating and managing a multi-tactic marketing strategy is tough. Marketing automation makes multi-channel marketing easier by providing channel partners with the solutions they need to engage prospects (such as content and social media syndication and efficient lead distribution) without increasing their workload.

Step 2: Nurture Demand

Investing in lead nurturing is critical and an ongoing, automated touch process is required to generate sales opportunities at lower costs. Suppliers can and should establish themselves as a primary resource for channel marketers by providing an integrated marketing platform that makes it easy for partners to educate prospects and customers across today’s extended sales process.

Step 3: Set the Stage for Collaboration

Channel partners deliver the best results for the suppliers who offer support that aligns directly with their current sales incentives. By working closely with channel partners to understand their needs and end goals, suppliers set the stage for collaboration and are better positioned to provide more effective marketing campaigns that resonate with prospects.

Effective collaboration requires connected systems in order to share all marketing touches. Using integrated marketing platforms; channel partners can execute complete multi-tactic campaigns, capture and track leads. As a best practice, be sure to take full advantage of extensions built into enterprise marketing automation systems (such as AppCloud extensions in Eloqua or Marketo Markplace add-ons) to connect with your partner community and enhance the value and impact of total solutions.

Learn more about the sales environment evolution and the 3 Steps to Successful Channel Partner Marketing in our new eBook.

The post 3 Key Steps to Building Effective Marketing Campaigns (Part 2 of 4) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

It’s a Buyer’s Market

It’s a buyer’s market – and prospects have changed the way they evaluate and purchase big ticket items. Instead of contacting a salesperson directly, today’s buyers typically kick off the research process with an Internet search. When they do reach out to an actual sales professional, they’ve already scoured the Web for relevant data regarding the goods and services they desire. Thus, the burden of delivering pre-sales product information, including key differentiators and value propositions, has largely shifted from sales to marketing. Responding to and supporting this shift amplifies the importance of marketing and calls for critical changes in how companies structure and deliver content to prospects.

Self-Directed Learning Requires New Tactics

Traditional marketing tactics just don’t cut it anymore. Today, targeted content marketing is required to effectively capture the attention of buyers engaged in self-directed learning. Marketers must generate and push quality, customized content to buyers that is relevant to where they are in the buying cycle. And marketers often need new resources, including marketing automation tools, such as those provided by Zift Solutions, Eloqua, Marketo, ExactTarget and Hubspot, to deploy content marketing effectively and manage leads throughout the sales lifecycle.

Taking On Channel Partner Marketing Challenges

Unfortunately, most channel partners lack the marketing experience and resources to take on the challenges brought on by the sales environment evolution. To significantly impact channel partners’ pipelines and results, suppliers have an opportunity (if not responsibility) to step up and help their partners:

• Provide access to infrastructure, solutions and strategic insight to effectively leverage content marketing
• Build effective marketing campaigns, including developing a multi-tactic strategy, setting the stage for collaboration and nurturing demand.
• Deliver continued success through optimization, which involves active monitoring, analysis and tweaks to provide value and capture sales.

Be sure to check out “3 Steps to Successful Channel Partner Marketing: Working Collaboratively to Drive Sales” and learn how to:

1. Build an Effective Marketing Campaign
2. Secure Channel Partner’s Buy-in
3. Deliver Continued Success through Optimization.

The post Times Have Changed: The Sales Environment Evolution (Part 1 of 4) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Our research shows that the average channel partner juggles between five and 13 vendor relationships. This means it is not enough just to sign up a channel partner. Significant effort still has to be invested in making sure they engage. This is the challenge facing vendors: how to become the preferred vendor for partners and drive partner loyalty.

Reframe Partner Relations

The channel marketer’s goal is to become the go-to vendor—and to lead the pack by the widest possible margin. Making the partner a valued ally is the key. Treating partners as equal go-to-market collaborators—not merely as links in a supply chain—is the differentiator that works.

Walk in Their Shoes

Savvy vendors will feel their partners’ pain—by providing help with services and solutions that alleviate strains on resources and save time for over-worked partner CEO’s. The difficulty of tapping into vendor marketing programs and the fear of being smothered by the vendor’s brand are chief obstacles to partner buy-in. These barriers are magnified by the shear volume of marketing activities and materials vendors are pushing the partner to undertake.

Channel marketers need to show that they understand and appreciate their partners’ difficulties.

Make It Easy to Maximize Vendor and Partner Results

Because partners are so busy, the key is to minimize their work in jointly selling your solution. Channel Marketing Automation solutions must be easy to use, employ best practices, generate leads and support the channel partner’s brand. If a system meets these requirements, the collaboration works for both vendor and partner.

Specifically, is the user interface intuitive and quick? Does the solution address fears by giving the partner “top billing” (personalization) in all marketing communications? For example, do vendor marketing activities leave room for each partner to promote its own value proposition? Does the partner have easy, real-time access to analytics that track meaningful metrics? Does the solution integrate smoothly with the partner’s preferred CRM application and sales process? And a crucial detail: do all links in co-branded activities and communications take leads to the partner’s rather than the vendor’s website?

Lead the Pack

The vendor that provides partners with a co-marketing program that reduces costs, is easy to use and saves time will lead the pack. The advantages of reframing the vendor-partner relationship are many: gaining and retaining partner loyalty, reducing costs and boosting profits for both businesses.

Finally, vendors who want to effect real change in their relationships with partners must commit to a real change in attitude. To make true believers of partners, vendors must first become true believers in this mutually beneficial model. Taking on and surmounting this challenge can set in motion a new and lasting market dominance for adaptive vendors and their channel partners.

Supplier:  What changes are you making to your program in order to “lead the pack?” 

Partner:  Have you noticed a difference in relationship and loyalty from your supplier? 

The post Steps For Becoming Your Channel Partners’ Preferred Vendor appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Not to get too preachy here, but good partnering is about partners bringing out the best in each other. The only way that works is when you and your partners share best practices. You are thinking you do that already? While most programs are pretty good at working together in some areas, most programs fall woefully short when it comes to marketing. If you are working with marketing automation, you’ve gained a wealth of knowledge about how to market effectively. However, in way too many cases channel programs have not taken the necessary steps to bring these best practices to their partner communities.

What do I mean? If you have embraced marketing automation, you know that nurturing works.  It revives tons of opportunities from being squandered. You understand the value of having detailed information about your prospects. You’ve seen the increase in close rates. You know measuring ROI is essential to your success. It allows your campaigns to continually get better. You know automation works. It makes your digital marketing efforts manageable. If you know all this stuff, why do you let your partners continue to market the old way?

I’ve heard all the excuses. Channel partners don’t have the content budgets or the marketing people to make what works for you, work for them. Well… while that might have been true in the past, people with channel partners now have no excuses. You need to check out your marketing automation vendor’s extension framework. With channel marketing automation, you can now extend your marketing automation campaigns so they can directly support your channel partners’ activities.

What does that mean? It means your partners get co-branded campaigns, where they leverage YOUR workflows and content, but have it automatically changed to support THEIR branding. It means you get collaborative selling where, after passing a lead off to a channel partner, both you and your channel partner can see all the marketing interactions with either company. And it means that you get closed loop reporting on marketing, where you can see your partners’ pipeline activities by connecting to their existing systems.  You don’t have to ask your busy partners to do any extra work just to keep you informed.

Now that is sharing your marketing automation advantage.  That means your partners benefit from your expertise and do marketing right.

The post Treating Channel Partners Like Partners appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Earlier today Gartner and 1to1 gave out their CRM excellence awards. For integrated marketing performance the two winners were Eaton and Autodesk. Gartner/1to1 felt that these companies did the best job at combining multiple marketing tactics to deliver exception results.

In Eaton’s case, their campaign, “Things Have Changed” combined tactics including print, banner advertising, email, direct mail, social media, desk toys, sweepstakes, and a specialized website SwitchOn.eaton.com.  With this integrated approach, Eaton identified $2M worth of new opportunities and added 12,000 leads.

Autodesk’s marketing innovation was around adding a gamification aspect to their trial software. Players earned badges and points as they moved through the trial, these accomplishments were shared across social media sites (earning additional points), and a leader board was set up so players could see how they stacked up against their peers. Emails were sent to encourage players to continually make progress. End result: Autodesk had over 600 trial users play the game (a 10% increase) and, with those trials, usage was up over 50%.

Congratulations to both companies!

And, if you can indulge me in one self promoting observation, their recognition as marketing leaders is especially gratifying knowing that both companies have chosen to work with Zift Solutions in bringing their marketing expertise out though their channel communities.

The post And the Winner in Marketing is… appeared first on Zift Solutions.

If you’ve been following the press about marketing, you’ve seen the stories. A few weeks ago the CMO Council declared 2013 as, “The Year of the Marketer”. Forbes is publishing articles like, “Why 2013 Is The Year Of The Marketer”.  And, the CMO Council’s benchmarking report found an amazing 82% of marketers believe they already have what they need to achieve senior management’s top-line revenue growth goals.

Interest on Wall Street has also been heating up.  With recent acquisitions of Pardot by ExactTagret, MarketingPilot by Microsoft, and Eloqua by Oracle, B2B marketing platforms are going mainstream with inclusion into the leading Enterprise Software Suites.

I believe all this activity is happening because the role of data in marketing has, not only been recognized, but has also been proven out by the results of the early adopters. Tools and business processes have matured to the point where it is no longer cost prohibitive to track marketing interactions, scientifically test different messaging, and systematically optimize the results.

What does this mean for partner programs and for co-branded marketing efforts? Because there is the extra dimension of coordinating the efforts of the vendor with his channel partner, getting the benefits of big data in marketing through partners takes a bit longer to prove out.  That said, there are great solutions (like Zift Solutions) that are pushing the envelope to provide these benefits.  With the new momentum behind marketing, it is getting ever easier for these companies to both sign up new clients, and raise additional investment capital to speed delivery of improved channel partner support capabilities.

That is why I would say that 2013 is the year that publicizes the success that early adopters have had with automated, tracked and integrated thru-partner marketing efforts, while it won’t be until 2014 until this type of partner support becomes a “must have” for every credible program.

Predictions are always tricky, but I find them useful even when they don’t pan out.  Do you think I’m on track? What do you see on the horizon in marketing trends? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!

The post How 2013’s Emphasis on Marketing Effects Partner Programs appeared first on Zift Solutions.

When you are trying to help your channel partner promote their products, one of the most frustrating things that can happen is when you put in a lot of time and money offering them a marketing program, and they either ignore it or don’t use it correctly.

I hear about this happening time and time again in our industry, and it is a problem that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. And, it’s a shame because if you’ve invested a good deal of time and money into marketing efforts that can benefit both you and your partner, you are losing money if they are not being implemented effectively.

The reason this happens so often is that your channel partners probably don’t know how to implement your marketing program effectively. It is, in some ways, outside their area of expertise.

A way around this problem is to implement marketing certification as part of your ongoing best practices. Using marketing certification, you can train one or more key members of your channel partner’s team in how to effectively use the marketing material you have supplied them.

In addition to providing them the necessary skills, a certification program has the added benefit of increasing your mindshare with your channel partners.

Once your channel partner can see the benefits of using your materials and understands how to use them, both you and your channel partner will generate more sales and profits together.

Of course, the challenge here is how to get your channel partners to dedicate the time to have one of their team members achieve marketing certification. The best way to do this is to incentivize the training.

Offer them access to funds that can be used to implement the marketing program as soon as a team member achieves certification status. Getting more money into their marketing budget or access to reduced price marketing materials makes the training time a good investment for your channel partners, and can motivate them to become involved in your program.

Making marketing certification part of your overall best practices will pay dividends into the future as your partners start to actually use the marketing materials you’ve provided them with – and use them correctly.

The post Marketing Certification: A Best Practice in Channel Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Managing channel partnership relationships has never been as important as it is today. Given how competitive the economy has become and how everyone is trying to cut costs, making the most out of your channel partnerships has never been more essential.

A few years ago, companies could get by with having a large number of mediocre channel partner relationships. Now, most companies want to have a limited number of finely tuned and highly effective channel partners instead.

But, how can you create a great channel partner relationship? There are two ways – through communication, and through automation.

When it comes to communication, you have to make sure that you have at least one person on your staff that is responsible for person-to-person communication with your channel partners. Those who can figure out exactly what partners need to make the most of the relationship, and then provide them with the tools, are the ones who will realize measurable value.

Being able to really listen to the needs of your channel partners is a great way to make sure everyone profits from the relationship.

Automation is also important. Companies are getting by with fewer and fewer employees these days, so any part of the process that can be automated should be. This is particularly easy if you are offering your channel partners solutions such as syndicated content for their site, email marketing campaigns or helping them with social media syndication.

For example, in the area of syndication, you can set it up so that your partner doesn’t really have to do much of anything – the new content will automatically publish on their website and on their social media feeds. With the right solution, your partner simply has to stick in a line of code on their website and the rest is taken care of automatically.

Of course, it’s your channel marketing expert who is having person-to-person contact with your partner and has to make them aware of the benefits of channel marketing automation. Once they realize it delivers real marketing value without increasing their workload, they’ll be happy to get on board – and your channel partnership will be more profitable for both of you.

The post Communication And Automation Are The Keys To Successful Channel Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

When I talk to people about their marketing efforts with their channel partners, I’m often surprised at some of the obvious tools that companies either don’t know about, or know about and don’t use, because they don’t realize how powerful they are.

One of the most frequent cases I’ve noticed is when companies either don’t know about or don’t use ad retargeting. It doesn’t make sense to me, because ad retargeting is easy to implement, cost effective, and consistently delivers results. Yet, many companies don’t even know what it is.

Ad retargeting is an incredibly simple concept. A potential customer comes to your site and browses products or services. When they do so, a cookie is automatically installed on their computer.

Now, most people don’t make a purchase the first time they visit a site, and eventually they’ll click to another site. This is where ad retargeting comes in. The cookie that you have placed on their computer will cause your ads to show up on the pages of other sites they visit.  This can have a huge impact on your brand awareness!

Clicking on the ad automatically brings visitors back to the page you specify on your site for the products and services they are interested in. Studies have shown that this tactic is so effective it can bring between 42 and 70 percent of visitors back to the site within a 24-hour period.

Not only can vendors bring these window shoppers back to their own site, but they can also configure the ads to Bring them back to the channel partner’s site – and away from competitor sites – greatly increasing the chance of a purchase through the channel partner. It’s really that simple.

You can even modify your ad retargeting efforts to increase the chance of converting the site visitor into a customer. You know what product or service they are interested in, so you could have the ad redirect them to a page with a special discount offer or coupon code. If you let them know this discount is only available for a limited time, you are strongly motivating them to buy from your channel partner more urgently. That’s good for your bottom line and that of your partner.

Once ad retargeting is up and running, it goes on autopilot. There’s not much more you need to do, so once you’ve gone through the initial effort of setting it up, you reap the benefits of brand awareness, revenue and profit.

I sometimes find it surprising that more companies are not using ad retargeting. It’s so simple effective, and elegant – and if you offer it to your channel partners, both of you will see increased revenue as the result.

The post Branding & Profits Through Ad Retargeting appeared first on Zift Solutions.

This is one of those eat your own dog food things. You know marketing works, which is why you create marketing programs for your channel partners to pick up. But getting adoption requires channel partners to get excited about your programs. You have to market your marketing.

But a more typical situation is that a company will put a lot of time and money into marketing programs that their partners can use, and then put little thought and/or budget into promoting the program.

This happens time and time again, and can be frustrating for any company trying to make the most out of their channel marketing relationship. After all, what’s the point in creating a great marketing program if it’s going to be dormant and not help drive sales?

The problem that most companies seem to have is that they don’t realize how much time and resources they need not only to make their partners aware of their marketing programs, but also to actively use them.

For the most part, companies underestimate the amount of work they are going to have to put into getting their partners to pick up their joint marketing programs. Because of this, they don’t allocate enough money to marketing the materials themselves.

In other words, their funding for joint marketing is out of whack.

At a recent conference, Sirius Decisions analyst Laz Gonzalez talked about their recommended allocation of partner support dollars being 28% going into marketing programs that partners can use, and 18% going into promotion to make the partners aware of the program.

That seems about right to me. This means that a full 46 percent of your budget to support your channel partnership should go into the creation of joint marketing materials and bringing awareness of the programs themselves.

Most companies at this point don’t put anywhere near that much money into their joint marketing programs, but that needs to change. Otherwise, the money you do invest in joint marketing will be wasted, because your channel partners will not be either aware of the joint marketing or motivated to use it.

Another consideration should be the amount of time you devote to getting your partners to get on board with the joint marketing effort. You take the time to train them about your product line – but do you also take the time to train them in how to implement your joint marketing programs?

Companies should have separate training sessions dedicated to teaching their partners how to use their joint marketing efforts. And, they should offer their partners incentives to actually put that training into practice.

The post Channel Marketing Programs Need Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The goal of any channel partner relationship is for both partners to make money and grow sales. That’s why we enter into these partnerships in the first place. Because of the nature of the channel marketing relationship, it makes sense to find ways to help and encourage your partners to make the sales that will drive profits for both of you.

There are two common mistakes that vendors make – and both of them come from the idea that they need to provide an added incentive to their partners to make sales rather than actually helping them grow their own businesses, which will in turn drive sales.

One common practice that doesn’t work as well as you might think, is offering channel partners a prize if they provide you with a given number of hot leads to whom we can market our products or services. This rarely works, because the partners’ main focus will always be on making their own sales rather than helping the vendor make sales.

The other common practice that tends to fail is offering channel partners additional funds for their own marketing efforts if they meet a target sales goal. This fails for two reasons. One, if they are able to make the sales goals, they already have an effective marketing effort in place and are unlikely to need additional marketing funds. The second reason this doesn’t work is that the vendor has no idea how the partner will spend the additional funding, and it may often be spent on ill-conceived marketing efforts.

The practice that does work is providing channel partners with marketing materials that have been tested and proven in the market place to help generate more sales. Giving them high-quality marketing content – branded with their company name, logo, and partner value proposition – allows them to sell more of your products and services as well as their own.

The better the sales content you provide your channel partners – and the easier it is for them to use the sales content – the more money both companies will make.

The bottom line is that providing your channel partners incentives will only work to a point, but providing them with the tools they need to make more sales does work. Therefore, if you want to make the most out of your channel partner relationship, provide them with the marketing content they need to generate more revenue.

Be easy to do business with. Be easy to grow business with.

The post Empowerment Is Key To The Channel Partner Relationship appeared first on Zift Solutions.

In 2012, it’s become clear that channel marketing is becoming an increasingly complex and competitive business. New technologies and marketing strategies ranging from social media to the cloud are changing the landscape very quickly.

This means that companies are going to have to focus on keeping their channel partners even happier than before. You can’t take your partner relationships for granted at all any more.

That’s why I thought I’d take some time to talk about best practices in channel marketing that are the most important in this environment. Companies that stick to these best practices are more likely to survive the sea change that is going through our industry than those that don’t.

Stop The Hype!

We used to spend a lot of time and effort hyping ourselves up and screaming about how much value we can bring to the partnership. These days companies are very wary of hype, so try to tone down your sales message to make it more credible.

Trust is Your Most Important Asset

No matter what industry you are in, you have a lot of competition. And, all of you are probably trying to offer the best deals to your existing and potential channel partners. The main reason why a company will choose your company for a channel partnership is that they trust you. So, always be honest and as transparent as possible during your interactions with your partners.

Help Your Partners Out When They Have Problems

Challenging problems come up in business each and every day. Whether it’s a product launch or a new marketing campaign, your channel partners are going to face tasks that are daunting. If you can help them with those tasks or even take over some of them completely, you’ll be the channel partner they want to keep working with.

Be Open With Your Channel Partners

Don’t try to hold back corporate secrets unless you have to. Instead, share your strategies and tactics with them. Let them know how you are going to be innovating this year, and share your best ideas with them. This builds value into the channel partner relationship.

Make it Easy for Your Channel Partners to Work With You

Simplify your fulfillment process as much as possible. Do so in a way that benefits them and not you. The easier you make it for them to work with you, the less likely they are to choose someone else. (I had a whole post just on this at 7 Things To Make It Easier For Partners To Work With You)

Make Sure You Are Providing Accurate Sales Quotes

Companies need to know exactly how much it’s going to cost them when they work with you. This is how they can set up their pricing structure into the future. Make your price quotes as accurate as possible so that they are prepared for the expense.

Make Customized Products Available

People are looking for more and more choices when they buy. Standardized purchases are becoming less and less attractive. Try to be flexible enough with your product offerings that your channel partners can easily fulfill custom orders.

Use Analytics (daily) to Monitor the Success of Marketing Efforts

With the advent of social media and other cutting edge marketing technologies, you can evaluate a marketing effort on a constant basis instead of looking at results every 90 days. Keep track of how different marketing efforts are benefiting both you and your channel partner on a regular basis, and use the numbers to alter your efforts so that they provide the most value to your partners.

What else would you add to the list?

The post 2012 Best Practices In Channel Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The channel partnership landscape is changing fast. This was highlighted in a blog post I stumbled upon the other day that talked about the latest IDC report on channel marketing trends.

IDC predicts that there will be a turnover of 25,000 to 50,000 infrastructure partners by the end of 2013. That represents a great sea change in the marketplace – where there will be some big winners and some big losers over the course of the next 18 months.

This can be attributed to the emergence of social media, the cloud, mobile devices, and big data – all things that were not much of a concern just two or three years ago. What this means is that your business landscape, and how you deal with channel partners, is going to change drastically over the next couple of years.

But, which companies will survive? How can a company prepare for this huge change in channel marketing relationships? The answer is that the companies with the best and most accurate analytics will be the ones that thrive. Those that don’t have access to insightful analytics will have problems in the marketplace.

As the new trends emerge, companies will have to be able to provide accurate data that shows a strong positive ROI coming out of the channel partnership. This cannot be done without analytics.

Companies will also have to reposition their goals to be more in line with the changing landscape, so that they deliver greater value to their channel partners. The best way to accomplish this is to use analytics to figure out which programs are delivering value – and focus on them – and which programs are not performing, and move away from them.

With the right analytics, in other words, you can create and modify programs so that they directly meet your channel partner’s goals.

Finally, you need analytics that provide data on customer touch points. As the blog post says: “The importance of this cannot be overstated – it closes the loop on the lead qualification, distribution, nurturing and sales cycles enabling continuous improvement to be applied to all of those critical functions.”

Once you have access to real world analytics, you can become a much more valuable channel partner while at the same time having the data you need in order to reposition your company to adapt to the changing landscape.

Without the right analytics, you are just guessing at what you need to do and may become lost along the way.

The post The Importance Of Analytics In A Changing Marketplace appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Social media is the new big thing for companies looking to expand their branding efforts. But, because social media is such a new marketing platform, there has been some disagreement over time about what social media efforts are effective and which ones don’t provide a reasonable return on investment.

This is why a recent article in Forbes is so interesting.

The background is that General Motors has been spending about $40 million a year on their Facebook marketing strategy. Roughly $30 million of that has been devoted to creating content for Facebook. The other $10 million was spent on ads on Facebook.

GM studied the effects of both types of advertising efforts, and after seeing the analysis made a telling decision – they will no longer buy any ads on Facebook at all. They are completely pulling their $10-million-a-year Facebook advertising campaign.

That doesn’t mean they are giving up on Facebook. They will still be investing $30 million a year on developing content – because they have determined that content does help their marketing efforts. It’s simply the ads that they’ve realized are a waste of money.

GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said that GM “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.”

Later, GM issued a statement saying, “In terms of Facebook specifically, while we currently do not plan to continue with advertising, we remain committed to an aggressive content strategy through all of our products and brands, as it continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers.”

Now obviously, every company and industry is different and so has different expectations from their social media strategies. But when a company as huge as GM runs the numbers and decides that it’s not worth it to spend any money on Facebook advertising at all, that’s a decision that needs to be paid attention to.

It certainly suggests that for most companies, developing interesting social media content is a much better investment of their social media marketing budget than buying the targeted ads that Facebook and other sites are constantly pitching us.  Furthermore, Social Media Syndication can help B2B vendors multiply the return on social media content investments through their networks of channel partners.

This is good news for content marketers, but might be a problem for Facebook. As Jim Kramer recently said about Facebook, “Sell, Sell, Sell”.

The post How Companies Like General Motors Get Value From Facebook appeared first on Zift Solutions.

As the CEO of Zift Solutions, one of my main jobs is to listen to our customers so that I know what kind of challenges they face with channel marketing in the real world. It’s nice to think that channel partners and suppliers can naturally work together to increase revenue, but the truth is that conflicts do come up from time to time.

One of the common issues that has come up in recent conversations is when a supplier is asked to provide marketing support for one of their channel partners’ bundled solutions. In other words, the channel partner is trying to sell a bundle that contains components from several different suppliers.

The supplier, naturally, would prefer to simply put their marketing time and energy into promoting the product they sell. Promoting the bundle feels like they are promoting other suppliers. The promotion doesn’t seem as valuable to them, because it can seem like they are using resources to help out other companies.

Meanwhile, the channel partner feels that the supplier should be willing to work with them. In some cases, they can’t sell the supplier’s product as a stand-alone item as easily as they could if it were part of a solution bundle.

So, how can such conflicts be resolved? The truth is that there is going to have to be some compromise on both sides. The supplier needs to understand that they should do what they can to help with the marketing of the bundled product. Yes, they will be helping other companies generate revenue, but each sale will also represent revenue for themselves.

Plus, by helping their channel partner, they are increasing their value in the partnership – and the more value a supplier can deliver to their channel partner, the longer their relationship will last and the more revenue both sides will generate.

On the other hand, the channel partner themselves should not take advantage of their supplier. They should understand that there are limits to how much time and money a supplier can invest in their marketing. And, they should try to get as many of their suppliers as possible to chip in. Supplier X is going to be more willing to market a product that contains components from Supplier Y if they know that Supplier Y will also be contributing dollars to a bundle that promotes Supplier X’s product.

By working together in this way, suppliers and their channel partners can bring current and valuable solutions to market that their mutual customer base demands.

The post To Bundle or Not to Bundle appeared first on Zift Solutions.

I thought I would put up our notes so that we could continue to expand on this through the blog comments.

Listen To Your Partners

1)  Regional partner advisory councils
2)  Qualitative research advisory councils
3)  Use social media to monitor feedback from partners
4)  Utilize 3rd parties to facilitate moderated PAC
5)  Acquisition on boarding – with as much personal interaction as is feasible
6)  As much executive involvement as possible
7)  Surveys are good, but it may be better if key partners are called
8)  Validate changes in program with partners before they are implemented

Provide Tools (but make it easy!)

9)  Use a partner portal to aggregate access to all relevant programs (the fewer the better)
10)  “Marketing in a box” – turnkey marketing programs for partners
11)  Partner locator: incorporate into website on functionality pages based on partners certifications – bChannels helpful in bringing this out
12)  Technical enablement – videos are great – Brainshark does a nice job here
13)  Playbooks on partner portal
14)  Provide a demo on a hosted environment – provides for both learning and demo availability
15)  Single log-in helps greatly
16)  Scaling up CAMs so they can have business discussions
17)  Surveys where the results are collected and then shared back
18)  For deal registration, make sure admin at partners can do all required actions

Team with Other Vendors to Provide Spurt for Solutions Sales

You may want to check with distributors about putting these together. It’s difficult but many partners seem to be looking for this support:

19)  Drag in dollars from other products – why this so important
20)  Alliances – Blocks- OEM
21)  Partner to Partner exercises with joint offerings

Focus on Partner Development

22)  Focused and targeted
23)  Special training that targets SEs – they are great for getting product included in solutions
24)  Using hosted environments
25)  Dedicated Channel Technical Partner Manager to help develop partners
26)  Make Opportunity planning part of CAM discussion (Picking segments & planning marketing initiatives to gain traction)
27)  Product marketing folks shouldn’t do training – leads to wrong focus
28)  Provide a partner help desk

Pay Incentives Quickly

29)  Table based predictable incentives (This quarter drives future rebate – allows rebates to be paid right away instead of waiting until end of quarter – 30 vs. 90 days)
30)  MDF Funding via approved SFDC campaigns

Transparency of Rules / Visibility

31)  Clear documentation on how leads are distributed
32)  Clear definition of what gets approved for MDF (Link MDF to approved business plans so CAMs have a chance to discuss)
33)  Clear rules of engagement
34)  Publish who is close to qualifiying for club
35)  Partners might think they are fine, but seeing they aren’t doing as well as some similar companies can fire them up to do even better
36)  Set up partner scorecards

Reduce Response Time

37)  800 phone number
38)  One point of contact
39)  Social, e.g. chatter (Warning – Some people have tried and turned this off as it became just a way to magnify complaints. Confidential information was also distributed too freely)

Once again, if you see something I missed, just let me know and I’ll add it. If you think we are off on one of these suggestions, use the comment section below and put it up for discussion.

The post 39 Ways to Make It Easier for Channel Partners to do Business With You appeared first on Zift Solutions.

While often treated as an expense by the finance department, marketing is in fact an investment in your business.  And like any investment, you want to measure its performance over time: are your programs and campaigns generating the returns you expect?

The trick is knowing what to measure, and having the systems in place to capture the data.

For many companies, the information they are using to monitor their marketing efforts isn’t telling them what they need to know. Typically, they will have access to silos of marketing data for different marketing channels that don’t tell the full story.  For example, they can see how many people clicked through to their site from a given ad, but not much more. They can’t see who clicked let alone whether or not they became a customer.

Companies need to relate marketing investments back to critical sales metrics such as the number of leads generated and the number of opportunities created. It is this lead and opportunity information that will show you which marketing efforts are creating a real return on investment.

For example, let’s say you have two pay-per-click ads running. Ad ABC is sending you twice as much traffic as ad XYZ.  On the surface, you might think ad ABC is outperforming ad XYZ.  But if the visitors from ABC land on your site and immediately leave, whereas the visitors from XYZ convert to leads, and enter your CRM system.  Obviously, with this lead information, you easily see that ad XYZ is the more effective ad, even though it generates less traffic.

Even more important than the initial lead generation is the metric of opportunity creation.  Did your marketing investment ultimately create a sales opportunity that is being tracked in your sales pipeline?

Knowing the difference will help you figure out which parts of your campaign are working and which ones are not. Here is an example of the metrics you should be tracking at the campaign level, and leading up to the creation of a sales opportunity:

• How long the person spends on your site?
• Which pages he or she visits on your site?
• How long they stay on the given pages?
• How often they visit your site before they make a purchase?
• Whether or not they converted into a lead?
• Did the lead convert into an opportunity?

Having these numbers at your fingertips will give you a much clearer picture of what’s going on with your marketing efforts so you can make more informed marketing investment decisions.

Tracking performance at this level isn’t as easy as getting the transactional data that most marketing has available, but it gives you a line of site between your marketing investments and the potential revenue created, and it will allow significant optimization of marketing dollars spent. To get these benefits for your direct marketing efforts consider working with a Resource Performance Management (RPM) vendor (e.g. Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot, etc). Providing this improved reporting for channel partner marketing efforts can be provided by a Channel Marketing Automation vendor (e.g. Zift Solutions).

The post Track The Metrics That Really Matter appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Innovation and adaptation are the two true keywords you need to focus on when it comes to B2B channel marketing. If you can innovate, you can continue to get maximum value from your channels; if you can adapt, you can make sure that your company is positioned to benefit from new technological advances.

This was made clear recently when Channel Partners created a conference for the leaders of the companies involved in the largest megamergers of the last 18 months.

They took the time to ask the people who spearheaded the the $22 billion merger of Qwest Communications and CenturyLink, the Level 3 Communications acquisition of Global Crossing Ltd., the Windstream Corp. purchase of PAETEC, and MegaPath’s merger with Covad Communications about how they handled their new channel marketing initiatives.

All agreed that post-merger, they had to change the way their channels interacted with each other and make sure they were as streamlined and cost effective as possible.

They all agreed that the core problems they encountered were that the people in the organizations did not understand the importance of indirect channels, and that there was an over-reliance on outdated channel marketing tactics.

What’s interesting is that all of these organizations ended up making the same basic changes to their channel marketing efforts:

• They got their teams together, stressed the importance of the indirect channels, and created advisory boards to work with existing employees to educate them about how to take advantage of the revenue potential of the indirect channels.

• They created smart phone apps that allowed them to communicate directly and securely with their channel partners. The apps allowed them to move away from traditional email efforts and instead created a direct way for the channels to exchange information, process and place orders, and co-ordinate marketing strategies.

• They began to move much of their channel marketing efforts away from their servers and into the cloud. Doing so not only saved money by eliminating the cost of the servers; it allowed their channel partners to exchange information with each other more efficiently in one location and allowed their channel partners to access the information they needed more quickly.

These three changes provided the companies with increased growth and a much stronger ROI on their channel marketing efforts than was occurring before the merger. More importantly, none of them were merger-specific changes. Any B2B company could make the same changes to their channel marketing efforts and reap the same types of results.

The post Megamergers Point Toward The Future Of Channel Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The statistics on the effectiveness of channel marketing efforts in 2011 have started to come in, and they are not encouraging. In fact, they demonstrate that companies are going to have to work harder to innovate with their co-marketers if they want to see growth in 2012.

Marketing Sherpa just released their 2012 B2B Benchmark Marketing Report and the statistics are, to say the least, troublesome.

They demonstrate that in 2011, there was a 50 percent decline in the overall effectiveness of three basic B2B marketing tactics – website design, search engine optimization, and email marketing.

This means that companies engaged in channel marketing may not be getting the same return on investment from these three marketing efforts. Much of this has to do with Google changing their search engine algorithm, which upended many marketers’ SEO efforts. Many companies saw their rank drop significantly.

But, that can’t explain the decline in overall marketing effectiveness on its own. After all, SEO is not a huge element of most co-marketing programs. The decline in the effectiveness of website design and email marketing are much more troublesome.
It suggests that not only are we still dealing with a struggling economy, but that the channel marketing marketplace has evolved and reliance on solely traditional tactics is no longer an option.

Instead, in 2012 channel marketing companies – vendors and channel partners – are going to have to work together to come up with new approaches and integrated for their B2B channel marketing efforts.

In 2012 I expect the use of social media solutions, including blog syndication and social media syndication, along with other next-generation marketing efforts such as ad re-targeting will become much more effective ways to promote your channel marketing efforts.

The challenge, of course, is to find ways to adapt your marketing culture to the new realities. You need to connect with your channel marketing partners and work with them to create new promotional efforts. Talk to them directly, and find out what is really important to them and how they want to interact with you. Then, make sure you tailor your efforts to their needs, instead of relying on what worked in the past, but is no longer effective in today’s B2B business climate.

The post 2012 Will Be A Better Year for Marketing Effectiveness appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Social media in the B2B channel marketing landscape is still an emerging field. Most companies and co-marketers want to use social media to expand their marketing efforts, but have little experience in doing so.

While many are aware of the benefits of having new low-cost ways to push their marketing messages, many are unaware of the dangers and how easily a social media marketing effort can go horribly wrong.

To see what might trip you up and to avoid problems, it can be helpful to look at the B2C marketplace, in which companies have been experimenting with social media marketing considerably longer than most B2B companies.

That way, our industry can learn from mistakes and move forward with our own efforts with considerably less risk.

A good example comes from what is now known as the McDonald’s Fiasco.

Here’s what happened: McDonald’s wanted to use Twitter to create positive viral awareness for their brand. So they uploaded brief, positive stories about eating at and working for McDonald’s, and used the hashtag #McDStories.

What they didn’t stop to think about was that not all stories have a happy ending. Within hours, thousands of people were posting their own McDonald’s “stories” using the hashtag. Most were negative, mean and spiteful, including one guy who wrote, “I once got food poisoning from eating a Big Mac” and another who posted, “McDonald’s is where dreams of being healthy and fit go to die.”

Obviously, this is not the effect that McDonald’s was looking for. But, what can a B2B channel marketer learn from this example?

It’s pretty simple actually – think through your hashtags very, very carefully before you use them. Is there any way they could be turned into a negative? Remember, as soon as you post something on Twitter it is “out in the wild,” and you’ll have no control of how you are retweeted or what is done with your hashtag.

Ask people in your office if they can think of any way a hashtag you want to use can be turned against you. Throw it at your IT guys and see what they think. Ask your children.

Only when you are sure that your hashtag and message can’t be turned against you should you launch your campaign.

The post Proactively Manage Brand’s Reputation in Social Media appeared first on Zift Solutions.

When it comes to channel marketing, we all want to maximize our results while limiting our expenses. We want to ensure that our channels work with us so that both parties generate as much revenue as possible and benefit from the co-marketing relationship.

But, what is the best way to accomplish these basic goals? There are a lot of stats out there that can give you advice on channel marketing trends, how to leverage social media, how the cloud and other new technologies are changing channel marketing patterns – but, at the end of the day, it all comes down to one simple idea: Effective channel marketing is all about sharing.

You and your channel partners need to be open and share with each other as much as possible. Here are some examples that every B2B channel marketer should be open to.

Share Your Ideas Back and Forth With Your Co-Marketer

Hearing what they think might spark your own ideas. Letting them know what’s on your mind might make them think of new ways to innovate and profit from the channel. When you share ideas back and forth, you each get a better understanding of what you want from the relationship – and you’ll come up with new product and service ideas, and new ways to market them. You’ll also find better ways to meet each other’s needs.

Share Your Leads

Your channel partner is not going to try to steal business from you, and you are not going to try to steal business from your channel partner. So, make a point of distributing new leads to your channel partners. By doing so, you’ll both enhance your marketing reach and you may be able to find new revenue streams.

Share Your Marketing Expenses as Much as Possible

Both of you benefit when products or services get sold, so neither one of you should be burdened with the brunt of the marketing costs. Find ways to split up the costs of campaigns with your channel partner, so you both generate more revenue while maintaining a fairly equal ROI.

Share Your Technological Resources

Make it easy for partners to leverage your marketing infrastructure. There is no need for you and your channel partner to double up on technology expenses and resources. You may be able to provide them with access to your technology at no additional cost to your company – while saving them a lot of money – and making sure you remain a preferred vendor. They too may be able to share some of their technology with you, reducing your costs as well, so both of you benefit.

Sharing benefits both parties, strengthens your relationship with your channel partner, and is good business.

The post Sharing: The Key to Successful Channel Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

When it comes to B2B channel marketing, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with our co-marketers and channels in order to increase the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. That’s good, because communication is important, particularly when it comes to cross-promotions.

On the other hand, what we can sometimes forget is the need to communicate effectively with our customers. Many times, our customer communication is one-sided. We send them marketing messages and hope they will convert into sales. But, how often do we really listen to what our customers have to say?

The need to communicate effectively was highlighted recently when Marketing Sherpa interviewed Kristin Zhivago, President of Zhivago Management Partners, Inc. and author of Roadmap to Revenue, after her keynote speech at their B2B Summit.

Zhivago explained how a program she initiated helped boost sales by as much as 40 percent. What’s even more impressive is that the program cost the company nearly no money at all.

Here’s what they did. First, they created a list of the different categories of customers they typically sold to. Then they picked three of their biggest buyers from each category, and sent them an email asking if they could briefly interview them over the phone.

They asked each customer what they liked about their interactions with them and their partner, and what they didn’t like. The conversations were recorded and transcribed (with permission). Names were then eliminated from the conversation, and the positive and negative information gathered was summarized in a report.

Then, her team looked at the results and spent time brainstorming how to fix the problems that were identified and build on the efforts that were appreciated by their customers. In many cases there were problems that they had no idea existed before, but were easily fixed. For example, one of their sales managers was making promises to clients that they could not possibly deliver on. Replacing that sales manager had a positive effect on both sales and company reputation.

Doing this took a fair amount of time and effort, but it didn’t have much of an impact on their marketing budget at all – yet it increased sales and revenue for everyone involved.

It’s a valuable exercise that nearly any B2B company can use, including those with extensive channel marketing relationships. Use this approach to see what your customers see at the business end of your marketing programs and partners. It could help your company improve your marketing efforts for years to come.

The post Listen To Your Customers To Boost Channel Sales appeared first on Zift Solutions.

It takes a lot of time and effort to build up a channel strategy and implement it with your partners. Once it is operational and producing revenue, there can be a temptation to just let it run itself. After all, if it’s working now, it will probably work in the future, right?

The problem with this way of thinking is that the market is constantly evolving, as will your channel strategy. You can’t just operate on cruise control once you’ve got things going. You need to actively tweak and change your channel strategy as the industry changes and as your relationships develop. With that in mind, here are some things that Zift clients have suggested keeping tabs on, so that you can alter your strategy when you need to.

1) Your Relationship With Your Channel Partner

How you relate to your channel partner is crucial to your overall success. You need to work with them to make sure that the relationship remains healthy. Your company can only profit from the relationship when they profit from it. You don’t want to give them any reason to switch to a competitor. Constantly monitor your relationship with your channel partner to ensure maximum cooperation.

2) Make Sure You Are Not ‘Just Another Vendor’

You need to develop relationships with the senior management of your channel partner. Ask them about their needs, both now and in the future, so you can see what solutions and potential new products you can offer them. Alter your development and marketing strategy to be in sync with their needs.

3) Demonstrate the Value of Your Product Compared with the Competition

Companies want B2B channel partners who deliver the most value to them. Find ways to reduce the adoption and marketing costs of partnering with you. Figure out if there are slight changes you can make to your relationship with them, or to your product, that can increase the way they perceive the value of your offering.

4) Keep Track of the Purchasing Obstacles For Your Product

Figure out if your channel partners are marketing your product to the right potential customers. Try to be present at the point of sale as often as possible, so you can see how purchasing decisions are made, and alter your strategies if you have to.

These are fairly simple strategies to implement – but they will involve effort and monitoring. When taken into the overall equation, they can help you make sure that your channel marketing strategy works for your company not just today, but well into the future.

The post 4 Tips for Active Channel Management appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Putting market hype aside, one reason that social media has become relevant to the channel, is that it helps build up trust and increases the value of a given brand.

When people learn something about a product or service through their preferred social media outlet, it feels like it’s coming from a ‘friend.’ That has a much more powerful emotional impact than a traditional advertisement. Beyond that, people target and limit what they see in their social media world, so someone seeing the message you and your channel partner have created is much more likely to be interested than someone who stumbles upon your site through traditional marketing efforts.

The question, however, is how to make social media as effective as possible when it comes to your B2B channel marketing efforts. The first step is to decide which social media platforms to use.

In general, if you are promoting trade shows, joint events, or want to communicate new marketing efforts, you should be using LinkedIn. Your messages will come off as very professional, and will be targeting decision makers in the industry you and your channel partners are targeting.

On the other hand, if you are trying to create viral buzz, promote a webcast, let people know about an event or jump-start a marketing campaign, you should probably be using Twitter. The way Twitter is constructed allows your message to be passed on quickly by interested parties, and is searchable.

When doing social media marketing for you and your channel partner, the most effective way to get people to pay attention to it is to create multimedia content. Whether they are videos, webinars or podcasts, having something that is interactive and not a ‘dry’ marketing message is likely to create much more buzz and have more influence on decision makers.

Now, the second step is to ensure that there is consistency between you and your channel partners. You both need to be working to spread the same message in similar ways. One way to do this is to create guidelines for your social media efforts, and then present them to your co-marketer. They can then use the guidelines you have provided to make sure both of you stay ‘on message’ and don’t provide conflicting or confusing messages to potential prospects in your industry.

Another approach is to use a social media syndication solution to deliver a library of valuable content that your channel partners can use when talking with their online communities. This lets channel partners easily push content to multiple social media sites. The end result is that channel partners are provided an environment to supplement their own social contributions with those provided by their suppliers.

Social media is about fostering communities; so helping to enable your channel partners to become influential voices around your solution areas can pay significant dividends.

The post Working With Your Channel Marketers On Your Social Media Efforts appeared first on Zift Solutions.

I work with channel programs all the time, so I know the real pros at making these programs successful are our clients. That said, I thought it would be of interest to list out some of the keys to success that seem to keep coming up when I talk with those pros about their programs.

Here are the core components that should fold into a successful channel program:

1) Minimize Complexity In All Ways

Your channel partners deal with many, many vendors who use many, many different ordering, invoice systems and other programs. They don’t have time to learn an entirely new way to interact with you. Instead, all of your interactions should be kept as simple and intuitive as possible.

2) Make sure your product or service adds value to their business

At the end of the day, your channel partner doesn’t want to have to spend a lot of time, money or energy marketing your product. They simply want your product to sell and increase their profits. So, help create a demand for your product so that it will “sell itself.”

3) Let your partners understand the three basic value builders you will provide them

Your channel partners are interested in how many new customers you will help them generate, how much the value of each transaction will be from each new customer, and how many of those customers will become repeat customers. Focus your communications on these three main concepts.

4) Don’t put them in charge of your brand

You are responsible for your branding efforts. They are not. You can’t expect them to create customized logos or templates, or handle the marketing of your brand. Take control of your branding efforts so they provide value to the channel partners.

5) Work with managed service providers

A fair number of companies are turning to managed service providers to streamline their ordering process. Each managed service provider will have their own list of preferred vendors. Those MSPs will not put you on their preferred vendor list unless you are willing to work with them and their systems.

6) Know when to stay with a channel partner and when to move on

No channel partner will want to work with you forever. There is a lifecycle to every business relationship. Eventually you and the partner will move on. This means you have to keep track of what’s going on with each and every channel partner you work with. Focus most of your marketing efforts on partners that are new, or are still placing a significant number of orders. When you notice that a partner starts to be less and less interested in your products and services, realize that’s natural part of doing business and start devoting fewer resources to them, so you have more available resources for the still active partners.

7) Seriously: Minimize complexity in all ways

I know I’ve already listed this, but it’s just so important! The best programs go to great lengths to try and keep the hurdles required to work together to an absolute minimum.

The overall theme is that you and your channel partners are out to grow your own respective businesses.  Your channel partners are working with a number of different vendors, each with their own rules, tools and processes.  Keep a channel mindset and make it easy for your channel partners to work with you.  You will capture channel mindshare and grow a successful and profitable business together.

The post The 7 Keys to a Successful Channel Partner Program appeared first on Zift Solutions.

That said, there are many different ways to build your list, so how do you know which ones are going to be most effective, particularly if you are a B2B company? Luckily, Marketing Sherpa recently released a study mapping out the most effective list building tactics.

Interestingly, the study demonstrates that what works when trying to build an email list to attract consumers doesn’t work as well for the B2B marketplace, and vice versa. By far the most effective way for a B2B organization to build up their list is to require registration during downloads – this had a 64 percent effectiveness rate. Compare that to webinars, which only had a 47 percent effectiveness rate, and you get a fairly decent idea of where to put your list building efforts. Email newsletter subscriptions seem to be not as successful as you would think – showing a fairly small 27 percent effectiveness rate. Social media sharing had the worst overall results, with a zero percent effectiveness rating.

Having up-to-date metrics like this is important, because it allows you to figure out how to allocate your resources most effectively. It’s also good news for B2B companies, since requiring registration for downloads is not only the best way to build your list, it’s one of the least costly of all available options.

Channel marketing organizations – whether the vendor or the distribution partner – can benefit from this knowledge.   Vendors should syndicate their marketing content in the form of white papers, eBooks, etc out to their channel partners; who in turn, can make them available for download (with a simple, short registration form of course) and voila, they have a growing email distribution list.

The post The Most Effective Way For B2B Companies To Build Their Email Lists appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Email marketing often gets a bad rap. Companies are worried that their email marketing efforts will be wasted and not bring a compelling return on investment. These fears are often fueled by media reports suggesting that people just delete promotional emails, or have them automatically redirected to their spam basket.

But for most companies, this isn’t the case. People can tell the difference between an unsolicited ad for herbal Viagra and a message from a company they trust from which they requested information.

When done correctly, email marketing is lucrative. The key, however, is that you have to give people more than just a sales pitch. You have to provide them with useful information that makes you look like an industry expert, and then provide them with a call to action back to your site.

This type of marketing has proven to be extremely effective. Let’s look at some interesting statistics. According to the Direct Marketers Association, companies see an average return on investment of $43.42 for every dollar spent on email marketing.

Any marketing effort that creates that kind of ROI has to be considered a good deal. But, that’s not all – a study by Exact Target shows that more than 50 percent of all consumers make a purchase as a direct result of email marketing.

According to iMedia Connection, 72 percent of companies that have engaged in email marketing report that their return on investment was ‘excellent’ or ‘good.’

The bottom line is that prospective customers are not as turned off by email marketing as the media may make you think. In fact, when done correctly, email marketing is a rock-solid marketing channel that drives sales and delivers a solid return on investment.

The post The Case For Email Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

• Business leaders and CEO’s ‘are’ on Facebook
• It improves your companies chances of being found by search engines
• It provides an environment that can spread your ideas to people who ‘like’ your company Facebook page by just posting an update such as news, photos, videos and your latest blog post to your Facebook page
• It collects and captures feedback about your products and services
• Provides another communication channel ( 2 or more is always better than one)

He then goes on to show some nice examples. One of the good ones shows what Cisco has done.

The post 5 B2B Facebook Pages Worth Copying appeared first on Zift Solutions.

There are many tools out there that online marketers can use to increase sales, from email marketing to search engine optimization and everything in between. What I find interesting is that one of the most powerful sales tools available – ad retargeting – is often one of the least used.

Ad retargeting is not a difficult concept to understand. When someone comes to your site and looks at your products or services, a cookie is placed on his or her computer that remembers what the potential customer seemed to be interested in.

Then, as the potential customer goes to other websites, ads for the products they looked at on your site will appear on their screen. When they click on the ad, they are brought back to the page on your site where they can buy the product or service.

This drives people back to your site and increases your chances of conversions. Best of all, it’s passive. You don’t have to do anything but set up your site to install the cookies, and the rest is fully automated.

Yet, many companies don’t take advantage of the potential of ad retargeting. A recent survey by Advertise.com and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization showed that 70 percent of online retail companies don’t use ad retargeting at all.

This is despite the fact that ad retargeting is powerful. According to FetchBack, 42.9 percent of site visitors who get a retargeting ad return to the advertising site within an hour. For the consumer housewares category, the number is even higher – with 69.9 percent returning within an hour.

Beyond that, an additional 21 percent of visitors who get a retargeting ad return to the advertising site within 24 hours.

With results like this, it’s hard to argue against using ad retargeting for your channel partners. It works. Best of all, your competition probably isn’t using it, so it gives you a leg up and a better chance of not losing a sale to another company. It encourages prospective customers to come back to your site and increases your chances of making conversions. If you are serious about expanding your sales funnel, ad retargeting is a no-brainer.

The post Ad Retargeting: An Underused But Powerful Marketing Tool appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Overall: 2/5 stars – marketing 101 information without much meat

First point they make: knowing more about your customers helps salespeople to sell. OK – so the sky is blue, nothing interesting here.

Next point – customer data is silo’d. First step to getting one view is to come up with a common data model. I think this is probably overstated. I can see efforts getting bogged down on things that aren’t that important. Consistency in key fields used for segmentation is important, but lots of the data can be treated as attributes that can add a lot of value.

Next point – Integrated marketing works better. Once again the sky is blue. One view of the contact with data from all marketing channels is required for real time personalization. I agree this is one of many benefits. The paper also talks about the importance of syncing with sales. Once again, that makes sense to me.

They then talk about the 4 stages of data driven marketing. 1 – Marketing data silo’d, 2 – integrated with sales data, 3 – include financial data, 4 – fold in customer lifetime value (CLV). Each stage provides additional data to the customer and accounts records. Getting to stage 4 provides the best returns but is also a lot of work.

Then there is a bit of a disconnect where the paper goes into a sales pitch for Data.com. I don’t see how Data.com helps at all with stages 3 or 4 and even stage 2 is a bit of a stretch. This is not to say the Data.com isn’t hugely valuable, it just seems like this write up is a bit of a bait and switch.

You want to read the whole paper and let me know your thoughts, you can pick up the paper at IDC White Paper Download

The post Review of IDC Paper: Data.com: The Fuel for High-Performance B2B Marketing and Sales Engines appeared first on Zift Solutions.

His two specific suggestions are:

• Don’t shy away from answering the tough questions
• Be personal, talking about what has actually happened to you makes the best, most engaging stories

To see how these apply and deliver results, check out the complete video:

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We are considering using the [syndicated content], however I’m still researching. I’m told by our web people (Hall Marketing) that we’ll lose a lot of our search capabilities [SEO] because all the content goes back to you or Sage, not us. I’m hoping to make decisions mid January, or so…

Hall Marketing in this instance is just incorrect. Correctly syndicated content helps with SEO. Since the exact search engine scoring algorithms are never published to keep people from gaming the algorithms, it is hard to quantify the effect, but it is definitely positive.

How can I be so sure? Google (who knows the algorithms it uses), uses syndicated content with their partners to help in promoting Google Apps. Just check out the public site http://google.zift123.com. I can assure you that Google is not hurting the SEO scores of its partners.

For a detailed discussion about why it helps, check out Paul Marshall’s post on Search Engine Journal, Is Syndicated Content Duplicate Content?

For more information of what syndication content is, and how it might be useful check out either web syndication or content syndication.

The post The Truth About Content Syndication and SEO appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The real pros at these capabilities are our clients. We are lucky enough to work with great people, automate their ideas to make them easy to leverage, and then regularly iterate based on the analytics that we track to provide a continually improving solution.

Part of this iteration isn’t about the Zift Solutions software platform, but about the ideas and techniques that the platform supports. My plan is to discuss everything from best practices for PPC and social media, to how to evaluate and on-board the right partner community. Hopefully this will create a forum where we can all share and discuss some of our current thoughts, and work together to get more great products and services to the people who can benefit from these offerings.

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