Your business thrives when you effectively measure and track the right metrics. Metrics provide a framework for evaluating performance, making data-driven decisions, and driving growth and innovation. For IT vendors, identifying and tracking these success metrics is crucial to staying competitive and achieving business goals. However, finding the metrics that matter most and not getting lost in a sea of data points can be challenging.

Understanding Success Metrics

Success metrics are measurable values organizations use to gauge their progress toward specific objectives. These metrics can be quantitative or qualitative, depending on the business goals and the type of metric. By tracking these metrics, businesses can objectively assess their performance, identify areas for improvement, and align their strategies with their goals.

Key Success Metrics for IT Vendors

• Revenue Growth: Measuring the increase in sales over a specific period indicates the effectiveness of your sales strategies and market demand for your products.
• Customer Acquisition and Retention Rates: These metrics show how well you attract new customers and retain existing ones. High retention rates often correlate with customer satisfaction and loyalty, which, in turn, boosts revenue growth.
• Profit Margins: Profit margins reflect the efficiency of your operations and the profitability of your sales. Monitoring both gross and net profit margins is essential to understand your financial health.
• Market Share: This metric helps you understand your position in the market relative to competitors. Increasing market share indicates successful competitive strategies and the value your channel partner places on your relationship.
• Customer Satisfaction: Measuring customer satisfaction through surveys and feedback can provide insights into customer experience and areas that need improvement. Include customer satisfaction and NPS (Net Promoter Score) in your monthly review metrics and consider placing customer satisfaction scores in your partner programs.

Setting Up Success Metrics

Establishing the right success metrics involves several key steps:

• Define Your Business Goals: Start by clearly defining your business goals and objectives. Your goals will guide you in identifying the specific metrics that align with them. For example, if your goal is to increase market share, focus on metrics related to sales growth and customer acquisition.
• Align Metrics with Your Strategy: Ensure that the metrics you choose align with your overall business strategy. Each metric should provide insights into a specific aspect of your strategy, such as customer acquisition, revenue growth, or operational efficiency.
• Prioritize Actionable Metrics: Focus on metrics that can drive significant improvements in your business. Avoid vanity metrics that do not impact your bottom line or strategic goals. Actionable metrics provide insights that lead to meaningful actions and business growth.
• Consider Industry Benchmarks: Research industry benchmarks to understand how your metrics compare to those of competitors. This will help you set realistic goals and identify areas for improvement.
• Leverage Technology and Analytics Tools: Utilize advanced analytics tools to efficiently collect, analyze, and visualize data. Tools like ZiftONE provide customizable dashboards that make it easy to monitor and interpret your metrics, ensuring you have the insights needed to drive success.
• Continuously Evaluate and Refine: Regularly review and adjust your metrics to ensure they remain relevant and aligned with your evolving business goals. As your business and the market change, your success metrics should adjust accordingly.

The Role of ZiftONE in Measuring Success

ZiftONE is designed to help IT vendors streamline their operations and enhance their partner relationships by providing comprehensive solutions for sales, partner management, and channel marketing.

• ZiftONE Channel Sales: Equip your Partner Account Managers (PAMs) and Channel Account Managers (CAMs) with the data they need to focus on high-value activities, stay informed, and remain accountable for their performance.
• ZiftONE Partner Management: Through user-friendly, customizable admin dashboards, ZiftONE makes it easy and enjoyable for your partners to stay engaged with your brand, fostering stronger relationships and better performance.
• ZiftONE Channel Marketing: ZiftONE empowers you to take control of multi-touch digital marketing campaigns designed to generate leads and support pipeline growth continuously, ensuring your marketing efforts are always aligned with your business goals.

What Gets Measured Gets Done

John E. Jones said, “What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated.” Not all metrics are right for every business or program. Measuring for success involves identifying and tracking the right metrics that align with your business goals and strategies. Leveraging tools like ZiftONE can assist IT vendors in streamlining their operations, enhancing partner engagement, and driving significant business growth. Remember, you need to report, iterate, and repeat measurements to keep them current and actionable.

To learn more about how Zift Solutions and the ZiftONE product offering can help you achieve your business goals, visit our website or contact our team for a personalized consultation. Let’s measure for success together.

The post Measuring for Success appeared first on Zift Solutions.

As channel companies seek ways to optimize their marketing strategies and stay ahead of the competition, it’s the topic on everyone’s marketing BINGO card. Artifical Intelligence (AI).  With its ability to analyze large amounts of data and provide actionable insights, AI is revolutionizing how channel marketing strategies are developed and executed. However, great channel marketing still comes from experienced marketers who know how to harness AI to maximize their output.

Benefits of Using AI in Marketing

AI enables businesses to scale without incurring high human costs, making it an invaluable asset in modern marketing strategies. The benefits of doing more with less are clear.

Greater Accuracy in Targeting Audiences

AI enhances audience targeting accuracy, allowing businesses to pinpoint their most promising potential customers with precision:

• Customer Data Analysis: AI sifts through customer data and behavior patterns to create detailed customer personas. This understanding enables businesses to cater more effectively to their audience’s needs and preferences.
• Multi-Channel Engagement Tracking: By monitoring customer interactions across various channels, AI helps marketers deliver highly relevant and personalized experiences.
• Predictive Analytics: AI predicts how users will interact with a brand, allowing marketers to tailor their messaging to individual preferences.
• Resource Optimization: By identifying potential customers and their behaviors, businesses can craft targeted marketing messages, saving time, money, and resources.

Improved Efficiency in Marketing Operations with AI + Marketers

Incorporating AI into marketing strategies significantly boosts the efficiency of marketing operations. By automating tasks such as data analysis and customer segmentation, AI frees marketers to focus on higher-level tasks requiring human ingenuity and creativity:

• Data Processing Speed and Accuracy: AI quickly and accurately processes vast amounts of data, enabling marketing teams to make informed decisions and develop effective campaigns.
• Automated Customer Interaction: AI-powered chatbots handle customer inquiries and complaints, reducing response times and enhancing the overall customer experience.

These improvements streamline marketing operations, allowing for more strategic and impactful campaigns.

Enhanced Customer Experience

AI plays a crucial role in enhancing the customer experience by increasing satisfaction and engagement:

• Customization: AI analyzes customer data to create unique experiences tailored to individual preferences and interests.
• Personalization: AI leverages data from past interactions to offer personalized solutions and support, making customers feel valued and understood.
• Faster Response Times: AI-powered chatbots and customer service agents provide quicker, more efficient support, leading to higher customer satisfaction. However, don’t let a chatbot replace people when a customer needs to talk with your team.
• Predictive Analytics: By anticipating customer needs, AI delivers relevant recommendations even before customers realize they need assistance.

AI fosters increased customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing personalized, efficient, and practical support.

Real-World Examples

Netflix’s AI Personalization Netflix’s ability to recommend shows and movies with uncanny accuracy is a testament to the power of AI in action. The platform analyzes viewing habits and preferences to suggest content that viewers are likely to enjoy, enhancing user experience and engagement.

Sephora’s AI Chatbot Technology Sephora, a beauty industry leader, has leveraged AI chatbot technology to transform the shopping experience. Recognizing that customers often feel overwhelmed by product choices, Sephora introduced an AI-driven interactive quiz. This digital beauty consultant provides personalized advice based on individual customer responses, making the shopping experience more manageable and enjoyable. The success of Sephora’s chatbot technology led to the launch of a chatbot-powered shopping service on Facebook Messenger, offering virtual color matches, booking sessions, and interactive beauty tips through KikBot, an autonomous, chatty makeup guru.

What does this mean for Channel Marketers?

AI is revolutionizing channel marketing strategies for IT vendors. By enhancing audience targeting accuracy, improving operational efficiency, and elevating customer experience, AI empowers businesses to create more effective and impactful marketing campaigns. However, the best results come from marketers who use AI to automate repetitive tasks and highlight data and trends, allowing them to craft excellent partner marketing campaigns. AI is a powerful tool that helps good marketers become great, making their work more efficient and effective without the need to hire additional staff.

Zift Solutions: Empowering Channel Marketers

Zift Solutions boots ROI. As the top Through-Channel Marketing Automation tool, ZiftONE streamlines marketing and communications.

With 20 years of experience, ZiftONE addresses channel challenges and eliminates data issues. Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions offers strategic guidance and seamless tool integration, enabling channel marketers to focus on strategy and creativity. Ready to add AI to your channel marketing toolkit? Contact us today.

The post How AI is Revolutionizing Channel Marketing Strategies appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Unlike pre-recorded events, Channel Focus Virtual offers a dynamic experience with live sessions, Q&A sessions, and one-on-one interactions. Emulating the renowned workshop format, participants engage in real-time discussions, ensuring true interaction and value for attendees. While it can’t fully replace the in-person experience, the virtual event aims to deliver cutting-edge strategies interactively, ensuring attendees stay ahead of the curve in channel success.

10 Reasons to attend Channel Focus Virtual 2024:

1. World-Class Expertise: Access the latest channel insights and practical sessions from industry leaders, ensuring you leave with actionable strategies for channel success.
2. Cost-Effective Learning: Gain invaluable knowledge from others’ experiences, saving you time and money by avoiding common pitfalls and discovering what truly works.
3. Top-notch Speakers: Immerse yourself in sessions led by over 40 renowned channel figures, offering cutting-edge strategic thinking, best practices, and actionable programs.
4. Tailored Agenda: Customize your learning journey with keynotes, tracks, workshops, and sessions, ensuring a unique and relevant experience aligned with your goals.
5. Practical Solutions: Learn directly from real-world case studies and how-to presentations, equipping you with actionable insights to enhance channel revenue and profitability.
6. Interactive Workshops: Engage in small group discussions to address your specific questions and exchange practical ideas with peers, fostering invaluable networking opportunities.
7. Networking Galore: Connect with fellow attendees during breaks and virtual meetups, establishing meaningful relationships that extend beyond the conference.
8. Authentic Peer Sharing: Enjoy a closed forum environment with seasoned industry executives, facilitating honest and practical idea exchanges devoid of press presence.
9. Access to Leading Providers: Gain exclusive access to world-class channel solution providers, addressing your critical priorities and unlocking new partnership opportunities.
10. Content Excellence: Benefit from content curated by a senior advisory board of channel experts, ensuring relevance to current and future channel trends.

Don’t miss out on this unparalleled opportunity to elevate your channel strategy and drive business growth! Join us at Channel Focus Virtual 2024. Register now!

The post Zift Solutions at Channel Focus Virtual 2024 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Cybersecurity: The Resilient Guardian

“Cybersecurity… struggled a bit this year, but by the 4th quarter, it’s picking up again, and the outlook for 2024 looks really promising,” observed Janet Schijns. This resilience in cybersecurity reflects a broader trend in the IT industry: the ability to adapt and rebound. While Fernandez expected a sharper rise, he noted, “It grew, but not as steeply as I thought. It plateaued, but it’s starting to climb again now.” While hot new technologies like AI exploded and took over the technology scene in 2023, overshadowing cybersecurity to a certain degree, the panel was unanimous that next year will be a big one for the security space.

AI: The Game Changer

Brandon Knight captured the essence of AI’s sudden prominence: “It was like the most interesting person at a party – suddenly, AI was everywhere.” AI’s meteoric rise in the IT channel signifies a paradigm shift. It’s not just a technological advancement; it’s a new way of thinking and operating. AI’s integration into various facets of the IT channel, from customer service to data analysis, signifies a move towards more intelligent, efficient, and personalized solutions. As AI continues to evolve, it will undoubtedly shape the future of the IT channel, challenging traditional models and opening new avenues for innovation.

The Evolution of Distribution Models

Speaking on the changing distribution models, Janet Schijns emphasized the need for a data-driven approach: “The distributors that can leverage data effectively will stand out.” This shift toward data-centric strategies in distribution underscores a larger trend in the IT channel: the move from intuition-based to insight-driven decision-making. Distributors who can harness the power of data to understand market trends, customer needs, and effective sales strategies will have a significant edge. As the IT channel becomes more complex, the role of distributors as strategic advisors and data experts will become increasingly important.

Education: The Bedrock of Progress

Juan Fernandez highlighted the importance of education in the IT channel: “We ended up playing dual roles [in 2023] – both as educators and learners.” The IT channel is in a constant state of flux, with new technologies and challenges emerging regularly. This dynamic environment necessitates a commitment to continuous learning and skill development. For MSPs and consumers alike, staying informed and educated is not just beneficial; it’s essential for survival and growth. As we move into 2024, the focus on education will likely intensify, with a greater emphasis on upskilling, reskilling, and knowledge sharing.

Looking Ahead: Embracing Change in 2024

As we look towards 2024, the IT channel stands at the threshold of a transformative era. As Janet Schijns said, “The channel is the lifeblood of the tech industry and it’s not going anywhere.” This statement resonates with a sense of resilience and permanence, emphasizing the channel’s critical role in the technology sector. However, Schijns also cautions that the coming year will be “rocky,” citing factors like elections, wars, inflation, and interest rates. These external influences will undoubtedly shape the IT channel, creating a landscape where agility and adaptability are paramount.

Brandon Knight’s perspective offers a complementary viewpoint, focusing on the theme of evolution and maturity. He predicts that 2024 will be about “finding where things level off,” suggesting a period of stabilization following the rapid changes and disruptions of previous years. Knight’s mention of “a little pain in growing” acknowledges the challenges inherent in this process of maturation. This perspective is crucial for all stakeholders in the IT channel, emphasizing the need for strategic thinking, efficiency, and smarter operations. The ability to adapt to these evolving circumstances will likely distinguish the successful players in the IT channel.

Juan Fernandez provides a forward-looking prediction focusing on the significance of data and its utilization. He anticipates “a big shift in how partners and vendors view each other,” implying a more collaborative and data-driven relationship. This shift could redefine traditional business models, with Fernandez highlighting “business operations as a service” as a potential trendsetter. The emphasis on education also remains a key theme, with Fernandez noting that “AI, cybersecurity, everything’s changing fast.” This rapid pace of change underscores the need for continuous learning and adaptation among partners, consumers, and vendors alike.

The Bottom Line

The insights from this panel discussion paint a picture of an IT channel at the cusp of significant transformation. The themes of cybersecurity, AI, evolving distribution models, and the importance of education emerge as key focal points. As we step into 2024, embracing these changes and preparing for the challenges and opportunities they bring will be crucial for all players in the IT channel.

For a deeper understanding of these themes and more, the full panel discussion replay offers a comprehensive exploration of these experts’ insights and predictions.

The post Looking Forward to 2024: Predictions for the IT Channel from the Industry Experts appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Unleashing the Potential of Custom Objects

Imagine a world where your channel program perfectly aligns with your business requirements, capturing and managing critical data effortlessly. Custom Objects in ZiftONE make this a reality. This powerful feature enables you to create tailored forms/workflows that streamline various processes, from warranty registrations to case study submissions, and beyond. Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all solutions and embrace the power of customization.

Igniting Possibilities: Unleash Your Imagination!

1. Warranty Registration: Simplify the process of registering warranties with a custom object that captures product details, purchase dates, and customer information. Watch as accurate record-keeping and seamless support enhance partner and customer satisfaction.
2. Case Study Submissions: Empower partners to submit case studies with ease. Create a custom object that collects testimonials, success metrics, and supporting assets. Showcase partner achievements and amplify their success stories to inspire others. They can even be showcased in the Partner Locator as part of a partner’s public-facing profile in order to demonstrate their enthusiasm for your brand and to help generate new leads!
3. Press Release Submissions: Do your partners have success stories that they want you to amplify? Streamline the submission and distribution of press releases. Utilize a custom object tailored specifically for this purpose, capturing launch dates, target markets, and press contact information. Increase brand exposure and make headlines by championing partner successes publicly and/or within your partner community.
4. Demo Unit Requests: Revolutionize the way partners request demo units for prospective customer use or to enhance the partner’s presence at a trade show. Customize a form/workflow within a custom object to capture essential details such as quantity, desired timeframe, and shipping information. Make it easy for both your partner team and partners to get demo equipment to where it is needed.

Why Empower Your Channel Program With Custom Objects?

Addressing the Jobs To Be Done

Custom Objects has the potential to propel your channel program to new heights

1. Simplify: Simplify the process of capturing and organizing partner-related information. Custom Objects in ZiftONE eliminate the need for manual tracking or disparate systems, enabling you to easily manage data in a centralized and structured manner. Goodbye chaos, hello streamlined data management processes.
2. Enable: With Custom Objects, you can create forms/workflows that serve the unique needs of you and your partner audience. If your partners are asking for a tool that doesn’t exist yet, simply create it yourself and differentiate yourself from other suppliers that your partners may work with.
3. Elevate: With Custom Objects, you can deliver an even more personalized and partner-centric experience. With a rapid means of creating tools that enhance your partners’ business processes, you will naturally foster stronger relationships and increase the likelihood of success. Custom Objects deliver on the promise of seamless, intuitive, and customized tools that make partners feel valued and supported.

The Deep Connections

Custom Objects, Partner Locator, and Partner Groups

Prepare to be amazed by the deep connections Custom Objects forge within the entire ZiftONE ecosystem. Imagine partners’ profiles within the Partner Locator featuring Custom Objects that the partner has submitted and that you, the Supplier, have approved. Picture a new set of Partner Groups that leverage Custom Object data to grant access to various features, tools, communications, and resources within ZiftONE, enabling targeted communication and personalized experiences throughout ZiftONE.

A New Era of Channel Partner Success

Zift recently rolled out this feature to all customers,, empowering them to unleash the power of customization, streamline processes, and elevate their partner program to unparalleled heights.

Want to bring customization and improved data collection to your partner program? Schedule a time to talk to us and find out what ZiftONE can do for your partner program.

The post Unleashing the Power of Custom Objects in ZiftONE: Empowering Channel Partners for Success appeared first on Zift Solutions.

What is Channel Marketing?

Channel marketing is marketing to partners in an indirect sales channel. Marketing in the channel is often viewed as more challenging than traditional direct marketing because your partner program needs to communicate its value proposition not only to end customers but also to and through indirect sales channels. In addition, you must promote the significant benefits of the company’s channel program itself to recruit and retain partners.

Channel marketing typically includes the following four channel marketing strategies:

• To-channel marketing involves recruiting and engaging ecosystem partners and communicating why they should work with your company, the benefits of working with you, how you can help them attract and serve their customers, and so forth.
• Through-channel marketing involves marketing your products and services to end customers through channel partners. This encompasses sales-enablement training and materials your company’s ecosystem partners use to sell or evangelize your services.
• With-channel marketing is a strategy wherein your company works with partners to market your solutions to end customers. This strategy differs from through-channel marketing in that this is a purposeful joint go-to-market strategy between the supplier and partner. An example of this is a supplier and partner hosting an event to reach end customers together.
• For-channel marketing is a less common channel marketing strategy wherein your company runs a marketing program or deploys a tool, such as a partner locator, to reach end customer prospects for the benefit of your partners.

Why Channel Marketing Departments Should Leverage AI Marketing

Competition in the channel to capture partners’ attention is significant. Whether you’re offering commoditized solution sets, looking to create a new product category or everything in between, you must fight for mindshare with partners you want to recruit, activate, and enable to sell your solutions. AI assists your partner marketing efforts by:

• Saving time – AI and machine learning can help automate or speed up specific marketing tasks, freeing up staff time to focus on creative endeavors that lead to revenue production. While Zift doesn’t endorse any of the solutions below, here are some examples of processes where you can use time-saving AI tools. Keep in mind AI is changing every day, and there are always new tools hitting the market, so this list is accurate at the time of publication:
  • Data entry, email sending and report generation. Bardeen is a good example of a tool that can help here
  • If engaging with customers in direct messaging channels like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or LiveChat takes too much time, check out platforms like Chatbot
  • Website design is often best left to professionals, but tools like Durable make it easier for marketers to do it on their own
  • It’s best practice to take notes during meetings, but sometimes it can be hard to figure out what you were meaning to take note of after the meeting ends. Solutions like Fireflies help here
  • If you don’t even want to take notes, outsource that task to a tool like Magical for automated note-taking, scheduling and task management
  • We all know that video content gets more traffic than written content, so solutions like Synthesia can convert text into video content
• Defining ideal partner profiles and ideal customer profiles – AI-sourced data helps improve your understanding of partners, customers and other players in your ecosystem and informs high-level recruitment and engagement campaign strategies. Engines like Patri ICP Engine API find, refine, and monitor your ideal customer or partner profile by integrating with your CRM, BI, and sales and marketing automation systems
• Idea generation – Content-generating AI platforms can help your channel marketers create content when encountering “writer’s block” and jumpstart their productivity. While ChatGPT is the most well-known of these content-generating AI platforms, other platforms with similar capabilities include ClickUp, Narrato, Lately, Jasper, ai and ZiftONE.
• Improving campaign performance – The data insights provided by AI-driven platforms can help your channel marketing team adjust campaigns and identify conversion obstacles much faster, bringing in more qualified partners and end customer leads quicker. For example, Google AdWords provide AI-sourced recommendations for improving pay-per-click (PPC) campaign performance and helping digital marketing specialists optimize for conversions.

The Introduction of Content-Generating AI for Channel Marketers

Content-generating platforms that use AI, such as ChatGPT and its competitors Bard AI, Jasper Chat, Socratic, Bing AI, and others, have all helped to short-cut and speed up writing processes. However, these platforms also come with concerns to keep in mind, including security, data privacy, data breaches, unconscious bias and content accuracy.

As a channel marketer, you must take care not to input proprietary information into these platforms. And make sure to take the output it’s giving you with a grain of sale – it’s a best to practice to ask subject matter experts to carefully validate the accuracy of the content generated. In order to mitigate these risks some companies are implementing acceptable use policies for AI platforms. The Society of Human Resource Management has a great example of such a policy you can use as a starting point to help create your own.

Given AI’s productivity advantages, your leadership may be tempted to cut channel marketing staff in favor of using AI writing software. However, point out to them that such a move would be short-sighted; generative AI platforms aren’t mature enough to understand the intricacies of indirect sales channel models and require curation from an expert to produce accurate and worthwhile content. Rather than view these early tools as staff replacements, consider them as time-saving tools to assist existing staff in producing content more efficiently. AI can increase worker productivity by as much as 14 percent, according to a study by Stanford and MIT.

Generative AI Supports Channel Marketing Data Analysis

According to an analysis from McKinsey & Company, commercial leaders across the globe are using generative AI in marketing for:

• Marketing optimization, including A/B testing and SEO strategies
• Dynamic content, including websites and marketing collateral
• Marketing analytics and dynamic audience targeting
• Dynamic customer-journey mapping
• Automated marketing workflows and nurturing campaigns

What does this AI-driven analysis mean for your partner ecosystem? Generative AI can optimize your channel marketing strategies through A/B tests of marketing campaigns, such as website page layouts, ad copy, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), PPC ad campaigns, automated lead nurturing campaigns and more. Predictive analytics also can help to provide your channel marketers with recommendations to ensure maximum return on investment (ROI) for program initiatives.

In a Nutshell

Through AI and machine learning, your channel marketing team can speed up partner recruitment and engagement efforts to lead to the financial success of your partner ecosystem.

When you’re ready to optimize your channel marketing initiatives, including taking advantage of AI, take a look at what the ZiftONE^TM platform can do for you.

The post How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Has Changed Channel Marketing in 2023 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

In-Depth Analysis: Anthony D’Angelo provides a thorough examination of the intricate relationship between digital transformation and building materials distribution. Delve into the strategies, challenges, and successes that are molding the trajectory of the industry.

Access the complete article published in Hub & Spoke: Read the full article here

Learn more about how ZiftONE and how it can help your building material manufacturing business drive revenue and stay competitive!

The post The Impact of Digital Distribution on Building Materials appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Knee-jerk reactions to continued economic headwinds may have your C-suite looking for places to cut spending, but forward-thinking organizations are investing strategically in technology to drive growth in a downturn.

“CEOs are confident that technology is a powerful tool to transform, scale, and optimize businesses,” according to IDC. The research firm’s study found that 87 percent of CEOs are looking to sustain or increase technology spending in 2023.  Gartner’s latest forecast also predicts worldwide IT spending will grow 4.3 percent this year. Those organizations that don’t invest in technology face a serious risk of falling behind.

Partner programs, which often operate as mini business units within companies, face similar pressures to do more with less. Strategic technology investments can help your channel organization weather the brewing economic storm – whether it rains or pours.

How Do Technology Systems Support Partner Programs in an Uncertain Economy?

While partner programs may leverage corporate technology for office productivity, accounting, HR and payroll, etc., they also need a tech stack of their own. This toolset may include partner relationship management (PRM) software, project management systems (PMS), communications and collaboration systems, file sharing, marketing automation software, learning management systems (LMS), digital asset management (DAM) platforms and more.

Building your partner program tech stack can help during uncertain economic times in three primary ways.

1. Technology Automation Enables Partner Program Scalability

A common goal for programs is to scale to serve as many partners (and, by extension, customers) as possible. An essential requirement for scaling a program is efficiency, which is achieved through strategies such as:

• Simplifying complex processes
• Automating manual tasks
• Removing redundancies

Your tech stack, particularly your PRM, will help accomplish these goals and give your program the support it needs to scale. Out of the entire stack, PRM stands head and shoulders above the rest because the platform is uniquely tailored to the intricacies and requirements of partner programs. Functions such as file resource and sharing, deal registration, order processing, mass partner communication and the ability for partners to obtain co-branded assets are just some of the capabilities of a PRM directly tied to scaling.

Scalability is critical for partner programs. While there are exceptions, indirect sales success is generally a numbers game, especially since not every partner will produce. The reality is that you can’t scale to support hundreds or thousands of partners without automating processes with technology.

Specific program models, such as wholesale or white-label, can’t function efficiently without a PRM (or PRM-adjacent) system. In this example, a white-label partner must be able to order services at will from the supplier and then immediately communicate timelines for deployment to an end customer as if it’s their own service. Programs can only achieve fast turnarounds at scale through the automation in a PRM; manual data entry simply isn’t fast enough when managing hundreds of partners.

2. Technology Maximizes Partner Program Return on Investment (ROI) 

The core focus of any partner program is to maximize ROI. Unfortunately, bottom-line decision-makers can easily interpret ROI maximization as cost minimization and may ask staff to do more with fewer tools. That’s a short-sighted view. In the long run, investing in high-quality tech systems will give your team time to focus on revenue-generating tasks that only a human mind can tackle, such as creating a complex sales proposal or troubleshooting a technical issue for a valuable partner.

Technology also is required to prove ROI by tracking metrics. Partner programs face a high hurdle of logging deals, proposals, prospects, leads and sales funnels for hundreds or thousands of partners. Tasking channel managers to manually monitor and record these metrics in a spreadsheet isn’t efficient or realistic.

PRM platforms are crucial to providing your company with the information you need for proper sales and pipeline forecasting. PRMs are equipped with analytics dashboards and report-generation functionality that make it easy to gauge the success of your program. And keep in mind that best-in-class PRMs integrate with CRM data, so you don’t need to worry about manual data entry errors between both platforms in your forecast calls.

The PRM tracks more than just the sales pipeline; entire program initiatives and resources, including marketing materials and campaigns, can be tracked inside the PRM. The PRM can give you the visibility you need to see how your partners use these materials and determine whether there’s ROI on your efforts.

Competing in a digital-first selling environment is a crucial driver of PRM software use for partners. Marketing and demand generation tools are in high demand, and partners turn to suppliers’ PRMs to execute campaigns. If your program doesn’t offer these value-adds to partners, another program will, reducing partner engagement and, ultimately, your program ROI.

3. Technology Supports Partner Program Continuity & Mitigates Staff Turnover

Partner programs, especially legacy programs with decades-long histories of engaging in indirect sales, can fall victim to their own success without tech systems and processes in place.

Vendor programs can heavily rely on close business relationships between channel account managers (CAMs) and their partners to bring in sales. Some of these business relationships can go back years or even decades, with some extending beyond business to personal friendships.

A CAM who leaves the company by choice or layoff can mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) as their trusted partners move their deals to the new vendor the CAM now calls home.

A partner program equipped with a high-quality PRM capable of integration into other PRM platforms, incentive management platforms, CRM platforms, professional services automation systems (PSAs), analytics packages and marketing automation platforms can keep track of critical relationships between partners and their internal personnel. From this data, the program can work to diversify contacts between key partners and the organization at large. Over time, those partners will begin to trust the vendor company as a whole as they associate with staff members other than their designated CAM and self-serve some CAM functions through these automated systems.

While you should replace front-line positions quickly, short-term vacancies won’t make or break your program if you have a high-quality PRM platform. PRMs enable partners to get core sales process components, like quoting, without needing to engage a supplier employee.

A PRM and a PMS operating in tandem can house all the core processes for onboarding new CAMs and partner personnel, safeguarding the program from staff departures or layoffs. Additionally, partner account information, deal status and other critical information about individual partnerships are stored in the PRM, providing new program reps vital information when picking up where previous staff left off.

Economic uncertainty can spur partner programs into short-term cost-cutting. However, technology investments can set up your program for success in the long run and help you weather the cloudy outlook.

When you’re ready to optimize your partner program tech stack, we invite you to look at what the ZiftONE^TM platform can do for you.

The post How Technology Investments Can Help Your Partner Program Weather Economic Uncertainty appeared first on Zift Solutions.

According to the report, the primary business issues channel partners face include:

1. Managing Uncertainty
2. Driving Growth
3. Improving Speed to Market
4. Focusing on New Markets
5. Improving the Effectiveness of Sales and Marketing
6. Reducing Customer Churn
7. Attracting and Retaining Employees
8. Improving Profitability per Customer
9. Keeping Pace with the Competition
10.  Increasing No. of Offerings per Customer (Cross-Sell/Upsell)

The leading digital marketing priorities for channel partners include the following:

1. Social Media (with 70 percent of respondents identifying it as a priority)
2. Email Marketing (with 68 percent of respondents identifying it as a priority)
3. Vendor Partner Referrals (with 60 percent of respondents identifying it as a priority)
4. SEO Implementation (with 56 percent of respondents identifying it as a priority)
5. Analytics (with 52 percent of respondents identifying it as a priority)
6. White Papers/Thought Leadership (with 40 percent of respondents identifying it as a priority)

Suppliers can help address partner issues and marketing priorities via through-channel marketing (TCM) and through-channel marketing automation (TCMA). 

What is Through-Channel Marketing?

Through-channel marketing (TCM) is a B2B marketing strategy suppliers use to promote their products and services through their partner ecosystem to reach end-user customers. TCM requires vendors to enable their ecosystem partners to communicate with prospects through various marketing tactics.

Through-channel marketing activities include:

• Flyers and data sheets
• Battlecards
• Blogs
• Case studies
• eBooks
• White papers
• Presentations
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Events
• Digital campaigns
• Social campaigns

What is Through-Channel Marketing Automation?

Through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) applies standard marketing automation to through-channel marketing, specifically for vendors to provide their partners with materials to market their products and solutions. TCMA allows partners to compete in digital marketing without becoming experts in marketing strategies, tactics and platforms.

TCMA offers partner ecosystems various ways to streamline channel marketing efforts, including:

• Accelerating go-to-market for new product launches, service promos or other offerings by scaling instantaneously across a supplier’s partner ecosystem
• Automating distribution of sales enablement content to ecosystem partners quickly and efficiently
• Scheduling of automated emails and tracking performance so vendors can prove communication with their ecosystem
• Triggering sales enablement emails based on engagement activity (e.g., form-fills) to walk partners through a vendor’s sales process
• Sending surveys to get ecosystem partner feedback on product knowledge and areas to improve marketing enablement
• Removing as many manual hand-offs of assets between supplier and partner personnel as possible
• Gaining the confidence of key partners who now have a much shorter time to revenue due to automation

The ”automation” part of TCMA is enabled through a SaaS-based TCMA platform like a partner relationship management (PRM) system. A TCMA platform allows partner marketing activities to be scaled across large partner ecosystems with hundreds or thousands of partners.

If you’re considering getting started with TCMA platforms, you should know there’s never been a better time to do so. Think about this: automation enables efficiency. The more efficient your channel program’s processes are, the more likely you are to see a return on investment in it. You can do more with less. Let the power of TCMA achieve better results and pay for itself.

What are the Key Features of a Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platform?

Interested in a TCMA platform but not sure where to start? High-quality TCMA platforms come with the following:

• Streamlined workflows for ease-of-use
• Group and user management
• Digital branding software, including branding of video content
• Social media syndication
• Email campaign creation and automation
• Portal page creation
• Partner microsite creation
• A library of brand-compliant and customizable marketing assets
• The option to get translated marketing assets for different regions around the globe
• An efficient portal from which marketing programs can be launched, tracked and measured
• Robust analytics for suppliers to track and measure performance, MDF and BDF usage
• The ability to quickly operationalize asset delivery
• Simplified viewing for partners to track and spend MDF

Channel Partner Digital Marketing Priorities Addressed by Through-Channel Marketing Automation Platforms

A TMCA platform can effectively address four of the six digital marketing priorities for channel partners in 2023 identified by Techaisle, including:

• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• White Papers
• Analytics

Suppliers can create these customized, messaging-compliant and brandable materials for their partner ecosystem. Let’s walk through some examples viewable within the ZiftONE platform. 

Through-Partner Email Campaign Example:

Providers can customize email campaigns based on partners and partner types. Then they can package campaigns for their entire partner ecosystem without adding to their team’s workload.

Partners can send campaigns directly to customers, reflecting their own brand while promoting vendor products. An API automatically connects with email automation platforms and provides copy-and-paste HTML for partners that send emails through other services.

Customizable Collateral Library Example:

A TCMA platform provides a brandable asset library that allows vendors to apply partners’ branding to content easily, use text blocks to plug in partners’ information and put relevant content in partners’ hands fast, including the white paper and thought leadership collateral they’re looking for. 

Analytics Example:

A robust TCMA platform enables suppliers to:

• Keep track of lead registrations and attribution
• Which campaigns and collateral are being deployed and are successful
• Partner activity

Deploy a TCMA platform for your partner ecosystem and you’ll be on the path to meeting partners’ leading digital marketing needs in 2023.

The post How Vendors Can Address Partner Marketing Needs in 2023 with Through-Channel Marketing Automation appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Partner access to lead generation programs is typically gated through a tiered framework in which partners must first meet specific criteria or sales thresholds. However, lead generation programs may also be part of partner training wherein new partners can get their feet wet through co-selling qualified leads. 

Lead generation programs may be managed ad-hoc if limited to select partners but quickly becomes unwieldy when they need to scale to dozens or hundreds of partners. That scenario calls for a formal partner lead distribution program.

What Is a Partner Lead Distribution Program?

A partner lead distribution program is a process wherein a partner ecosystem manager strategically assigns individual end-customer leads to specific partner companies that are best suited to sell to or service them or, as noted earlier, have prequalified to receive leads.

What Are the Benefits of a Partner Lead Distribution Program?

A partner lead distribution program enables suppliers to:

• Boost Partner Program ROI – By delivering targeted leads to select partners, suppliers can drive a more predictable ROI from their indirect channels. Here’s how: By ensuring well-trained and high-performing partners handhold significant prospects, deals go smoother and close rates increase.
• Increase New Partner Recruitment – It’s no secret that recruiting productive partners has become more competitive over time, especially in the information and communications technology (ICT) channel, where commoditized solution providers beat the competition by throwing larger SPIFFs and promotions at their transacting partners. Of course, there’s a limit to how many Xs you can add to a SPIFF before deals become unprofitable. Typically, only larger companies with higher volumes of cash flow can handle an 8X or 10X SPIFF. One way to lure partner deals away from a larger competitor paying higher SPIFFs is to provide partners with qualified leads.
• Train New Partners During Onboarding – New partners need practice and assistance selling or deploying your solutions, especially if they’re venturing into a new vertical or technology type. Your program can rapidly advance your partner’s development by providing them with real-life opportunities to interact with qualified prospects in a co-selling motion during onboarding.
• Ingratiate New Partners – What better way to communicate your commitment to a partnership than dropping a potential deal into a new partner’s lap? An early win within the first couple of months of a new partnership creates positive momentum. Conversely, investing time in unproductive partnerships can prove frustrating for your partners and your C-Suite.

What Are the Steps to Creating a Partner Lead Distribution Program?

A partner lead distribution program is an ongoing, iterative process that involves acquiring, qualifying, scoring and distributing leads.

Step 1: Acquire Leads

Entire books have been written on how to generate end-customer leads, but for this article, we’ll simply categorize lead acquisition into two major buckets — inbound and outbound.

• Inbound lead generation activities typically include search engine marketing (SEM), which consists of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) to attract visitors to your website. Website visitors have read your company blogs, watched your videos, listened to your podcasts and seen your organization mentioned in relevant industry publications. These visitors become leads by filling out lead capture forms on your site, engaging with chatbots, emailing the appropriate contacts and calling your company phone number to discuss engaging your services.
• All these lead-capturing methods enable you to gather contact information, including name, email address, phone number, company name, company size and location. This info is stored in your customer relationship management platform (CRM), which can be integrated with your partner relationship management platform (PRM).
• Outbound lead generation activities typically include sending email drip cadences, messaging prospects on LinkedIn and other social platforms and making outbound calls to:
  • hot leads acquired from tradeshows
  • warm leads from co-marketing efforts with ecosystem partners
  • cold leads on target accounts from resources like ZoomInfo

Once your company has a base of interested end customer prospects, you’ll need to qualify them to ensure they’re the right fit for your solution set.

Step 2: Qualify Leads

Based on the information you’ve gathered on each lead, you’ll need to assess if they’re serviceable by your company. 

For example, an Internet access provider that only offers services in the United States can quickly rule out a prospect that needs Internet services in the rest of the world. In contrast, a cybersecurity provider that offers a customized solution that must work within an existing tech stack may need to set up an initial consultation to further qualify leads by asking about their specific needs, budget and timelines. 

Once the leads have been qualified as serviceable, you’ll need to score these leads.

Step 3: Score Leads

Lead scoring is assigning a numerical value to each lead your company generates. Scoring leads help your marketing teams prioritize the leads, engage appropriately and hand them off to qualified partners in your ecosystem. 

Develop a scoring system with your ecosystem’s partner types in mind. A prospect may be an excellent fit for your solution set, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be an ideal fit for all of your ecosystem partners. You can score leads based on multiple factors, such as:

• Fit – Is the lead in the right region for your partner? The right industry? The proper role to be purchasing the solution?
• Interest – How engaged has the lead been with your online content? Have they reached out in the past, but it wasn’t the right time to deploy your solution?
• New Business vs. Upsell – Upselling an existing customer may be an easier close. However, determining whether to engage may be influenced by different behaviors than for prospects. For example, rather than looking at website visits and engagement with your content as you would with a prospect, you might assess a customer’s support tickets, engagement during onboarding and use of your current products or services.

Lead scoring can vary based on the type of data you collect from leads interacting with your company:

• Demographic Information – If your company only sells to specific buyer personas, like a CIO, CTO or IT director, and one of those positions fills out a form, the lead score will increase. If the lead is inside your service area but is interested in a type of service available only in a particular geography, their score would decrease. If the form-fill on the site includes optional fields filled out correctly, the lead score may increase. 
• Company Information – Your company may be more inclined to service customers of a specific size, type or industry. The more they fit into your ideal customer profile (ICP), the higher the lead score. 
• Online Behavior – How leads interact with your site can help gauge their interest in your solutions and where they might be in their buying journey. For example, if they frequently visit your pricing page, they may be actively comparing your plan levels to competitors, potentially indicating a buying state. A site visitor who fills out a form requesting a consultation or a quote will score higher than a visitor who fills out a form to download an eBook or subscribe to a newsletter. 
• Email Engagement – Measuring prospects’ email open and click-through rates can help your team determine those who are most engaged and more likely to close. The more click-throughs and emails opened, the higher the lead score. 
• Social Engagement – Similar to email engagement, look at which prospects clicked through from organic and paid social media to your site and engagement with your company content on those platforms.

Step 4: Distribute Leads

Once the leads have been scored, they’re ready to send to your partners. Not so fast! First, you must figure out how to distribute which leads to which partners. You have several options to choose from. The most common lead distribution models include the following:

• Round robin – A round robin evenly distributes leads across the entire partner base without tiering or criteria-based screening. Newer programs or programs without strict parameters for lead distribution may opt for this model as it’s technically the most equitable and “fair” model for all partners involved. 
• Cherry-pick – A cherry-pick method involves distributing all leads to a shared resource for qualified partners to pick the leads they want out of an established pool. Lead quantity and deal size parameters must be set to ensure equity between qualified partners.
• Regional – A region-based or territory-based model involves segmenting and distributing leads to partners based on their location within a given country. For example, a lead based out of Boston, Massachusetts, would be assigned to a partner based in the northeastern United States. This method is particularly useful for solutions that require in-person visits to deploy. In an ecosystem model, you could also involve multiple in-region partners in the deal, one to nurture the sale and another to install the solution.  
• Vertical – An industry-based or vertical-based model is similar to a region-based model, except it includes partners with specific industry expertise or who meet particular compliance requirements to serve specific leads. For example, a healthcare lead may be sent to a partner who is educated in HIPAA requirements and can deploy HIPAA-compliant solutions. Similarly, a retail sector lead may be sent to a partner educated in PCI compliance and deploys PCI-certified solutions. 
• Top performer – A top performer model distributes leads to partners based entirely on merit, such as attributed revenue for transacting partners or  influenced revenue for non-transacting partners. Deployment partners may be offered projects based on the number of error-free installations completed. This model has the added benefit of only sending leads to partners who have earned them based on prior performance, which maximizes the ROI on your lead generation efforts. 
• Shotgun – In a shotgun model, partners are pre-evaluated based on strengths, skills and experience, factoring in their partner type. Right-fit leads are then shared among like partners on a first-come, first-served basis. Like the top performer model, this has the benefit of being merit-based while adding an element of competition for the best opportunities.
• Hybrid – A hybrid model incorporates various strategies to meet your ecosystem’s goals. So, for example, if a key benefit of joining your program is guaranteed lead distribution to all partners, then you’ll select a round-robin model. However, you might also set up a select tier that receives leads following the top-performer model to maximize ROI. So, in this example, your program will deliver leads to all partners, reserving the best leads for partners most likely to close them. 

What Software Enables a Partner Lead Distribution Program?

Partner relationship management (PRM) software platforms help automate partner lead distribution management. PRMs automatically assign and distribute qualified leads through email notifications and integrations into partner CRM platforms. As a result, partners get data such as lead profile information (name, company, etc.) and lead history (campaign, emails opened/clicked, website views, etc.) to help them easily and quickly engage. And providers get a complete picture of the sales lifecycle for each lead they distribute.

Looking for a PRM with automated partner lead distribution management?

Lead Distribution Management from ZiftONE enables your partner program to:

• Deliver leads via email or partners’ CRMs, such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, SugarCRM, Sage and more 
• Enable visibility and tracking across the entire lead lifecycle 
• Speed and strengthen follow-up with deeper prospect data 
• Easily see and share feedback, track lead activities and measure results with automated closed-loop reporting 
• Leverage Zift’s Through Partner Marketing Automation (TCMA) to help partners nurture warm leads until they’re ready for sales

If you’re considering getting started with PRM software, you should know there’s never been a better time to do so. Think about this: automated partner lead distribution management enables efficiency. The more efficient your channel program’s processes are, the more likely you are to see a return on investment in it. You can do more with less. Let the power of PRM achieve better results and pay for itself.

The post Partner Lead Distribution: Benefits, Steps & Software appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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In this blog post, we’re exploring the benefits of PRM software platforms and why they are essential for building and maintaining successful partner relationships. We also discuss the key features and capabilities of a PRM software platform, as well as important considerations when selecting the right solution for your business. So if you’ve ever found yourself asking, “What the heck should I look for in PRM?!” this one’s for you.

Here are key questions you should ask your PRM vendor:

1. Can the PRM facilitate partner onboarding?

PRM platforms need to be part of the partner experience from step one of the onboarding process to drive adoption. Best-in-class platforms enable e-signatures on partnership agreements to kick off onboarding. Plus, they house your education, training, certifications, lead registration and quoting.

The PRM platform can segment and categorize partners throughout their onboarding process to further customize how your program is training partners with content only relevant to their given stage in the onboarding process.

Plus, onboarding with the PRM platform can open up more program revenue pathways. The best PRM platforms will include learning management system (LMS) capabilities. An LMS allows your program to onboard partners that fit multiple program types through various courses and training tracks, so it can simultaneously support white-label partners, direct agents, TSBs and their subagents, VARs and MSPs.

2. Can the PRM integrate with your CRM?

A PRM should integrate with your CRM. You can gain deeper insights into your partners’ activities by syncing the data from your PRM with your CRM. CRM and PRM must correctly map each other to reflect sales commissions and deal attribution. If all sales go through your CRM, mapping them into PRM is essential so the entire sales process is automated.

3. Will the PRM enable marketing automation for partners?  

The PRM needs to be able to provide marketing automation for partners. This functionality isn’t just for large, well-established partner programs. When a program is small and still trying to gain market share, that’s when it most needs marketing automation functionality. Automation makes it easier for partners to market your services, so they’re more likely to do so. 

4. Is the PRM easy to use and navigate?

Your PRM should be a cohesive resource for all functions and actions you want your partner to take. The partner shouldn’t have to log in to multiple systems to do business with you. 

When registering marketing leads in the PRM, for example, the partner should be able to log them as a deal simultaneously. Beware of PRM platforms that claim they do this when they’re really several platforms linked by a single-sign-on (SSO).

Why Choose Zift Solutions as Your PRM Software Platform Provider?

Nothing screams “amateur!” for buyers louder than a disjointed, cumbersome experience. ZiftONE helps channel leaders manage data, marketing and reputations through a “one pipeline, one platform” mantra. So, operations, enablement, marketing and sales are working from a single integrated source — the one that helps them maximize partner efficiency and minimize buyer frustration.

Vendor Experience

• Gain Pipeline Visibility
• Establish Marketing Attribution & ROI
• Manage Deal Lifecycles
• Unify Channel Data
• Generate Insightful Reports

Partner Experience

• Reach & Retain New Customers
• Access One Program Location
• Leverage Co-Branded Content
• Deploy Powerful Partner Playbooks
• Stay Ahead with Training & Continuous Learning

Buyer Experience

• Work with True Industry Experts
• Get Personalized Content and Solution Recommendations
• Enjoy a Seamless Buying Relationship

Want to learn more about how ZiftONE can help you nail vendor, partner and buyer experience? Contact us at this link.

The post What Should You Look for in a PRM Software Platform? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

With ZiftONE, and through features like Provider Locator, we directly connect members of the channel ecosystem to one other. Our goal is to deliver technologies to suppliers to better manage their ecosystems. We do that through three features:

1) Partner Finder

ZiftONE’s Partner Finder feature provides an entirely new way for partners to find other partners to work with. Through the feature, channel partners can look for a specific partner that will meet their needs. Partners can also promote themselves to other partners by creating a profile that highlights the skills, services, and complementary products they can bring into a deal. From there, partners are able to directly contact each other.

As an example, one of our customers is a semiconductor chip manufacturer. Their partners require assistance designing these chips and then need further help locating someone to build the boards for their chips. All in all, our customer’s partners are responsible for accessing many other partners to get their jobs done. Partner Finder provides a simpler way for all partners to locate each other and create a finished product.

Partner Finder is the first step in enabling partners to evaluate each other and identify the best partner for them. This feature generates distributed leads that give suppliers visibility into who is contacting who. The partners can then convert those leads into deals, further providing visibility into how partners are getting connected.

2) Multi-Partner Deal Registration

Multi-Partner Deal Registration offers a way for partners to document when other partners are collaborating with them on deals. By enabling and rewarding stronger partner collaboration, suppliers provide an environment where one partner can work with another to close business. This adds value to the partners while also working to improve the end customer’s experience. 

For example, imagine a hardware manufacturer. They sell through many partner types. One of their partners might have a strong relationship with a customer; following a merger, this customer now has a location across the country where the partner doesn’t have a presence. The manufacturer can reach out to a partner in that location to help close the deal or take on the installation and servicing of the product. With Multi-Partner Deal Registration, they can also document this collaboration and make it visible to the hardware manufacturer, who can then reward each partner’s participation in a deal accordingly.

Multi-Partner Deal Registration also allows partners to create a more accurate representation of a deal to show all the partners involved. This includes non-transacting partners who have had a huge influence on the deal closing, giving ZiftONE customers a more accurate picture of who is actually influencing customer decisions.

3) Provider Locator

The Provider Locator feature is focused on connecting channel partners with the service providers they need to best sell a supplier’s product. By connecting partners with approved providers, suppliers can have peace of mind that the listed agencies will maintain foundational brand and market understanding. Within the ZiftONE portal, partners are empowered to search for whatever they need within their geographical area–and then connect with the appropriate providers.

Curious about the use case of Provider Locator? Picture a large global technology company that operates in many regions and many languages. After finding that partners using their own agencies were creating sub-par marketing materials, they were able to use Provider Locator to make available the agencies that their corporate teams worked with in each region. Doing so made it clear who could provide the highest quality services for their brand.

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If you’d like to learn more about Zift Solutions and the ZiftONE features that can provide harmony within your channel ecosystem, contact a member of our team at this link.

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Phew. Just reading that list is exhausting, never mind actually executing on it. Disparate software solutions may promise that they can get this all done… but then, channel program managers are stuck doing their jobs in too many places. And – worst of all – many are struggling with it.

Reintroducing Zift Service Points

Do you want to grow your channel program without growing your headcount? By utilizing features like ZiftONE’s Service Points, you can. Service Points enable you to:

• Utilize create sophisticated, multi-touch marketing campaigns,
• Simplify your partner outreach process,
• And more efficiently train channel partners and colleagues.

With Service Points, channel programs have access to flexible, fully integrated solutions that actually drive results. If you aren’t familiar, Service Points are purchased by customers and used to perform services they need to optimize their use of the ZiftONE platform and drive channel success.

Zift Service Points offer customers a broader catalog of services that they can choose from or purchase as a bundle from one of three prescriptive service packages.

I already have Service Points. Now what?

If you’re an existing ZiftONE customer with Service Points paid for in your contract, you’re in luck. You can begin using these today!

To get started, submit a service request to the Zift team.

1. If you’re logged into ZiftONE admin, hit the question mark in the upper right corner. From there, go to “ZiftONE Academy” and “Submit a request” in the upper right corner. Make sure you’re filing a Services Request and provide the relevant information.

A member of Zift’s Professional Services team will soon be in touch.

Service Points expire at the end of your subscription term – so if you haven’t used them up quite yet, there’s still time to act.

If you have any questions, email your Customer Success Manager. Our job is to make your life – and partner portal! – easier. For more information on Service Points, head to CustomerONE.

How do I get Service Points?

If you’re an existing ZiftONE customer, you’ll need to contact your Customer Success Manager to have service points added to your contract. You can also receive more information at this CustomerONE page – including how long they last, what they can’t be used for, and how they are packaged.

If you aren’t yet a ZiftONE customer, we’d love to start a conversation today! Please fill out this contact form and someone from our team will be in touch soon.

The post Seeking a Simpler Channel Program? Use Service Points appeared first on Zift Solutions.

“We are thrilled to announce the collaboration between Zift and Microsoft to deliver a Dynamics 365 capability that manages channel partners through our industry-leading ZiftONE platform,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “By building partner management directly in Dynamics 365, the user experience for channel sales leaders, marketing leaders, and administrators is familiar and efficient, and delivers the full power of Zift’s Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform.”

With this integration, Dynamics 365 customers can now manage deals and users directly in Dynamics 365 without ever leaving their native environment. With a combination of channel expertise, powerful data tools, and a platform built for ease-of-use, channel programs will be empowered to see immediate ROI and dramatically improve their partner experience. 

This new solution includes all of ZiftONE’s features: Dynamic, hyper-personalized, easy to use partner portal experience, powerful through-partner social media and email marketing campaigns, co-brandable video, comprehensive onboarding plans, easy-to-create online training, partner locator, deal registration, lead distribution and more.

“Microsoft is glad to be partnering with Zift Solutions to provide a partner relationship channel management system with a more seamless technology experience built on Dynamics 365,” says Toby Bowers, General Manager, Industry, Applications & Data Marketing at Microsoft Corp. “By making it easier for partner programs to access their data in one place, we are significantly reducing roadblocks that lead to friction and reduced ROI.”

Companies interested in adding ZiftONE for Microsoft Dynamics 365 to their current Dynamics 365 instance can view the listing in the Microsoft AppSource to find out more.

About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions has a decade and a half of experience delivering Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Channel Marketing Management. As the global leader in Enterprise Channel Management, the company’s ZiftONE platform integrates channel sales, marketing, enablement, and operations in a single end-to-end channel management solution that oversees the entire funnel from lead to revenue. In 2020, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions Launches Integration Between ZiftONE and Microsoft Dynamics 365 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

I titled my essay: Heather Tenuto, President of the United States of America.

Question1: Is the C-Suite for you?

I would be a terrible POTUS. They don’t seem to get much sleep and the pay isn’t that great. I would hate that job. As it turns out, just “getting to the top” isn’t a good enough reason to want to be a CXO, either.  

Being a leader at the top of an organization requires very different skills than the roles within it. I’ve always been a great problem solver. Give me a problem, the messier the better, and I will work my tail off to resolve it with grit and elbow grease. These skills are useless as a CRO.  There are too many challenges to be solved, even for me. My job is not Head Problem-Solver but Head People Developer: very different and not for everyone. Before you target the leadership role, make sure it’s something you are equipped for and happy to do. 

Question 2: Are you ready for more feedback? 

We all say we’re “open to feedback” because it’s what we’re supposed to say… but is it really true? Early in my leadership journey, I recognized that receiving negative feedback affected me physiologically. It changed my mood, others noticed, and in turn they stopped giving me feedback. Being open to feedback means being able to listen to what others say, refraining from reacting, deciding what to accept, and then making a change for the better.  

I once shared my resume with a colleague I had previously worked with and asked for his feedback. He told me that a C-level position was too much of a reach for me, and that I should focus on Human Resources instead of Sales. In the past, that kind of critique would have decimated me, but I had since learned that it’s okay to reject feedback. This person hadn’t worked with me for a very long time, and hadn’t seen me in a Sales position. I was thankful for his candor but I didn’t change course, and soon landed the role I was after. 

Once I got more comfortable with feedback, I found people I trusted and asked them for very specific advice. And because I didn’t react negatively, they were happy to give it. 

“What weaknesses do you see that will hold me back from becoming a CRO in 2-4 years?” 

My boss’s answer gave me a game plan. I had gaps, and I found ways to fill them and was able to achieve my goal. And there was more feedback waiting for me when I got there. Board meetings are feedback thunderdomes. Get ready. 

Understanding what’s required of the job to which you aspire and uncovering and filling the gaps in your own experience is the surefire formula for success at any level. It’s worked for me so far, I will apply them when I am ready for my next role, which to the disappointment of my fourth-grade self, still won’t be President of the United States. I’ll leave that to the professionals.

The post Eyeing the C-Suite? Two Questions to Ask Yourself appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Additionally, Zift Solutions was named a top leader in Partner Management software, a category it has been included in for four consecutive quarters. G2, the leading tech marketplace for businesses to find and review technology products, releases quarterly reports detailing progress in a variety of software categories.

On top of being included in the Through-Channel Marketing and Partner Management categories, Zift was recognized as a Leader in Small-Business for Partner Management, a Leader in Mid-Market for Partner Management, and received a “Users Love Us” reward. These rewards are given to companies that have received 20+ user reviews with an average 4.0-star rating.

“We are incredibly grateful for the number of positive customer reviews that led to these results,” said Gordon Rapkin, Zift’s Chief Executive Officer. “Time and time again, we’re reminded as a company that our customers are the backbone of our business. Thank you to those who helped us achieve these results.”

Zift Solutions is the choice of leaders in the channel, including Dell, Cisco, Nutanix, and more. It recently expanded its market-leading ZiftONE platform with innovative new features, including integrated Virtual Event campaigns, which help channel programs take their virtual event promotion to the next level, and Success Plans, empowering sales leaders to get on the same page as their partners with detailed annual plans.

To learn more about Zift Solutions, please visit www.ziftsolutions.com or stop by booth #2444 at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference and Expo from April 11-14. The company’s ZiftONE platform integrates channel sales, marketing, enablement, and operations in a single end-to-end channel management solution that oversees the entire funnel from lead to revenue.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions has a decade and a half of experience delivering Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Channel Marketing Management. As the global leader in Enterprise Channel Management, the company’s ZiftONE platform integrates channel sales, marketing, enablement, and operations in a single end-to-end channel management solution that oversees the entire funnel from lead to revenue. In 2020, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions Named Number 1 in G2 Through-Channel Marketing Spring Reports appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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But when I speak with channel chiefs in the field, I find myself wishing they would spend more time curating the tools they need to find the actionable data that will support making the right decisions for their channel’s success. There’s a tendency to “outsource” those decisions, to let the programs or IT team handle the selection of tools and platforms. I believe that’s a big mistake.

I suggest to them that nobody in their IT team, and probably nobody else in their company, understands the channel business and their partners like they do. Nobody lives every day with all the inputs needed to be successful like they do, and nobody has a better handle on the reporting they need every day, week, month, quarter, or year.

In speaking with channel leaders, it often surprises me how little they know about the tools their teams are choosing to understand and manage their channels. You need the right data, so you also need tools and platforms that your partners will actually use. Who is in a better position to make these decisions than the person on the hook for channel revenue? If I could give my past-self advice, it would be to stay very involved in any technology decisions that would affect my partners and the data I need to run my business.   

Before You Decide What You Want, You Should Know What’s Possible

For one thing, by participating more in the evaluation process for selecting data tools, you have an opportunity to learn. How are others using data? What more is even possible?

You really shouldn’t decide what you want or need until you know everything you could have, everything that’s possible. Having real time understanding of all the new capabilities coming to market opens new doors of innovation and imagination you couldn’t have reached otherwise. You always start off not knowing what you don’t know, so your best strategy is to learn as much as you can about what you could know.

Connecting and Combining Tools

Right out-of-the-box, some platforms offer capabilities you may never have thought of or thought were not available in any system you’ve seen before. With just a little bit of ingenuity, or a good application programming interface (API), all kinds of other connections can be made with other systems that can really augment what you learn from these tools. They give you the ability to create the telemetry you need to run your channel business.

It’s remarkable to see how the most successful of our colleagues have taken what the software vendors have given them, connected those applications to other platforms that support the business, and given themselves the ability to accelerate channel revenue through a multi-prong approach:

• Analyze the data. What things happened to create revenue and how do we track the progress of those things into future quarters?
• Coach the people. Where are the skills gaps and how can we efficiently plug them? 
• Get ROI. How do I track my channel GTM investments and prove that they are returning?
• Understand the customer. Where are customer needs trending and how do I help our partners pivot?

Each of these viewpoints empowers a channel leader to make better decisions. The trick is making sure you can see all these things. Picking the right tools to give you the right vantage points is critical.

There’s So Much More to Talk About

Being a data-driven channel chief is a broad, inclusive topic. In future posts, I’ll be talking about:

• How to best determine which key performance indicators (KPI) should be most prominently displayed on your dashboard. 
• How data can surface challenges you didn’t even know you had, in time for you to take decisive action about them. 
• How to recognize trends in the data that can help you devise future strategy.

I’ll also be sharing insights and best practices from the best chiefs in the channel.

Please do let me know if there are topics you’d appreciate learning more about here in this blog for channel chiefs by a channel chief.

The post The Data-Driven Channel Chief: Choose Your Tools appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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Estimating return-on-investment (ROI) is both vital and challenging for businesses, their units and their activities.

• While simple in concept, ROI in practice consists of both hard costs and soft costs that are allocated differently by different providers.

• The channel and channel activities are no exception to the challenges of ROI measurement (and in some ways are more complex).

• Virtually every company department – including those not dedicated to the channel – impacts channel ROI.

• While the metrics used in channel ROI dashboards vary (and evolve) from provider to provider, it’s vital for partner relationship management (PRM) platforms and dashboard tools to empower accurate tracking across multiple distribution layers.

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Author Stephen King says that Henry G. Bohn got it wrong. The road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions, King asserts, but adverbs. But any channel chief can tell you they’re both wrong – it’s paved with discussions about channel ROI.

The pursuit of ROI, for all its challenges, is a noble cause. If you don’t believe us, ask your CFO. It’s also a necessary pursuit that can benefit greatly from ROI dashboards. We talked with eight channel experts to help you build yours.

What is Channel ROI?

The concept of ROI is simple enough. If you invest in something, you hope to get more back than you put in. The calculation – at least in concept – is just as simple. Here’s how Investopedia advises its site visitors to determine ROI:

To calculate ROI, the benefit (or return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment. The result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

   Current Value of Investment – Cost of Investment 

ROI = ——————————————————————————————–

Cost of Investment   

But as any CMO, CFO or CEO can tell you, ROI is anything but simple. And you don’t have to plummet down the rabbit hole pursuing concepts like net present value (NPV), discount rate or internal rate of return (IRR) for things to become complicated – especially when discussing nearly any business activity. That’s because of issues like time horizon, revenue and expense allocation, fixed costs vs. variable costs and – as oft as not – C-suite philosophy.

The channel is no exception. Only instead of struggles with concepts like how much to invest in customer retention programs (and, later, how much of a difference they made when facing a new competitive dynamic), channel leaders face questions like: 

• What’s the ROI on tradeshow participation?
• How much does channel revenue contribute to our cost basis?
• How do we cost justify sales teaming between our inside reps and channel partners?
• How long will our new channel program take to achieve ROI?
• How do we achieve ROI competing with firms offering aggressive SPIFFs and compensation?
• So many more – virtually all business challenges are mirrored in channel programs.

 The elephant in the room for all of these issues is that businesses – and their channel programs – are dynamic. And so are the markets and competitive landscapes in which they operate. This means that detailed ROI models and assumptions need to be developed and agreed to with the unique characteristics of each organization.

 At the same time, it’s essential to avoid becoming hamstrung in paralysis by analysis when developing or expanding channel programs that may not have sufficient scale for hard ROI (aside from projections). This is where ROI indicators (in the form of metrics) come in. The right KPIs and other indicators can help channel programs gain their bearings and pursue improvement regardless of issues like program stage, allocation and other factors.

To help you gain your own bearings, we discussed the challenges of Channel ROI with eight channel experts and developed a list of six Channel Dashboard ROI tips you can put to work on your behalf.

How Departments Aside from Sales and Marketing Contribute to Channel ROI

Channel chiefs sometimes face challenges when communicating that every department in the company impacts channel ROI – engineering, provisioning, customer service… All of it. With this in mind, we asked our experts about how other departments (aside from the apparent relevancy of marketing and sales) impact channel ROI. Here are some key takeaways:

• Accounting: “Accounting is a critical piece of the puzzle,” says Greg Plum, Principal, Americas-East for Partner Ready. “Since the accounting team is often tasked with tracking and paying commissions earned by channel partners, their accuracy and availability to address partner inquiries greatly impacts channel success.”
• Systems Engineering: “The systems engineering group may have the most influence of all the departments,” says Dede Haas, Channel Sales Strategist & Coach at DLH Services. “They are definitely the most trusted by the partners and their customers because they are not considered ‘sales.’ They are – besides the channel account manager (CAM) – the go-to people when partners and their customers have technical issues. They are not confronting the partners on marketing and sales issues, but by the very nature of what they do – repairs, troubleshooting, updating/upgrading, explaining the reasons why the product is so important for the partners and their customers – they are listening and fixing a problem. Any recommendations they give will be taken seriously and that can lead to more product or enhancement revenue.”
• Enablement, Training and Support: “Enablement/training plays an important role with channel program ROI,” says Matthew Peeples, Channel Leader. “An enabled/trained partner that can explain the value of technology from a vendor’s products produces much faster than a partner that cannot. [Additionally], partners that have access to a dedicated partner support team provide a faster ROI than partners that have to figure it out on their own or have to work with the customer to call through the normal customer support team.” All of these factors underscore the importance of having your channel enablement best practices down pat.
• Product Teams: “Product and product development play a key role via offers and offer definitions,” says Brent Earlewine, Senior Vice President of Indirect Channels, IntelePeer. “At its core, the channel program is based upon what we bring to market via the channel community.” 
• All of Them: Jon Howes, Sales Director for Juniper Networks, points out that every department can contribute positively to channel ROI. “For organizations where indirect business is the norm, it’s a cliché, but true to say that every department should contribute to the channel program’s ROI model,” he says. “Legal, finance, product support and customer service each play an important role!”

Channel ROI Considerations

The indirect layer(s) in the channel deliver substantial revenue opportunities. But those layers – which could include technology services brokers and distributors as well as direct partners – also create multiple points for ROI assessment. Is your relationship with distributors generating sufficient ROI? What about partners? How about partner enablement and your through-partner efforts? How does your channel partner engagement plan help to drive ROI?

We picked up some helpful tidbits from our experts to help you maintain perspective across all of your ROI-related activities with these realities in mind. Here’s a summary: 

• Intuition matters: Often – especially early in channel programs when insufficient scope and scale exist for reliable ROI – decisions are made with an intuitive understanding that ROI is “built in” to certain activities. “The classic example of an activity that delivers intuitive ROI is tradeshow participation,” says BuzzTheory’s Khali Henderson. “It really speaks to the power of a strong channel partner. Providers will confidently participate in tradeshows knowing that recruiting one productive partner will deliver ROI, even if they can’t put an exact number on it. That never really goes away, but when programs mature, the same principle applies to partner retention. Providers will work the shows both to gain new partners and protect their existing partners from poachers.”
• Platforms should enable distributor ROI tracking: “Distributors like technology services brokers can significantly impact ROI,” says Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer for Zift Solutions. “However, these relationships are complex. You don’t just sign up with a technology services broker and watch the revenue come in. They have communications plans and sponsorship opportunities, technology services broker-only SPIFFs, partner summits with booths and sponsorships, and other incentives that encourage them to promote your products to their subagents. This complexity means you need tools that can track it all and assess ROI at the distributor level without dealing with issues like double counting technology services broker-sub contributions or, worse, having no real visibility at all. Your PRM tools should empower you to accurately track partner recruitment and engagement across all of your activities with distributors so you can determine their effectiveness.” 
• The pandemic clouds some measurements: Even established programs must weather potentially confusing external forces. Mary Moore Cavanagh, Channel Manager for PGi, observes that the pandemic has turned some metrics – such as average time to achieve partner ROI – upside down. “In ‘normal’ times, I would say we would see ROI in about six months,” she says. “However, Covid has changed this, and our channel partners are not as familiar with webcasting and have moved more heavily into the collaboration platforms like Zoom/Teams/and webinar products like GoToMeeting and WebEx. We are seeing the biggest ROI right now from resellers of our product. The irony of this is channel partners would see a larger payout on a webcasting option, but many deal with SMBs and they have no need for a webcasting platform.”

Channel ROI Dashboard Tips from the Pros

We asked our experts for tips on building channel ROI dashboards to help you develop and refine your own dashboard. They provided sage advice covering everything from ROI philosophy to metrics that help to drive partner engagement best practices to dashboard KPIs themselves. Here’s a breakdown of their tips:

Tip 1: ROI is in the Eye of the Beholder

As we indicated earlier, determining ROI on individual activities is both an art and a science. DLH’s Haas points out that determining ROI varies from company to company. “ROI is viewed differently by different vendors based on what they think is important,” Haas says. “Unless they are strictly transactional, there is so much more they can add to what they think is an appropriate investment.”

“How do they measure ROI? Is it by revenue alone, or is market share included? ROI is usually measured on hard numbers like revenue, but what about soft numbers or no numbers at all? Some vendors may measure their investment in the channel based on how many of their partners have gotten certified. They can assign a number to that and add it to the calculation. In my opinion, it is whatever the vendor wants to measure to determine what they consider is an ROI.”

Tip 2: ROI May Be Relative

BuzzTheory’s Henderson agrees with Haas and points out that some companies determine ROI by comparing the costs of customer acquisition from one activity to the costs of another. “You might compare the results of sponsoring a distributor’s annual partner meeting against the costs of acquiring those partners outside of the event,” she says.

Even this kind of measurement could vary from one vendor to the next. “Vendor A might look at straight partner acquisition costs, and Vendor B might also factor in the time-to-revenue benefits of gaining multiple productive partners at once,” says Henderson.

 “Either way, the comparative approach provides a meaningful frame of reference that keeps companies from becoming too bogged down in tricky issues like soft-cost allocation. They know they must recruit partners regardless of those factors. The ability to measure the performance of a targeted boost in spend against their day-to-day recruitment activities provides enough data for them to know when they’re moving in the right direction.”

Tip 3: Sometimes ROI Indicators Are Simple Benchmarks

Speaking of moving in the right direction, Tenuto of Zift Solutions adds that, for many companies, ROI indicators are a matter of taking a snapshot of performance today and comparing that performance over time. “So, you don’t have all your ROI factors worked out,” she says. “Improving in vital KPIs signals improving ROI.

“This is another reason you need a PRM with strong reporting and API capabilities,” she said. “And it’s not just about partner acquisition. It’s about partner engagement and retention and how to improve both metrics.”

Tip 4: Don’t Overlook ROI Indicators at the Partner Level

Partner Ready’s Plum points out that ROI indicators apply at the individual partner level as well. “Deal registrations moving to discovery stage is a major indicator of your partner’s understanding the value of your service and your optimal target customer,” he says. “If fallout at the deal registration stage is excessively high (compared to other sources of business), it would make sense to spend time with the partner to ensure alignment.”

Peeples also points to partner-level indicators. “At the simplest level [you have] badging and deal registrations,” he says. “For more mature channel programs [you have] tracking customer satisfaction of working with a partner, partner satisfaction in the channel program, partner portal engagement, joint-business planning, additional sales of multiple products, average discount requested above program level, etc.”

Tip 5: ‘Human ROI’ Is Harder to Calculate with Metrics

“[Determining ROI] really depends on what metric is homed in on,” says PGi’s Cavanagh. “If you are looking at the ROI on spending money at a technology services broker event, then you can do that with sales stats.

“The human ROI is harder to gauge.  Did you become a trusted advisor for a channel partner by doing extra training/being responsive?  Longer-term sales dollars answer the question, but in the short term, [it’s] harder to gauge … and at what point [are you] in the ROI negative because you’ve sunk time and effort into a channel partner without any return?”

Tip 6: Track KPIs

Howes of Juniper Networks and Earlewine of IntelePeer offer up some KPIs they like to track. They include:

• Active Pipeline Value
• Average Deal Construct Size
• Average Deal Value
• Conversion Rate
• Cost Per Lead
• Funnel Velocity
• Joint Business Planning
• Leads Provided
• MDF Spend
• Number of Current Opportunities
• Partner Investment Cost
• Ramp to Revenue
• Resource Allocation
• Sales State Per Lead
• Win/Loss Ratio

A deep dive into other channel program KPIs is available in our channel reporting dashboard article here.

The post Six Channel ROI Dashboard Tips from the Experts appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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• The channel is more competitive than it has ever been. Even smaller players and upstarts need channel partner reporting data to compete in today’s environment.

• Channel partner reporting helps you across a wide swath of strategic and operational objectives—from better decision-making to stakeholder motivation.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are central to developing a channel partner management reporting framework, but it’s as essential to think about how metrics are derived as the output they provide.

• Ultimately, KPIs should help you assess new partner potential and identify which established partners you’ll invest in.

• Your reporting framework should consolidate information, deliver the right information to the right parties at the right time, and help you nurture relationships with partners.

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Channel partner reporting impacts your entire channel operation. Without it, you’re flying by the seat of your pants.

To be fair, many companies launched successful channel programs without partner reporting—especially in the channel’s early days. It’s easy to take care of partners and their customers when you’ve only a handful. Get some basics right like provisioning, commissions, and support, and you could be wildly successful in the game.

But two significant channel realities are rapidly putting navigation-by-instinct in the rearview mirror:

• Today’s channel competition is fierce. Competition in the channel isn’t what it was 20 years ago, or even five years ago. Its proven pay-for-performance advantages can power unparalleled growth, which has spurred competition in every aspect of working with channel partners and their customers. Leading channel firms are leveraging data to make smarter decisions faster and help their partners grow their businesses. Players that want to become leading channel firms need that same data to compete.
• Channel success creates scale quickly. Throughout the channel’s history, companies with channel success often experienced growing pains when scaling up. As their programs matured and sales accelerated, their success sometimes got out from under them. Today’s channel entrants have learned from the struggles of companies before them and are building in growth-management tools from the get-go. That means data.

To help you develop or improve your channel partner management reporting framework, we talked with eight highly successful executives in the channel—from top analysts, marketers, and consultants to operators inside firms large and small. Here’s what we learned.

How a Channel Partner Management Reporting Framework Can Boost Your Business

Channel partner reporting is your flashlight in the dark. It helps you see where you’ve been, where you are today, and where you’re headed. More importantly, it empowers you to change course and optimize your journey. As we learned in discussions with these same channel leaders about best practices in channel partner reporting, having access to the right data helps you:

• Make better decisions. From the C-suite to your channel account managers (CAMs), reporting dashboards can give your team the data it needs to make better decisions faster.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses across your channel program, including people, processes, and partners.
• Build stronger partner relationships. Incorporating data into your discussions with partners helps you build trust with your partners through transparency and helps tell the story of your partnership.
• Motivate personnel and partners. People are competitive creatures; a good dashboard can go a long way toward coaxing partners to excel.

What to Consider when Creating a Channel Partner Reporting Strategy

Data, for all practical purposes, is a tool. Just as you need the right tool for the job, you need the right data in your reporting framework. In practical terms, this means that channel partner reporting is all about key performance indicators (KPIs).

Before we dig into the nuts and bolts of building your framework, consider these valuable observations and advice from our panelists regarding KPIs:

Tip 1: Building a successful reporting framework requires the right metrics

When it comes to assessing the best KPIs for internal use in evaluating the health of your channel program, it’s essential to take a holistic view of the data. That means it’s not only important to discuss the most important metrics to track but also the flaws in the KPIs most organizations use, how they can be improved, or be replaced.

Reconsider these commonly-used metrics:

Number of partners

This “feel-good” metric might look good on paper but doesn’t necessarily provide insights on revenue potential or possible problems. Better metrics include the percentage of partners and their salespeople that are consistently closing sales and the percentage of active producing partners that drop out (i.e., partner attrition).

Total partner revenue

Tracking total partner revenue or even partner revenue compared to quota can lead organizations to falsely believe that their partners and partner programs are successful. The reality is that they’re simply using channel partners to fulfill orders and not leveraging the multiplier effect of “having more feet on the street.” A more accurate reflection of partner contribution and value is partner-originated (or influenced) revenue.

Number of deal registrations

Knowing how many deals partners are pursuing is a good metric. However, it is not necessarily a measure of opportunity or sales skill, but of reporting skill. More telling metrics are pipeline coverage and win rate/close ratios. Sales velocity is an even better measurement; it analyzes how fast deals move through your sales pipeline and generate revenue. (To calculate sales velocity, multiply the number of opportunities by average deal value and win rate. Then divide by the length of your average sales cycle).

Net-new customer revenue

Generating revenue from net-new customers is critically important to growth and is an important metric to track. However, maintaining and expanding existing customer satisfaction and revenues is just as important because it produces advocates who drive net-new customer revenue. In addition, renewal and repurchase rates and upsell/cross-sell revenues are critical contributors to profitability and long-term viability, especially in a recurring revenue model.

Number of new partners

To drive revenue growth, you need to maintain an active pipeline of potential partners and organizational accountability for signing qualified and committed ones. However, signing new partners is the easy part and not necessarily representative of future revenue. Remember the Pareto Principle, which says 80 percent of the typical supplier’s revenues are derived from less than 20 percent of their partners. The more important metrics to track are the cost to acquire and activate a new partner, onboarding completion rate, and the average time to a partner’s second deal to avoid counting on the “one-hit wonders.”

Other key metrics that channel organizations should be tracking to measure their health include: 

• Return-on-investment (ROI). To eliminate wasted investment, focus on high-producing programs and maintain the company’s willingness to invest in channels, you should measure and compare your various partner programs’ ROI (revenue generated by the program compared to the cost). Focus on deal registration and co-op/market development funds (MDF) since they’re usually the most complex and expensive programs within a channel organization.
• Partner profitability. Eliciting feedback from partners about their satisfaction with all aspects of their vendor relationship is essential. Since the major factor contributing to partner satisfaction is partner profitability, this metric is just as important, if not more so. If your partners are not driving profitability by promoting, selling and/or supporting your offerings, they’re not going to invest in more training, marketing or sales activities.
• Channel team performance and satisfaction. Nothing matters more when it comes to channel revenue success than having the best possible people in place to support your partner community. Best practice metrics to track are the percentage of channel account managers (CAM) achieving at least 75 percent of quota as well as their churn rate and their satisfaction level.

Tip 2: KPIs should help you decide in which partners to invest

When discussing which KPIs are the most important for external use in communicating with partners, determining which partners to focus on is essential to successful channel management.

Not all partners are created equally. Therefore, a core determinant of channel success is effectively deciding on which partners to focus time, effort, and resources to drive the highest return. The traditional approach has been to assess, rank, and prioritize partners based primarily on revenue performance. However, revenue is a lagging indicator that measures how a partner performed in the past.

With rapidly changing buyer behaviors and market dynamics, past performance is no longer the strongest indicator of future performance. High-performing channel organizations derive more accurate insights by assessing and prioritizing partners based on revenue performance as well as the value they deliver and their growth potential. They also share that data directly with the partners during joint business planning and quarterly business reviews (QBRs) to open dialogues about where and how both parties can make needed changes or improvements to drive mutual success.

Tip 3: With new partners, look for leading indicators that help you assess future potential

Partner engagement metrics, such as those listed below, are important leading indicators of the future success of a new channel partner. In other words, the more engaged they are, the faster they grow and the more they grow. That said, as partners move beyond the onboarding and activation stage in their journey with a supplier, there are more predictive and prescriptive metrics to track, as outlined above.

Joint business planning

Does the partner actively participate in annual joint business planning and QBRs, with the right people at the table? Additionally, are they willing to engage in collaborative account planning and cross-sell targeting? The long-term metric should be the effectiveness of those plans based on pre-established metrics.

Training and certifications

How many and what percentage of partner employees are trained and certified? The long-term metric should be how many of those are actively closing deals.

Portal utilization

What is the number and percentage of partner employees regularly logging into the partner portal and downloading information? What is the average amount of time they spend on the portal?

Marketing activities

How many supplier-specific marketing initiatives has the partner executed? Did they achieve the established measurable results?

Digital promotion

Does the partner maintain a professional website with accurate, relevant, and timely information on your portfolio? Additionally, are they promoting your portfolio via social media?

7 Steps to Build a Channel Partner Management Reporting Framework from Channel Leaders

With the KPI overview as a backdrop, you can apply the recommendations from industry leaders on building out your channel partner reporting framework. Here’s their advice, presented as actionable steps you can take to set up your organization for success.

1. Map Your Channel Partner Reporting Needs with Stakeholders
2. Pick Strong Tech for Channel Partner Reporting
3. Integrate PRM and CRM to Improve Channel Partner Reporting
4. Build In Best Practices for Channel Partner Reporting Upfront
5. Design Your Channel Partner Reporting Dashboard and Report Templates with Your Brand in Mind
6. Build Channel Partner Reporting Dashboards for a Range of Roles and Relationships
7. Leverage Quantitative Channel Partner Reporting Data to Spark Qualitative Discussions

Step 1: Map Your Channel Partner Reporting Needs with Stakeholders

Since it’s difficult to establish meaningful data when your metrics keep changing, you’ll want to bring stakeholders together to nail down those metrics. That means internal personnel and alike.

Step 2: Pick Strong Tech for Channel Partner Reporting

“It’s almost cliche to say that not all solutions are created equal,” says  Lionel Farr, Chief Technology Officer for Zift Solutions. “But as any seasoned channel executive can tell you, it’s true. Hopefully, you’ve got a partner relationship management (PRM) that’s up to the task of delivering the data you need to know from your partner activities that also can pull in the external data you need so you can centralize it.”

If your PRM isn’t up to the task, consider business intelligence (BI) and data visualization platforms. “[Use] a wrapper like POWER BI to generate centralized views from disparate data sources,” says Brent Earlewine, Senior Vice President of Indirect Channels for IntelePeer.

Eileen Corrigan, channel leader, uses reports instead of dashboards. She says BI can be helpful across complex business units, markets, and ecosystems.

Step 3: Integrate PRM and CRM to Improve Channel Partner Reporting

Farr’s observation on leveraging your PRM for data centralization was echoed by most of our experts. Using your PRM as a single source of truth is logical and convenient—particularly when factoring in integrations.

Kris Blackmon, Chief Channel Officer for JS Group, advocates using a PRM to centralize data and emphasizes the need to integrate the PRM with your customer relationship management (CRM) system–not only to eliminate data silos but to avoid channel conflict, too. “Vendors wanting a full understanding of their channel have to start with really leveraging the heck out of their CRM,” she says. “I see too many examples of companies that use only the barest capabilities of their CRM, which is a giant miss.”

 

“Being able to pinpoint where in the pipeline you’re losing prospects is absolutely critical for growth efforts. Your CRM needs to tie to everything, especially your PRM system. Every time you have to manually enter data into your CRM, you’re wasting time and increasing your opportunities for error. Having your CRM and your PRM closely tied together not only gives you vital visibility into your own pipeline but it helps you manage your partners’ opportunities. Most importantly, it helps mitigate channel conflict, which is the number one complaint of partners about their vendors,” Blackmon says.

Step 4: Build In Best Practices for Channel Partner Reporting Upfront

“Leverage everything you know about best practices upfront so you can minimize refinements later,” says  Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer for Zift Solutions. “You want to focus on how to use your data effectively and not become bogged down in experiments and redesigns.”

We’ve developed an extensive review of best practices with channel leaders, which you can review in full here. Here’s a quick highlight video as a refresher:

Video: Channel Reporting Best Practices

Step 5: Design Your Channel Partner Reporting Dashboard and Report Templates with Your Brand in Mind

Once your data is in place, ask your brand manager to design your dashboards. Today’s visual brand specialists are skilled in data visualization. If you don’t have a brand manager available internally or through your marketing agency, make sure you use your formal brand guidelines when developing your dashboard.

“You may think it unnecessary to focus on the data presentation, but it makes more sense to do so when you consider a recent webinar you watched and how the quality of the slides impacted your perception of the presenter and his or her company,” says Khali Henderson, Senior Partner for BuzzTheory.

Step 6: Build Channel Partner Reporting Dashboards for a Range of Roles and Relationships

Everybody looks at data differently depending on their role in the organization. For example:

• Executives don’t want to sift through piles of data to get what they need.
• CAMs need actionable information.
• Partners want to understand and improve upon their performance.

Take the time to build the right dashboards or reports for the right parties.

Step 7: Leverage Quantitative Channel Partner Reporting Data to Spark Qualitative Discussions

When all parties have the data they need, you can leverage that data to improve performance. Sometimes, driving quantitative improvements requires qualitative assessment with partners. Having objective data at your fingertips helps to put those discussions in perspective.

“The quantitative data should lead to qualitative discussions,” says IntelePeer’s Earlewine. “The struggle is embedding or producing qualitative data as part of the actual dashboards. A [partner] relationship health index score is a possible example where we can use the quantitative data to feed a qualitative ‘report card.’”

The post 7 Steps to Build a Channel Partner Management Reporting Framework appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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By monitoring five metrics, you can gauge partner performance, increase pipeline awareness, and enable pipeline growth:

1. Net New Leads
2. New Qualified Opportunities
3. Active Pipeline Value
4. Closed & Won Opportunities
5. Funnel Velocity & Conversion Rates

Partner Program Metric #1: Net New Leads

The universe consists of two groups:

1. Those who are your customers
2. Those who are not yet your customers

Let’s begin by discussing what your partner’s salesperson needs to know about this second group. Since they’re not yet customers, we need to find leads that can connect us to new customers – net new leads. Where are they?

You may be providing your partners with leads. Leads may arrive in response to ads on their website. Ongoing demand generation programs are designed to bring net new leads on an ongoing basis.

One challenge with net new leads is that there’s no way of knowing how good they are until they are properly pursued. The even bigger problem is getting them properly pursued. Few salespeople like cold calling, and with good reason. Cold calling requires training, coaching, motivation, and encouragement. You can absolutely help your partners with these and earn their appreciation and loyalty in the process.

Tracking Lead Activity

Have you ever asked your salespeople what became of a lead, only to be told, “Well, I left a voicemail”? Unfortunately, a voicemail does not constitute proper follow-up with a lead.

This may be the moment to escalate the situation to a sales manager. This involves tracking each lead and what it turned into, how many leads were converted into customers, and sharing the conversion rate with sales managers. Deciphering whether or not a person is a net new lead doesn’t stop at that decision; it requires follow-through tracking at each step of the process.

Partner Program Metric #2: New Qualified Opportunities

We can consider a lead to be a qualified new opportunity when it meets the following criteria:

1. Has the budget been allocated to the opportunity?
2. Is the customer prepared to make a buying decision in the near future?
3. Is the customer willing to be convinced to buy from our salesperson?

All manner of sales processes have been devised to track the progress of these criteria, but there are really only three states that matter: Unclosed, closed, or lost. When it comes to these states, remember that:

1. Unclosed or open opportunities remain on the pipeline.
2. Lost opportunities are removed from the pipeline and must be replaced.
3. Closed or won opportunities must also be removed from the pipeline and must also be replaced.

Whenever an opportunity is won or lost, our salesperson will have to switch back to seeking mode to find new opportunities to qualify. Until then, they remain in closing mode.

Partner Program Metric #3: Active Pipeline Value

Another variable to keep monitoring is the active pipeline value of each deal, indicating how much revenue and how much gross profit we can expect to generate from each closed opportunity. This may shift several times during the sales process as items are added or removed.

There are many formulae out there for “weighting” the sales pipeline. Some involve estimating the likelihood of closure and multiplying that times the active pipeline value to keep a running total of likely production. Others set up flags to indicate different stages of the sales process and these can be helpful.

At the end of the day the three stages that matter remain the same.

Partner Program Metric #4: Closed & Won Opportunities

Closed and won opportunities are the result we’re after and are always cause for celebration. As a reminder, when we have a closed and won opportunity, or a sale, we must remove that item from the pipeline and replace it. Time to go back to pursuit mode.

Partner Program Metric #5: Funnel Velocity & Conversion Rates

Funnel velocity is just what it sounds like it is: a measure of how fast we can move from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom of the funnel, where we convert leads and opportunities into customers and close them. In other words, Metric #5 is how fast we get from Metric #1 to Metric #4.

It’s important to evaluate funnel velocity in the context of conversion rates, which are closely related to closing ratios. Closing ratios represent the percentage of pursued sales that actually close. Of all the net new leads you pursue, how many are converted into customers? Armed with both our funnel velocity and conversion rates, we can learn much about each salesperson, the sales performance of the partner and, ultimately, our own sales performance.

The easiest way to see the value of these two related metrics is to state them as an answer to the question, “How is our sales performance going?”

“We close 20% of the opportunities we pursue, and on average we get them closed within a month.”

It’s important to note here that your evaluation of that performance is completely relative to your past performance. That is, the important thing is to keep on improving. The next time you measure, in the following month, quarter, or year, you should decide how much you want to increase that 20% and work to achieve that. And you should work to reduce the time it takes by increasing your funnel velocity. You are always competing against your own previous performance.

Increasing Funnel Velocity and Conversion Rates

There are many ways to increase funnel velocity, but all are grounded in staying on top of follow-up. For every marketing and sales activity there must be a planned next step, and the execution of that next step must be confirmed on time. Every contact moves you further down the funnel or out of it. Remember, if 20% convert, 80% do not, so the sooner you determine whether or not a given target will ever close the better. Remove them from your funnel and save yourself time to use elsewhere. Some great funnel velocity increasing activities include:

1. Content marketing. Keep showing them how knowledgeable your team is by sharing their insight and observations.
2. Multi-media messaging. Don’t depend on emails alone. Call. Text. Try direct USPS mail! Social media messaging. You have many weapons available to you to contact prospective customers.
3. Share case studies. Perhaps the most credible channel marketing you can share are stories about other customers and the value they enjoyed from your offerings. “If they received this return on investment and these benefits, so will you!”
4. Nurture your targets. Send them high-value information to help them make their buying decision faster. Show your concern for them to receive great value from your offerings.
5. Attention grabbers. Appropriate premium items capture attention and get your prospects feeling that they have received something from you. Many will remember that it is more blessed to give than to receive and may feel more compelled to return the favor.

This is a great language to speak when you’re figuring out how to recruit channel partners. When everyone else is pounding partners over the head to fill their pipelines and increase their sales, you coming in with effective strategies to actually accomplish that will be a welcome change.

The more of these tactics you can provide support for, the better your channel partner engagement will be – and the more partner mindshare you’ll earn. Keep reminding partners that customers appreciate those who follow-up effectively and on time. The more compelling reasons to buy you provide, the faster your funnel velocity will become, and the higher your conversion rates will be!

The post 5 Partner Program Metrics That Monitor Pipeline appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Vertical Markets Make Great Targets

You can target based on market size, geography, or revenue segments. Oftentimes, the most productive way to target is by specific industry – or, a vertical market.

From your channel partner’s point of view, vertical markets can make setting targets easier and more profitable.

Say your partner sells your product to one of their customers and scopes an extensive delivery and deployment project around it. The next thing they should do is find similar customers and sell to them using the same project. How does this make things easier and more profitable?

1. They can build their messaging around something they’ve already done.
2. They have an existing case study proving the value proposition.
3. The methodology is already built, saving time.
4. Since they’ve already done it once, they should be more efficient doing it again. If they charge the same amount as they did the first time, they’ve produced this project more profitably! Next up: rinse & repeat.

There are many ways to identify potential target verticals. You may be able to help your channel partners build campaigns around them. Sometimes, you may even find them in your channel partner’s home base.

Finding the Right Channel Partners for Vertical Markets

Channel partners often invest heavily in taking on specific vertical markets. First, they need to do market research to identify opportune verticals to pursue. Then they need to investigate the issues plaguing that specific vertical, and what companies in that vertical need to solve those challenges. They are usually best served to hire someone with deep experience in that vertical, preferably someone who formerly worked in it. The challenge is finding someone like that who is also a great salesperson.

Sometimes, Verticals Find You!

ZiftONE users have found that there’s much to be learned from analyzing the existing data you have about partners and their customers.

A truly engaged channel partner may be happy to work with you on exploring their data to uncover insights. Here’s one way to do that which may result in a vertical or two finding their way to you:

• You may already be selling into vertical markets and not know it.
• Sort a copy of your partner’s account base by industry SIC code or, at least, by industry type or category.
• Before you can even filter that spreadsheet, you may immediately spot a large number of accounts in the same industry. It may even take your partner by surprise.

Here’s an example of how to sort by industry type within partner portals.

Develop a Vertical Offering

Once you’ve identified a vertical industry in which your partner has several customers, dig out project proposals for any work you’ve done for them. Analyze these carefully for consistencies. What have they done for many of those customers in the same vertical? What have they done well for them?

From these answers, you and your partner can easily fashion a reusable engagement model designed specifically for that vertical. Be sure to identify and build documentation for both sides of the equation:

1. What value do vertically aligned customers enjoy from the results of your partner’s project using your product? Turn this into the marketing message, defining it in the context of the customer. What is the value to them?
2. Document the methodology, making sure any member of your partner’s team can understand and undertake it.

You can even help build boilerplate proposals ready for use as soon as other members of that vertical show interest.

Earning Buy-In from Channel Partners

Remember that today’s channel partner has little or no expectation of meaningful margin performance from any product. There’s almost always a competitor of theirs willing to discount any product down to basis points.

Instead, today’s channel partner becomes enthusiastic any time a vendor shows them how to wrap more of their own services around the product. This enables them to generate revenue at higher margins and more substantial profits from those service sales. This is one of the easiest ways to earn partner mindshare.

When partners see how much easier it is to sell the same engagement over and over again, that can build trust between you.

Analyzing Channel Partner Data for Vertical Markets

Remember the old story about giving a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but teach him how to fish and he can eat for a lifetime?

The same holds true for unearthing existing verticals hiding deep within customer data. Once they’ve tasted success selling the same vertical engagement repeatedly and more profitably each time, they’ll want to do it again. And again. Now they’ll just keep going back to the well that is their own customer data to find the next vertical.

It’s valuable to remind partners to keep seeking answers in their own data. The value proposition you helped them create at the first engagement should develop and grow as they repeat it. Or, they may find that they’re not speeding up the process and becoming more profitable each time they do the same project over again. Something’s wrong there, and they should work to find out what it is as soon as possible.

Use ZiftONE to schedule communication or reminders with partners.

From a relationship standpoint, the best news is that every time your channel partner sells this engagement, they’ll be selling and appreciating you and your products.

Enabling Channel Partners for Vertical Success

Enabling partners to become more self-sufficient and more productive by mining their own data for sales-generating answers is the best kind of partner enablement.

When they find verticals hidden in their data, it will not be surprising to find that they are the same verticals you’ve been focusing on and building marketing content for. After all, they used your product to win the business in the first place. Help speed their plow by providing them with as much collateral around the vertical as you can. Every statistic they can use in a proposal to convince the next customer of their value proposition is helpful. Every example you’ve documented on how your product helps customers just like them will be convincing.

At the same time, consider having your own technology staff review each partner’s methodology with them, offering to answer any questions they may have about how to make their processes leaner, so they take less time and are therefore more profitable. Help them sell their solution over and over again and deliver it more cost-effectively each time.

Vendors seeking to scale up their partner’s profit performance can start by mining their own customer data to find new avenues of success for their partner enablement framework.

The post How to Identify Vertical Markets in Channel Partner Data appeared first on Zift Solutions.

As Zift’s Chief Technology Officer, Lionel Farr is a powerhouse. He’s been with Zift since the beginning — leading our incredible team of developers and engineers as they designed, built, and continue to improve ZiftONE, the first and only end-to-end channel management platform. This guy is the driving force behind some seriously disruptive channel-focused technology; Technology that keeps winning awards and acknowledgments for innovation and integration. In fact, ZiftONE was just named a Leader (once again) in the 2020 Forrester TCMA WAVE, receiving the top ranking in Strategy and high scores in 11 key categories, many of which fall directly under Lionel’s purview, including Digital Asset Management; Digital Marketing Execution; Security & Compliance; Integration; UI/UX; and Product Innovation Roadmap.

And yet, Lionel Farr, CTO, remains shrouded in mystery. In the days when we worked in corporate vs. home offices, there were occasional sightings of Lionel. Some say the best place to catch him, when he emerged from what we imagined to be a dark technology-packed lair, was a ping pong table in a common area. He was also photographed at some point for one of those Leadership Team web-blurbs. That blurb was likely the only clear source of truth regarding the history and mystery that is Lionel Farr. UNTIL NOW.

We managed to capture and interview Lionel for this week’s episode of Channel Chatter LIVE! Take a listen and hear Zift’s ever-elusive CTO talk about his team’s passion — and why and how Zift stays so far ahead of its competitors, particularly in the areas that matter most to today’s technology decision-makers.

LISTEN NOW

The post Channel Chatter LIVE Captures Zift’s Ever-Elusive CTO appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Today, channel organizations must close and lock those windows to comply with strict data privacy policies and regulations. It goes without saying that adhering to the data privacy laws everywhere our customers are located or conducting business is of the utmost importance to us. We recently spoke with Tim Porterfield about GDPR and how channel marketers use Zift to ensure compliance. Today, we’re following with Zift’s Director of IT and resident data privacy expert Stuart Phipps. He’s navigated Zift through multiple SOC II Type 2 certifications with no exceptions. Naturally, we turned to him for answers on CCPA. 

What sets the CCPA apart from GDPR? 

“The California Consumer Privacy Act is not a far-reaching set of regulations like GDPR, but it is still a strong step in the right direction for protecting consumer’s rights to privacy in the US,” said Phipps. The main difference between the two laws is the broadness of their reach. GDPR applies to the data of an EU citizen worldwide, meaning EU citizens can invoke their right to be forgotten from any company that has acquired their data. The CCPA applies only to California-based companies with revenue over $25 million or whose primary business function is the sale of personal information. 

Data encryption is another important facet of privacy that CCPA addresses. Encryption makes data that much more difficult to be accessed by unauthorized users and adds a level of security to companies involved in data transfer. Mainly, though, its purpose is to ensure the protection of personal data.

Phipps also thinks it’s not a matter of if, but when, for other states to follow suit on new privacy laws. “The CCPA is likely the beginning of a whole suite of data privacy laws in the US — New York, Illinois, and Washington state are all in the process of drafting privacy laws to be enacted in 2020.” 

Zift is committed to driving your channel success, and that includes ensuring compliance to all data privacy laws not only for ourselves but for suppliers and partners as well. Our platform is set up with the “right to be forgotten” in mind for the end customer, and partners can be anonymized in our support system.  

How does Zift ensure CCPA compliance for Suppliers? 

GDPR’s requirements are more stringent than the CCPA. So the GDPR requirements met and ensured by ZiftONE also cover the needs of CCPA. We have steps baked into the platform that brands can enable that require verification of contacts opting-in for marketing and communications. Keep in mind, though: a system designed to protect data is only as good as the people using it. Our terms and conditions protect suppliers and us as a data processor. 

It’s worth stating: playing by the (data) rules pays off. Our system has automatic bounce rate and spam rules in place, and those who fail to meet those rules repeatedly lose access to our platform for communication. Conversely, those who use it effectively gain more email credits. 

Have any questions for our IT experts on how Zift ensures total compliance for GDPR and CCPA for suppliers and partners? We’re happy to answer them. Leave a comment or contact us — privacy matters, but our commitment to data security is totally transparent.  

The post CALIFORNIA’S GDPR? CCPA, DATA PRIVACY, AND YOU appeared first on Zift Solutions.

B2B organizations that sell through indirect channels and partner programs in Europe and the UK can certainly take steps to ensure that their own contact lists are fully compliant. But what about their partners? If partners aren’t following the rules, does that undermine a brand’s overarching compliance? Since not adhering to GDPR rules can lead to hefty penalties and fines (we’re talking upwards of $25M), we sat down with Zift’s Director of Product Tim Porterfield to talk frankly about how Zift ensures GDPR compliance for its customers. 

How does Zift ensure GDPR compliance for channel organizations?  

As we protect and maintain over 2 billion points of data for channel programs doing business in the EU, UK and around the world, Zift takes data privacy and security very seriously.  We continually monitor evolving data privacy regulations and analyze our platform to ensure we protect our customers’, their partners’, and their end customers’ data. 

To that end, we have implemented several features in the ZiftONE platform to ensure GDPR compliance. Partners using the Zift platform are required to verify that their contacts have opted in to receive communications and marketing materials. We have a cookie manager that allows end-customers the right to refuse tracking. We also provide a user-friendly path so contacts can easily exercise their right to be forgotten if they choose. 

If a partner uploads their own list of leads or contacts, will the B2B brand or supplier be at risk of non-compliance for GDPR?

In short, no. A little longer answer is “We do everything we can to ensure the partner is accountable for their actions in the platform.” Once a partner has accepted the Terms and Conditions of use for our platform, they have legally taken ownership and responsibility for their data. Brands are not at fault if the partner misuses the tool. We also have steps in place that brands can enable that require verification of contacts opting-in for marketing and communications.

With that being said, no system is perfect and the protections we have in place are only as good as the user saying, “Yes, the contact has opted in.”  Our terms and conditions protect not only our customers but also us as a data processor. The additional confirmation of, “Yes, the contacts on this list I have uploaded have opted in to receive communications from me” is just another small step to ensure the partner has taken full ownership.

On top of all of this, we also have automatic spam and bounce rate rules in place that help ensure end customers receiving communications from our platform are only receiving it from high-quality partners who are not out to game the system. Those who try to play outside the lines will eventually find their ability to use our platform for communication will be removed. But on that same note, those who use it effectively will gain access to more email credits and increase their ability to generate leads and close deals.

What if a partner uploads a contact list that is not GDPR compliant?

During the process of uploading a contact list and leads into ZiftONE, a partner is pointedly asked if the contacts in the list have opted in or not. The answer to this question will determine if we allow the partner to communicate with the contacts on the list through our platform.  

Any contact or end-customer who feels they are on our list without their permission can quickly remove themselves from all or some of the partners who have their data by using the ‘Control My Data’ link located on the Privacy Policy page of the ziftsolutions.com website.  This quick and easy process:

1) Confirms the contact owns the email address with a verification email 

2) Gives limited access to a results page that displays all partners who have their data, and

3) Provides the choice to unsubscribe or anonymize their data from some or all of the results 

How is ZiftONE better than other channel marketing management or partner relationship platforms in supporting and ensuring GDPR compliance?

Not only am I the Director of Product here at Zift, but I am also a consumer. I am very aware of how it feels to end up on a list I never wanted to be on and how hard it is to get your information removed when that happens. If we focus on making sure we respect the end customer and their right to privacy then we are doing more than just being “GDPR compliant.” While we work to protect our customers, their partners, and the privacy rights of every contact added to our system, we do so from that perspective. 

To that end, Zift is GDPR and CCPA compliant. We are subscribed to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. We adhere to the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Principles (collectively, the Privacy Shield Principles) for Personal Data received from entities in the European Economic Area (the “EEA”), the United Kingdom (“UK”) and Switzerland.

We are also compliant with SOC2 Type II and have maintained this for 3 consecutive years with clean reports, using “Best Practice” of ISO27001 and the following codes of practice and implement where appropriate:

• ISO/IEC 27002 – Code of practice for information security controls
• ISO/IEC 27017 – Code of practice for information security controls based on ISO/IEC 27002 for cloud services
• ISO/IEC 27018 – Code of practice for protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII processors have been adopted.

Putting all that technical stuff aside, the key thing that ZiftONE does to ensure brands and suppliers remain GDPR compliant is to confirm partners have permission to engage with the contacts they add to the system. We notify targeted end customers that tracking cookies are in use and ask for their permission to track how they engage with our platform and provide a quick, user-friendly way to opt-out of communications and remove their data from contact lists. 

The post SHARING MEANS CARING (PARTICULARLY ABOUT GDPR) appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Industry thought leaders and analysts were quick to recognize our efforts as well as the transformational power of ZiftONE. We were honored to receive the prestigious 2019 Frost Radar Best Practices Award for Innovation Excellence from Frost & Sullivan recognizing the launch and impact of ZiftONE. In their words, “The Innovation Excellence best practice award is bestowed on companies that are industry leaders reinventing themselves through R&D investments and innovation.“

Frost & Sullivan analysts noted: Removing data silos and making intelligent marketing decisions on the channel partner and direct marketing and sales side is a challenge most marketing teams face today. ZiftONE from Zift Solutions alleviates these pain points by bringing data and insights from channel marketing, sales, and operations into one place, highlighting Zift Solutions’ understanding and innovation leadership in the marketing automation solutions market today.

Zift’s investment in innovation is unmatched in the industry, with over 25% of our revenue committed to R&D to expand functionality for suppliers managing their channel programs with ZiftONE.  After launching ZiftONE, our pace of innovation accelerated, and the platform is growing and improving every day. The Zift product team is constantly listening to the market and our customers, and our engineering team delivers enhancements and improvements every week.  

Enhance. Expand. Integrate. 

An exciting platform extension you can put to work immediately is the ZiftONE Developers Workbench. The channel management platform has to integrate with existing enterprise technologies and operational systems. ZiftONE was built to be a part of the enterprise ecosystem, and it comes with a long list of pre-built connectors and interface tools, but most IT organizations require more. To answer that need, we delivered the ZiftONE Developers Workbench. It is a comprehensive toolkit that opens up all of the programming interfaces in the platform so that anything Zift developers can do, our customers’ IT team can do. We made ZiftONE an open platform that enables developers to enhance, expand and integrate it with just about anything in the corporate infrastructure.

To ensure the highest levels of service and security as your IT infrastructure grows, Zift has added a number of critical security certifications (Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Level 1, Cyber Essentials, IASME Consortium, and Privacy Shield Framework) as well yet another year to our string of Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II compliance audits with no exceptions. 

Joining the Revolution

Shortly after the launch of ZiftONE, members of the channel technology market asked to join in our channel technology revolution. So we created the ZiftZone Strategic Alliance Program, a rapidly growing ecosystem of trusted and certified agencies, applications, and service providers, all of whom drive channel success for our customers.  Zift’s global reach is advancing rapidly via ZiftZone and our customers are reaping the benefits with connections to more than 30 leading providers of channel-focused solutions and services.

We’re moving forward into 2020 with more customers, more integrations, more alliance partners, and more expansive capabilities. We continue to support and invest in our existing customer platforms while we innovate and advance ZiftONE to provide the next generation of channel management excellence. 

We’ve spent a great deal of time in 2019 listening to our customers. They are excited about the ability to manage the entire partner lifecycle with ZiftONE. They like the fact that they can onboard, train, engage, and activate their partners with transformative tools to generate pipeline and close deals. They also appreciate the fact that they have the flexibility to take a DIY approach, using ZiftONE’s dynamic portal tools to quickly onboard and activate partners.  They also appreciate that they can leverage our Zift Services, Channel Center of Excellence and ZiftZone partners for even more expansive capabilities and support. 

In 2020, our focus remains on addressing the complex needs of channel leaders. We’re thrilled to see so many organizations reaching out to us to learn how they can join the ZiftONE revolution. Some have expressed their desire to get help in understanding exactly how their channel program stacks up against others in the industry — and even create an action plan to move forward. Our Channel Center of Excellence provides a Channel Readiness Assessment to explore the foundational levels, current capabilities, and overall effectiveness of your channel program. I encourage you to kick off the new year by scheduling your assessment as soon as possible to ensure you meet your 2020 goals. 

What are you planning to conquer in your channel program in 2020 and beyond? Let us know if you’re ready to turn your future visions of channel success into reality today with ZiftONE. 

The post Step into the Future of Enterprise Channel Management appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Emerging Channel Ecosystems Drive Innovation 

Early last year, I attended a Channel Focus conference where a Microsoft executive stated her company is OK with partnering with competitors, so long as it drives value for the customer.  Savvy Suppliers know each partner program is creating its own ecosystem, comprised of both partners and vendors that come together to help them drive effectiveness and productivity.  They enable partners to apply their MDF against marketing activities, or offer them traditional agency services, or in some cases, they provide sales and marketing tools that can increase their effectiveness.

Where to Start? 

Your partner portal should be the door into all the benefits you’re providing to partners, such as incentives, learning, third-party services and more. Behind the portal, leading suppliers are consolidating what activities partners can engage in and making it easier to navigate. But there’s more. Don’t stop at the portal; instead, build communities for your partners and “electronic marketplaces” where they can access third-party services and collaborate with each other. 

Divergent Partner Types 

Because partners come in all shapes and sizes — distributors, MSPs, resellers, referral partners, etc. — taking a one-size-fits-all approach now means certain death (or, at best, a slow one) for Suppliers who opt to take this route. As channel programs evolve to meet the needs of new partner types, many are looking at ways to segment and categorize partners in order to deliver program benefits in proportion with their needs. However, it’s not easy to tell if your program is equipped to handle the needs of smaller reseller transactions or specific requirements for MSP partners. Leading channel programs are assessing their capabilities across their entire program, not just in the marketing or sales silos.  

Where to Start?

Assess your channel program’s current state to see if your program is ready to add new partners. Avoid keeping partner profile data trapped in a PRM or point solution; otherwise, it will be hard to leverage valuable data on partners for marketing purposes. As your organization determines which partners it will select to work with, make sure both processes and automation are in place to segment partners into manageable sets, each aligned with specific requirements and benefits. 

Time-to-Value is Precious

Time-to-Value is becoming critical as an ever-increasing number of Suppliers are looking to accelerate the onboarding process to drive more revenue faster with partners. Yet channel sales and partner marketing continue to be misaligned in many companies, leading to inconsistent partner experience and a lack of measurable results. Technology itself can also be a hurdle in gaining end-to-end visibility. Like most channel programs, you’ll need to look in different places (such as spreadsheets or disparate databases) to get a full picture of what is happening across your program. This inability to accurately predict channel performance leads many channel leaders to the question: “What is the ROI of my channel?”

How Can I Measure More Effectively?

Defining and streamlining time-to-value starts with planning but rarely ends there. Companies trying to estimate how well their program is performing have found themselves at a loss when describing the success of their channel efforts. We have found that many times from a reporting standpoint, there’s a lack of rigor and maturity in terms of the metrics companies use to evaluate their channel. They look at the wrong data! Worse yet, the models and frameworks available to them from industry analysts or consultants often fall short when you’re talking real data that sits in many different places. In order to avoid this lack of visibility, Suppliers are beginning to leverage BI tools against their channel data. They are also aligning their sales and marketing teams, so they can drive efficiencies when engaging with partners, such as onboarding or applying incentives.  

Two Backing Factors: Partner Enablement and Automation

Over the past year, Suppliers have continued their drumbeat on partner enablement, reaffirming their commitment to invest. That’s fine, but there’s no sense in throwing money away by offering incentives to get partners trained. Isn’t that something they should be doing anyway? Instead, think about applying “achievements,” which can act as milestones partners reach to receive additional benefits, e.g. a partner takes a training course on social selling, which activates a social campaign for them.

At the risk of standing on the soapbox before this narrative concludes, this past year we have seen many companies think automation first and process second; it should be the other way around! This is evidenced by the number of companies that jumped into failed automation projects because they hadn’t thought through their routes to market, or had a marketing campaign that fell short of results because they omitted marketing it to partners.  

Looking towards 2020, B2B channel programs stand to benefit from new innovations and new partner types that will help them expand their market presence. But like 2019, the results will need to be at the forefront. Chasing down that value will require companies to look across their entire program and examine cause and effect in order to prove they are really getting a return on their channel investment!

The post Key Insights into the 2020 B2B Channel Landscape appeared first on Zift Solutions.

My friends and family know that I live by that quote. Maybe that’s why I can still do front flips and backflips on the trampoline. Youth is all in the mind. That said, I am struggling to embrace that I have a junior in high school. My nightly reading is about college and all these words that aren’t words: SAT, ACT, GPA. There are a whole lot of acronyms I don’t know, like LAC (didn’t have that when I went to Marquette — a solid LAC) and there is CLEP, LOR, OOS, COA, DOA, DOI, ED, EA, and my favorite, QOL, which of course we didn’t have either when I was deciding on colleges. You just went to a campus, walked around, met some people, and had a conversation! (Don’t worry, I’ve included a handy acronym legend at the end of the post.)

I started to wonder: why are there are so many acronyms? Is this acronym-izing a recent trend, based on being more efficient so we can communicate or text more quickly? Did we have this many acronyms in business a few years ago or farther back? If so, maybe the college process is more business-like now.

I did some research to see if I could find some answers. I went back to the 1990s in my business. I looked at the business process tools available at that time and if acronyms were as popular then. In the ’90s, we had mostly manufacturing tools like inventory solutions, finance, and accounting solutions, human resources and project management solutions. All of these solutions were independent solutions with non-acronym names until the term ERP was created. Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, was a term Gartner Group created in 1990 to describe a single system that encompassed all business functions within one platform. The first ERP was created by SAP — of course, another acronym. Go figure!

In the channel space and at Zift, as you would guess, acronyms are abundant: PRM, TPMA, TCMA, CMM, CIPM, CDM, LMS, and LDM. All are independent solutions, and it seems that no one uses the full wording. In talking with other industry pros, I’ve discovered that some don’t even know what some of those acronyms mean because the acronyms are so new. (I totally understand!) And this year Zift fully embraced the acronym game and launched ZiftONE: the first ECM. That’s the first Enterprise Channel Management system, a single system that encompasses all channel functions needed to create a thriving, successful channel program within one platform. 

ZiftONE is to ECM as SAP is to ERP. Isn’t that much easier to understand now? 

Let’s take it a step further: ZiftONE is a SaaS ECM — and the GOAT. 

I’m loving these acronyms now!  Maybe I can learn to love the college application and decision process, too. Fingers crossed.

Acronym Legend

CDM: Channel Demand Marketing

CIPM: Channel Incentive Management

CLEP: College Level Examination Program

CLM: Channel-Focused Learning Management

CMM: Channel Marketing Management

CMS: Content Management System

COA: Cost of Admission

DOA: Director of Admissions

EA: Early Action

ECM: Enterprise Channel Management

ED: Early Decision

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning

GOAT: Greatest of All Time

LAC: Liberal Arts College

LDM: Lead Distribution Management

LMS: Learning Management System

LOR: Letter of Recommendation

OOS: Out of State

PRM: Partner Relationship Management

QOL: Quality of Life (at campus)

SaaS: Software as a Service

TCMA: Through Channel Marketing Automation

TPMA: To Partner Marketing Automation

The post ZiftONE is the ECM GOAT! Where’d Those Acronyms Come From, Anyway? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The Nats had a long journey making it to the playoffs and later winning the World Series. Their pitchers, hitters, and defensive players all had to come together to propel them to their win. I’m reminded of Zift’s own journey, and how our team has worked as one. After a long journey and the launch of ZiftONE, the first end-to-end software application that covers all channel bases, Zift Solutions was also awarded the Frost Radar Award for Innovation Excellence — you can read the report for yourself at that link. 

Winning this award marked a milestone in a long journey for Zift, like winning the World Series after a long season. It’s required focusing on many aspects of our business to reach this level of performance — building a product that is both deep and broad that engages partners at every turn meant a lot of fine-tuning. It also required having a hard-working, passionate staff and a loyal base of customers who believe in our vision. 

I’d like to share some key insights I’ve gained from making this journey, ultimately winning the Frost Radar Award, and some lessons learned along the way.

Product Depth and Breadth

The analysts at Frost & Sullivan recognized Zift’s ability to provide a broad set of functionality to keep up with modern marketers interested in omnichannel marketing, while also providing additional functionality to support channel planning and oversight, partner recruitment and onboarding, partner sales and marketing enablement, channel demand generation, and channel engagement and sales execution. 

Unlike many companies that provide single-point solutions, Zift delivers everything needed in ZiftONE to engage partners, build knowledge and drive channel performance – all in one platform. By covering all the bases, ZiftONE eliminates the headaches customers face when having to buy multiple software applications to support channel partners. 

Here’s how Frost & Sullivan describes it:

“By including all of these crucial partner management pieces into one solution, Zift takes the guesswork from customers looking to optimize their partner management strategy without tedious integrations and data silos.”

Dedicated Staff and Loyal Partners

The first and hardest part of winning any championship, whether it’s a World Series or an industry award, is making sure the right players are on the field. While merging several companies we had to align our development efforts, streamline our service capabilities and reset our mission from being the best PRM and CMM solution to creating a new software category: enterprise channel management (ECM), which analyst firms are now adopting as they realize the growing need for horizontal channel software. 

This doesn’t happen overnight, though. It comes from a dedicated development team, challenged each and every day by sales teams digging into customer requirements, and from our hard-working services consultants who assist our customers, much like passing the football to a star player for a goal, to reach their channel automation goals. 

It also stems from our customer success and channel engagement teams, who advise partners every day and act as their “virtual marketing” departments. It’s this kind of dedication and shared vision that has created a winning environment at Zift.

Top-Notch Innovation

Given the furious pace of change taking place in the industries we serve like high tech, finance and manufacturing, that Frost & Sullivan gave the award for excellence in innovation over the other companies we compete against speaks volumes. 

Innovation isn’t limited to product alone. You’ll find it in various forms at Zift. It manifests as thought leadership from our CTO and our development staff, who are pioneering the latest innovation in artificial intelligence as it applies to the channel; it comes from our expanding ecosystem of partners, which include ancillary tools like incentives and propensity data vendors that add value to a partner’s experience on our platform; and it comes from our customers who provide us regular feedback in roadmap sessions and advisory councils that challenge our thinking and make us better.

I had the honor of flying to Austin, Texas to receive the Frost & Sullivan Awards. Aside from attending the ceremony, I had a chance to spend time with other company executives who shared new ideas, challenges and stories of how they’re reaching greatness. While accepting the award, I shared our story and the journey Zift has taken. If you’d like to read the report for yourself, you’ll find it here. 

The post Covering All the Bases: Zift Receives Frost & Sullivan Award for Innovation Excellence appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Frankenstein’s monster is known for many characteristics: his creation, neck bolts, and fear of fire come to mind. He’s also been known to incite a bit of chaos. 

Take your channel program, for instance. 

You started with a small piece, maybe launching a partner portal. Next came the addition of a learning management tool. Then, perhaps, it was a channel incentives program. After that, you may have bolted on a channel marketing solution. These point solutions may work wonders individually, but collectively… What you end up with is a channel technology monster with a lot of mismatched and unconnected pieces that don’t work well together. Just like Frankenstein’s monster — your disjointed channel IT infrastructure is wreaking havoc on your channel program and partners. Far from a fearless, powerful program that can go the distance, chaos stymies your channel plans at every turn. 

Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways Frank may be appearing in your program. 

Kiss Partner Engagement Goodbye

Frank’s got a lot of qualities you may find off-putting — and if you find them off-putting, partners find them downright unmanageable. Partners should be welcomed to your partner portal and able to locate everything they need with ease. Remember: they have options for where they can spend their time and resources for sales and marketing. Stacking the deck in your favor with a beautiful, easy-to-use portal just makes sense. 

And that’s where Frank often fails. When your ChanTech solutions are all over the place, partners turn and run to something that requires less effort to use. 

Data Scattered to the Winds

When the different parts of your channel program don’t talk to each other easily, data visibility is a distant dream — and Frank makes gathering data a nightmare. Without clear access to all your data, it’s impossible to keep track of how campaigns are performing or what partners are using the most. You can’t rely on data that isn’t accurate, or, even worse, that you can’t find at all. 

Frank’s Too Spooky to Share Skills

Partners often don’t have time to waste on hunting out resources on different parts of your partner portal. How can they become subject matter experts on your brand if it’s impossible to figure out your messaging or product lines? And how will you be able to report on their abilities when learning management tools are spread out across multiple platforms? Frank stretches skill-learning systems until they’re much harder to use than they have to be.

And that’s really the point: Frank makes a lot of channel management much harder than it has to be. 

Now that you know how Frank can crush your careful channel plans, we’re sure you’d like to kick him out of your program for good. Frank is why we created ZiftONE. It’s a monster-slaying, channel-changing platform, and with it, we help channel leaders put Frank to rest. 

Find out more about Frank’s channel antics in our brand new eBook, The Misadventures of Frank the ChanTech Monster. You’ll see all the ways he manifests and how to find channel success post-Frank with improved visibility and communication. There’s a new day dawning for your channel program, no pitchforks necessary. 

The post It’s Alive! Is Frank Ruining Your Channel Program? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

We’re at the beach, in the mountains, or simply kicking back with family. We share pictures on our phones or over IM with our coworkers when we get back. We’re all a little more relaxed in office attire and disposition. Though, much like New York City, the channel never really sleeps. Most people choose this time of year, the dog days of summer, to pack up and leave the serious channel marketing decisions until you’re ready to put your head down and get back to it in late August or early September. Right? 

Not necessarily. 

We’d argue you’ll be able to put your feet up even more easily if you know your heavy channel lifting is done before you get back. The surge of people who choose to put off buying decisions on new pieces of channel technology is well-known — when the school year starts back, so does business. 

You know how to get past procrastination. But how can you beat work worries when you’ve got sand between your toes? Take another sip of your frosty cold drink of choice and let’s get down to business before you’re out of office.

1. Staying on top of tasks feels good. It’s no secret that keeping ahead of your workload feels good. Being able to leave work for time off knowing a major task is settled is a big relief, especially something as important to your work as a new channel tech provider. This leaves you with more time to concentrate on catching up when you get back, instead of feeling bogged down immediately with a huge decision hanging over your head. 
2. You’ll have more time to play around with cool, new tech. When you get back into the swing of things, you’ll have plenty of time to get better acquainted with your new piece of channel technology. This also allows your team and extended ChanTech team time to get the nitty-gritty underway quicker, since there’s always that rush of buying decisions right around the start of the school year.
3. When all goes well, you’ll enjoy your vacation more. You’ve done what you needed to do. Enjoy the fruits of your labor! Preferably the kind in a cocktail by the pool.

But just before you turn on your vacation out-of-office email message, let’s talk ChanTech. What are you looking for in your next CMM, PRM, or LMS? Advanced reporting with plenty of filtering options to drill down and enable data-driven navigation? Zift has your back. We love sharing how ZiftONE can help manage your channel program year-round — get in touch if you’d like to know more. 

Have any more thoughts on making big tech decisions before you take off for your summer vacation? Leave a comment on how your decision-making process could benefit (and throw in a detail or two on where you’re headed). 

The post Vacation Time? Straighten Out Your ChanTech First appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Besides ensuring data protection, GDPR and its fellow data privacy acts have made marketers evaluate their practices for lead generation. Most marketers worth their salt (dare we say, like you!) have pared down or even eliminated the more questionable practices of the past. Still, it’s been a year since GDPR enforcement began. So it’s worth a refresh of good practices for lead generation, particularly in email marketing. 

This List Ain’t Big Enough for Two Practices

Email used to be the Wild Wild West of marketing — Anything goes, essentially. Emailing people who never signed up for your newsletters? Fair game. Fortunately, for the most part, we’re past that now. Between GDPR and the other laws either being carried out, like the California Consumer Privacy Act, and bills being proposed, like the New York Privacy Act, the future looks a lot more regulated for data protection standards. 

And this regulation is happening around us in real-time. Since data protection standards are changing so rapidly, it pays to stay informed of local and international (if you conduct business globally) laws regarding the use of data. To borrow from GDPR’s terminology, personal data — data that concerns an individual, such as their name or email address — is a commodity not meant to be abused. So treat your contact lists with the respect they deserve. 

People are willing to part with their personal data for convenience, or in our industry’s case, for a good whitepaper or eBook. So moving in the direction of more regulated controls over data use will not mean fewer contacts — rather, it enables more control on the contact’s part to take their data back when they’ve decided they no longer wish a company to have their info. But that’s not set in stone for many locations yet, including much of the US. 

Get Back in the Saddle 

The Wild Wild West is over, but it’s left its mark on some marketers who may not have caught up just yet. Get back in the saddle with these best practices for clean contact lists:

• Trim your list for optimal open rates. Every so often, go through your list and prune out the emails driving up your bounce rates. A higher bounce rate is not a good thing. Bounce rates indicate that user is not receiving the email — either the email address is no longer active or their inbox is full. Keeping your contact list current will also give your open rates a boost. No inactive email addresses mean more people are likely to see your email. Save the tumbleweeds for the frontier, not your open rates.

• Smaller contact lists aren’t necessarily a bad thing. This means you can drill down into specific interests and raise your open rates by targeted contact lists by region or vertical. You’ll be quicker on the draw with focused targets and likely see higher win rates. 

• Stop when you say you’ll stop. Once contacts have unsubscribed from your list, keep that promise. Let them leave and hunt out new contacts instead. Everyone will be happier for it. 

Ready to head home on the range with your optimized contact lists? Hold your horses! We’d love to hear what you’re doing to clean your contact lists and navigate the changing marketing landscape around data use. Drop us a comment (and tell us your favorite old Western flick, too). 

The post GDPR’s One-Year Mark: Wild Wild West No More appeared first on Zift Solutions.

We’re focused on providing world-class availability, security, and privacy controls. As a result, we have achieved a degree of security and operational maturity seen in very few software-as-a-service companies. We are in an exclusive club — Less than 1% of SaaS vendors who have achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance attestation! 

Our team has spent the last few months working diligently through a detailed, thorough third-party review, so our organization can be designated as SOC 2-compliant. When a company completes this process, its customers and partners are assured by a third-party that the organization adheres to a strict set of principles around securely managing your data. Zift recently completed this process for the third consecutive year, and again received a “clean report” with no exceptions!

Some of the most common questions we get from customers revolve around security and privacy. We field questions like:

• How do you protect my company’s data from potential threats?
• What critical security controls have you implemented to ensure the security of my company’s data?
• What type of testing is performed to ensure the effectiveness of those security controls?

How can you be sure a service provider has really prepared for all the potential issues? SOC 2 is one of the major frameworks that’s come to the forefront of security discussions as a way to combat issues before they start.

Let’s look at what being SOC 2 compliant means, and why it’s important.

What is SOC 2 compliance?

The Service Organization Control reporting platform was developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) to help companies get a handle on the complex, diverse security issues out there, and provide a framework for service providers to measure against. SOC 2 compliance covers companies that provide services like data hosting, colocation, data processing and software-as-a-service (SaaS), and is based on five “trust services principles” that reflect different criteria for managing customer data: security, privacy, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality.

The five SOC 2 principles 

The SOC 2 principles double as a great way for customers to organize their thoughts and concerns over data management. To be compliant, service providers must have clear, well-documented, proven strategies for each of these topics:

• Security ensures that system resources are protected against all types of unauthorized access, including network and application firewalls, two-factor authentication and intrusion detection.
• Privacy addresses how the system collects, retains, discloses and disposes of personal information, and how that process aligns with the organization’s privacy notice and with the AICPA’s generally accepted privacy principles (GAPP). It includes access control, two-factor authentication, and encryption.
• Availability looks at how accessible a company’s services, products, and systems are, based on the contracts and service level agreements (SLA) it has. It includes performance monitoring, disaster recovery and security incident handling.
• Processing integrity, at its base, asks if a system achieves what it’s meant to do. Does it process data the way it promises? Does it do so in a timely manner, with authorization, and with the performance and price agreed upon? It involves quality assurance and process monitoring.
• Confidentiality relates to data that has access and/or disclosure limited to specific groups. It involves encryption, access controls, and network and application firewalls.

Why does SOC 2 matter?

It’s important to note that no vendor is required to be SOC 2 compliant; it’s a voluntary process, generally driven by customer demand. Any company that chooses to go down this path has security and privacy as a top priority within the company. After all, the certification process is a months-long endeavor, conducted by impartial outside auditors.

SOC 2 is considered the “gold standard” in compliance for software companies and is well worth the effort. It’s a very tangible way for Zift Solutions to ensure that our data, and our customers’ data, is handled using the strict guidelines mentioned above. It’s more than checking a box; it’s a commitment that goes to the very heart of our relationship with the continuing assurance to our customers and their partners worldwide.\

To learn how your organization can use channel sales, channel marketing, and channel operations together as ONE with ZiftONE, visit us or get in touch.

The post SOC 2 Type II Success: Keeping Data Security Close to Home appeared first on Zift Solutions.

A channel tech stack can be unwieldy and disconnected if you’re not careful. Without the right reinforcements in place, ChanTech stacks can fail. It’s not crashing of blocks with laughter and some quick scrambling to rebuild the tower. Failure, in this case, will be defined by lower partner adoption, inability to connect closed-loop reporting dots and costly integration projects that never quite deliver. How can you keep the stack from falling apart? Consider using one foundational building block instead of so many individual pieces.

That’s where Enterprise Channel Management can step in. With ECM, there’s a single platform base — one platform to train on, one platform generating channel data, one platform for your partners to conduct all of their business with you. Let’s get back to that unsteady ChanTech stack first, though, and look at what elements are making it go tumbling down.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

Much like the always-doomed tower of blocks, some pieces of your existing channel tech may not be aligned for efficient communication. Sure, there are integrations, but connected point solutions just focus on sharing information between systems, not painting a complete picture. In contrast, a single platform approach can provide intelligence on the entire partner life-cycle. This can answer complex questions like: How much pipeline did we generate from partners we’ve onboarded in the last three months?  

It’s hard to focus on the bigger picture when the individual pieces aren’t fully aligned. As the saying goes, you can’t see the forest through the trees — and these trees could be costing you valuable returns. When the pieces each need attention and there are lots of moving parts between them, it can be more difficult to get down to the hard work of building, improving and maintaining your channel program.

Balance Your Partners’ Needs

Think of the partner experience with all these moving, disconnected parts. We know partners won’t log in to multiple systems for training, deal registration, and sales enablement. Partners will choose the path of least resistance and do business with vendors that make it easy (and profitable).

Without a seamless, fully-integrated login process — one door into an entire platform — partners are not likely to come in and do business. A convoluted login equals business lost to partners who just want to jump in and get right to work on finding leads and making sales. Make a modern, easy-to-navigate entrance. You want partners selling your products, and a simplified, all-in-one experience makes it easier for them to do business. Your partners are your greatest strength in the channel, and a stronger, more stable ChanTech stack directly benefits them.

Are you playing your own dangerous game of moving parts and balancing acts? I’d love to hear how you’re improving or managing your channel tech stack without the whole tower unraveling. If you’d like to learn a little more about effective channel management, take a look at Top 3 Best Practices for Better Channel Program Management — it will help keep your channel tower standing straight and steady.

The post Keep It Simple: Managing a Stable ChanTech Stack appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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I’ve noticed a trend of suppliers and partners viewing CMM as more of a storage space for campaign materials than as the powerful tool it can be — if you use it properly. The Media Library Phenomenon, or whatever you choose to call it, holds back both sides of the channel relationship from a truly successful experience. By viewing it as strictly a library for content, you’re missing out big time on campaign, lead gen and measurement opportunities.

Are you making the most use of your CMM (channel marketing and management) platform? Suppliers treating CMM as a place just to deposit content will all but guarantee that’s how partners see it, and they’ll react as you’d expect — grab content and log out. Let’s go over how partners and suppliers are both at risk of missing major benefits if CMM is used solely as a media library.  

CRM is Clunky

What’s your current process for creating campaigns? Do you log into your CMM platform, download necessary resources, log into your CRM (customer relationship management) platform, upload the assets, and then get to work? Hopefully, having to read all those steps one after the other highlights how many steps it takes to do a task you could accomplish much more easily in CMM alone. Completing campaigns in your CMM platform saves you tons of time and the headache of having to transfer assets around between platforms.

A Waste of Valuable Resources

Your CMM platform has so much more to offer than the media you associate it with. When you use the CMM platform to send out social media or schedule campaigns, you get much more bang for your buck than the ten-step system that takes it to tackle digital marketing with a CRM system. You get powerful analytics showing you how your campaigns are performing, which let you make informed next steps for future campaign planning. You also get the advantage of easily using multi-tactic campaigns instead of one-touch campaigns — piecemealing together individual campaigns in CRM takes way more time than it could using a CMM that’s tailor-made to help you get campaigns up and running quickly. For example, many campaigns are optimized for use on the Zift platform. So, you’ll be forced to recode when and if you try to move and manage them inside another tool. That’s more time, energy and resources most partners don’t have on hand.

Foster Trust & Collaboration

Trust is an integral component of any successful channel relationship. Partners may be apprehensive to use CMM systems because they don’t want to share precious mailing lists with the system in fears it may be stolen. Prove that wrong — and establish that your CMM system is built in a way that partner-owned mailing lists can’t even be viewed by suppliers (like Zift CMM, which meets GDPR guidelines and the highest standards of security protection of privacy over everyone’s data). In addition, a true CMM system fosters collaboration and better results. Baked-in workflows and best practices provide channel-specific guidance, direction and visibility across the sales cycle that CRM systems just don’t support.

Make the Most of Your Investment

Are you using your CMM platform as strictly a library, or do you want to get the most bang for your buck? You’ll get much more visibility into partner activities — and their engagement levels, something you’re definitely invested in — if you convince them to conduct activities in your CMM platform. Incentivize and reward partners for logging into your portal and achieving results.

Another investment you should make the most of? Your campaigns. Give partners good, engaging content to work with. That should be on your mind from day one of a channel program: how can you create content that partners will engage with and keep them coming back for more? Ideally, you should make campaigns less of a product message and more of a conversation. What will connect with both partner and end-user needs? Creating content that connects with both these groups, but especially with end-users, is key to engagement.

Want to get started with a CMM system that presents powerful, unique opportunities for both suppliers and partners? Take a look at Zift CMM — or, drop us a line via the comments below telling us about your experience with the Media Library Phenomenon.

The post Leaving the Library: Getting the Most Out of Your CMM Platform appeared first on Zift Solutions.

MSPs are the real workhorse for resellers, servicing the products they sell. And, as VARs layer in more service offerings, they are becoming MSPs themselves. Plus, with exponential demand and growth in the security space, traditional MSPs are expanding to become Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs).

MSPs are on the front lines with customers. By missing opportunities to connect, Vendors, as well as MSPs, are leaving a lot of potential revenue on the table.

More than 80 percent of MSP revenue comes from delivery of their own services. They don’t have time to slow down, so they recommend and implement what they know best. They are incredibly passionate about what they do, but they are not sales and marketing professionals. In fact, Datto’s brand new Global State of the MSP Report notes that 53% of MSPs struggle with sales and marketing.

What’s Standing in the Way

At a recent conference, a friend and MSP said to me, “You know, I didn’t care about reselling, because it seemed like a dollar here, a dollar there, and not worth my time. But then I realized that, even with a very minimal commission, I could add several hundred to even thousands to my monthly business bottom line…”

When he trailed off, I had to ask, “Well, why don’t you?”

His response: “Because I don’t really know how and I don’t have time to learn how to market or sell the products I’m servicing. I can easily say ‘Hey, your firewalls and data security and communications are a mess.’ Or, ‘You need new laptops, phones, software or security cameras.’ That’s easy. The problem I have is: How do I work with Vendors to actually sell those products and make money from them? I don’t know where to start.”

Vendors and Suppliers, it’s clearly time to point MSPs in the right direction: Toward and into your channel program.

Tap Into MSP Energy

MSPs have high energy and may fall in love with a product they see at a conference or even online. But it’s easy for them to lose that glow once they step back into the day-to-day of their own business. That’s why fast (and preferably self-service) onboarding into channel programs is essential.

Once MSPs are in the front door (i.e. logged into your partner portal), get them activated fast. Tap into their energy with immediate training and engaging content that keeps them coming back for more info (and solutions) they can share with their clients.

Remember: Excitement dies when nothing happens. You make partners — and MSPs — loyal to you by making it as easy as possible to do business and helping them prosper.

Telling the Bigger Story

Vendors are already challenged to deliver their content and go-to-market strategy to and through partners, not to mention MSPs. But MSPs provide direct support for the products they are actually reselling. They are in front of clients every day. MSPs are already in the end users house, so to speak, so help them answer basic client questions first:

• Why is this the best solution to solve a specific problem?
• What are its core benefits to a business or organization?
• Why should we implement this product instead of something else?
• Why are you the best Vendor to provide this solution?

The next step is to show MSPs exactly where your solutions align with their services. Help them tell the bigger story to customers, so they’ll be incited to purchase solutions from and through the channel instead of going straight to Amazon, Best Buy or Walmart.

These big box retailers remain the preferred vendors of choice for MSPs because of their simplicity, even when they could be retailing for vendors themselves, adding another line of revenue via channel sales commissions.

Stay in Their Comfort Zone

MSPs are going to big box stores for products because it’s easy. It should be just as easy to do business with Vendors. Remember 80 to 90% of the MSPs’ revenue comes from providing their own services to customers. Reselling products is less than 20% of revenue and that’s being generous.

MSPs should not have to step outside of their comfort zone to partner with you. It’s your job to ask the questions of MSPs: How do you sell today? How do you market today? How can we help? That way, your efforts will center around what they currently do — and how doing business with you will help their customers and their own business succeed in the long run.  

Learn More About MSPs

Check out Datto’s new Global State of the MSP Report to learn more about MSPs’ top business challenges and how working with the right channel program can mitigate them.  

The post Leaving Money on the Table: A Vendor/MSP Love-Hate Story appeared first on Zift Solutions.

But, each and every time Zift contributes to an analyst report, I find myself singing the theme song to an early-80s sitcom, Square Pegs. I loved this show and adored watching the bright super-nerds Patty Greene and brace-faced Lauren Hutchinson trying their damnedest to join the “in” crowd at Weemawee High.

Organizations looking for solutions to their business challenges often rely on industry analysts from leading firms like Forrester, SiriusDecisions and Gartner to gather insight and direction prior to implementing a technology. They are considered the experts — the cool kids, per se. They determine who’s in and who’s out.

More Than a Little Unconventional

Zift works hard to ensure that they (and those who rely on their research) have the most current and comprehensive information about our products and services. Over the past several years, the channel technology (ChanTech) market has exploded. Analysts are working hard to categorize new offerings and providers. But Zift rarely fits into a specific category, even among channel-specific B2B technologies — hence, that ‘Square Pegs’ feeling.  And, like my beloved Square Pegs Patty and Lauren, Zift is more than a little unconventional.

There are multiple analyst reports focused on Through Channel Marketing Automation or TCMA (in which Zift is classified as a Leader), Partner Relationship Management (PRM), Channel-focused Learning Management (CLM) and more. But these highly segmented reports don’t cover the broader scope of what Zift provides, or what today’s channel leaders actually need to drive engagement, growth, and revenue.

Pure-play providers may fit neatly into these little boxes and pre-defined categories, but Zift does more. We see and fulfill the broader need for Enterprise Channel Management, which goes way beyond all those siloed solutions.

Zift’s approach to innovation may make us a square peg, but it keeps us and our customers in a leadership position. We know channel leaders are tired of purchasing, implementing and managing multiple disparate applications and point solutions to support their channel programs. Our focus is to deliver an integrated platform that spans the entire channel lifecycle. This is where we are investing heavily — over 27% of our revenue is invested in R&D. We are always looking ahead.

However, we are not only planning for the future. Today we are combining key TCMA, PRM, CLR functionality and more through the Zift platform. But we know even great tech doesn’t do much on its own. So, we also connect our users to the Channel Success, Engagement and Creative Services real people working in the channel require now.

Let’s face it: Today’s complex channel challenges aren’t going to be solved by a single-faceted solution. And Zift simply won’t be typecast. (P.S. For the record, turned out that super geeky early 80’s Patty from Square Pegs grew into the late 90s It-Girl and fashion icon, Carrie Bradshaw.) Patty, Carrie, and Zift: all innovators. All just a little ahead of their time. (Betcha’ the analysts will catch on and catch up soon…)

The post Square Pegs or Future Icons? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

I can feel it, even now as I’m writing this post. It’s not that focus is difficult. It just requires constant attention. Focus to lose hours in a book, or to remember my best friend’s birthday, or to leave the ketchup off my younger cousin’s burger because this week he’s decided he hates ketchup. It’s more than that, though. Focus requires focus.  

From a business perspective, focus can provide clarity that ultimately benefits revenue growth and ROI. It’s one ingredient in a mix of key elements that lead to a powerful channel program. Arguably, focus is among the most important elements for channel companies to consider.

That’s something telecommunications leader Star2Star understands. They sell 100% through the channel. Considering most companies do between 20-30% of their business through the channel, Star-to-Star’s commitment to channel sales guarantees a level of laser-focus on partner engagement and satisfaction.

“Our partners are our lifeblood,” says Star2Star CMO David Portnowitz. Supporting the partner is an essential element of their marketing equation. When all of your sales are made through the channel, partner success becomes a top priority.

Approach partners “like a small, digital agency,” according to Portnowitz. Catering to partner needs and providing partners with “whatever they need to go out and complete sales” is a logical extension of this philosophy.

Partner focus is a crucial part of successful channel programs. It takes many different forms, just like focus in our daily lives. In the channel, it means connecting with partners regularly and constantly assessing what they need most from you. It means producing content that’s relevant to partner needs, from whitepapers to complex campaigns, which empower them to sell effectively.

Focus is a concept you should warmly welcome into your channel program. See what else Star2Star has to say on the subject — and let us know what you’re doing to maintain partner focus in the comments section.

Visit ChannelVisions.tv to hear more from the top thought leaders in the channel.

The post Channel Visions: Staying Focused on the Partner appeared first on Zift Solutions.

You clicked around, figured out their pros and cons, and ran through your checklist of what you can’t live with or without. The way they wrote about their strong suits made your heart skip a beat. With bated breath, you looked at pictures and imagined a lifetime of bliss… with your channel technology provider.

Whaaat? I know. Let me explain.

It does mirror the online dating process (which, let’s admit, many of us are familiar with). You vet candidates, select a list of finalists, sit down and awkwardly talk over coffee, drinks, or (gasp!) dinner, and hopefully find one good interaction that leads to commitment.

What channel technology profile will make your heart sing? It depends from business to business, just like it does in love. What works for one company might make another company swipe left. What works for you? What are you looking for out of your relationship?

We’ve got a few suggestions for what you should look for when you’re shopping around for “The One.”

Play the long game

There’s no rushing perfection or the process of selecting the right solution for your channel partner program. So why not take it slow? You’re running a marathon, not a sprint.

What you’ll want to look for in a provider is a company that will keep working with you after the initial kickoff. They’ll offer you extensive services for both you and your partners to keep everyone happy. When it comes time to court your favor for a renewal of service, you’ll likely be glad to sign again — who doesn’t like to feel taken care of?

Look at their close relationships

People want to find people who already have good relationships in their life. People surrounded by friends are more appealing. It’s the same with ChanTech. Whether it’s their employees or their customers, look for people who are passionate about the tech they’re using.

Don’t look at just their carefully-edited selfie. Look at the people involved. Look at their processes. How would you be using that tech on a daily basis? Does it mesh well with what your team is already doing? Does it vibe with where you need to go?  Looking at how other companies are making use of that same technology can help you determine whether it would be a good match for you.

Are they willing to compromise?

Here’s the real kicker. Can your prospective provider give you what your particular channel program needs? If they are trying to sell you a solution straight out of the box, you’ll likely not find many customizable options — and if you have your heart set on the channel program that works best for you, working together with the provider is key.

Working in tandem for mutual success is what channel programs are all about. Why should it be any different with your channel technology provider? Look for flexibility in what their platform offers. Are you getting out-of-the-box content, or a customized setup that reflects the needs and goals of your specific partner program? Is your second date going to be dinner at a cozy insert-your-favorite-food restaurant, or is it going to be at a fast food chain?

Zift can, of course, check all the right boxes. We’re thinking about you and your specific needs from the start. We won’t just run you through our product demo like a slick date; we’ll want to get to know you and learn about what makes you tick. Are we your perfect match? Maybe so, but that’s not really the point of this post. Regardless of which channel tech provider gets your right swipe, doing your homework and taking as many opportunities to get to know the provider and what they can offer you is a must. See if they’re willing to be your business partner, willing to help solve your most complex challenges through software, services and proven best practices.

Jumping onto a provider’s platform without assessing your future compatibility together is a short-term win but a potential long-term loss, just like dating someone you don’t thoroughly vet first. So do yourself a favor and be cautious before you commit — in the channel and otherwise. After all, you never know. “The One” could be right under your nose!   

The post I Can See My Future with You appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Last time, Laz Gonzalez talked about how marketers need to update their practices and step up to get customers engaged, since email marketing, particularly “spray and pay,” is no longer a viable tactic. So what else is there? Marketing is still a wild west for creative ideas – GDPR has only forced our hands in implementing the bold campaign ideas that we were too timid to try earlier. Since emailing any email address you could get your hands on is no longer a viable option, especially in the EU, some brands have really stepped up their game recently. Here’s a round-up of brands that I believe are pulling off memorable marketing campaigns.

Domino’s: Paving Potholes for Pizza Perfection
Domino’s is paving potholes in several cities to protect pizzas that get damaged in route for delivery orders. Thus far, four cities have been accepted. Convincing your potential customers and reminding them your brand helped them out may incline them to send their business your way, especially since many consumers are more willing to give companies their business if they have a solid set of brand values. Want to get Domino’s to fix your pizza delivery route? You can apply to have your city considered for pothole treatment over at Domino’s campaign website.

What you can take from this:  Helping customers solve a problem that affects your solution, even in a minor way, can earn you major brownie points – and more customers ordering your pizzas.

Country Time Lemonade: Lemonade Legal Aid

Country Time Lemonade has launched a campaign for Legal-Ade, which is a legal team that helps pay fines and permits for children with lemonade stands. When neighborhoods come citing permits and fines to try and squeeze the lemony fun out of the classic summer tradition, Country Time decided to help young entrepreneurs keep their business up and running.

According to their website, “Life doesn’t always give you lemons, but when it does, you should be able to make and share lemonade with the neighborhood without legal implications.” They’re covering fees or fines up to $300, which is a sweet deal – and, of course, great publicity for Country Time Lemonade. Why not use their brand’s lemonade if they’ve got your back?

What you can take from this: What’s not to love about this campaign? A brand standing behind customers, especially customers like kids with lemonade stands, will always make a good impression on their audience.

IHOP – or rather, IHOb
This list would not be complete without mentioning IHOP – or, as they’re known for a limited time, IHOb. Whether they’re successful long-term or not will remain to be seen, but it got the internet’s attention. Part of the reason this campaign worked out was announcing the change a week before revealing what the “b” stood for (burgers), and presented many opportunities for interaction. Other brands gave their feedback, joking about changing their name and focus – Burger King notably changed their Twitter handle and icon to Pancake King.

This attention paid off, at least in the short-term. #IHOb was a trending topic on Twitter for multiple days. Was the stunt worth the questions they’ll have to field at individual IHOP stores for the next few weeks, as anxious customers wonder if this pancake will be their last? That remains to be seen. It was a bold move, and it definitely brought more attention to their business, so it’s at least a short-term win.

What you can take from this: Being bold pays off. IHOP’s brand was so well-known that it was being overlooked for other meal options. By pulling off a campaign out of left field, they reminded customers that they’ve got range – and guts. They’ve seen an uptick in customers post-IHOb, too.

Interesting campaigns with real-world tie-ins garner more attention than just blasting out emails. Marketing spaces are inundated with companies promoting products and solutions without a real hook for the customer. Depending on your audience, that may be exactly what customers want. Exploring new routes of marketing post-GDPR can grant plenty of buzz. Let’s leave “spray and pray” behind. It’s time to be bold.

What are some campaigns that have caught your attention recently? Share what you liked or disliked in the comments below.

The post GDPR and the Channel: Three Brands Changing the Marketing Game appeared first on Zift Solutions.

“We’ve updated our privacy policy.”

How many times have you seen this message in the past month? And how many have you deleted without even a cursory glance? You can bet many of your customers and prospects are doing the exact same thing.

We’ve all been inundated with emails about updates to privacy policies. Every time I opened my email account the last week of May, I knew I was in for another batch of privacy policy updates. Usually, I’d delete them without thinking too much about it. Maybe, if it was for a service I use regularly, I’d open the email and give the text a cursory skim. As I deleted another seemingly irrelevant email, I did catch myself wondering: How have this many sites captured my email address? What do some of these services even do? Do I even remember signing up for some of these? With every privacy policy email I received, I realized how many people were talking to me that I’d tuned out.

GDPR not only affects the privacy policies of companies doing business in the EU, it is also affecting marketing strategy and tactics. It forces organizations to step up and put new practices in place. Net new prospects now have to raise their hands and signal interest. And organizations have to do much more than blasting out “spray and pray” emails. Will this impact your numbers? How much interest was “spray and pray” generating, anyway? This remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to measure.

GDPR is also making companies across every industry step up in terms of what they are offering to prospects. Sending out email after email to people through lists bought online or filled with outdated contacts won’t cut it anymore. Instead, reaching the people who are asking for info and who have a real need for what your business offers should be your end-goal. You still have to deliver value and tell a story to get customers to take those next steps toward a purchase. And, doing so will take a more integrated mix of tactics.

All the best practices for post-GDPR marketing were in place prior to the regulations going into effect. If anything, GDPR has forced our hands into taking a more targeted approach. Is that such a bad thing? Connecting with prospects who are truly interested versus sending them to disinterested people who delete them as though they were just another privacy policy update on May 24 certainly seems to be the better end of the deal.

You have the opportunity to talk directly to people who are listening now. Keep looking for those prospects who are engaging with what you’re putting out there. And take a hard look at how you intend to move them toward a sale.

This is the first in a series of posts on GDPR and the Channel. The next post takes what’s established here and elaborates on ways you can engage prospects outside of their inbox. Stay tuned!

The post GDPR and the Channel: We’ve Updated Your Marketing Policies appeared first on Zift Solutions.

There are two common reactions to the General Data Protection Regulation: blasé contempt or outright terror. It feels like data privacy – and the internet at large – is at the cusp of a whole new era. Those affected by this ruling are either worriedly getting data protection officers up to speed and receiving customer confirmation on their new data privacy policies or in deep, deep denial.

“My company is in the US,” you may say. Some of your partners or leads may still be in the EU. If your company touches the EU, even peripherally – if one lead is in the EU’s jurisdiction – you are affected.

So what does GDPR do? Why should you care?

The Layman’s Guide to GDPR

When I first started research for this post, I had a faint idea of what GDPR did. I knew it mandated data privacy laws for residents of the European Union (EU), but I did not know what “personal data” entailed beyond the obvious. I knew that Zift’s engineering and product departments had been hard at work for months to ensure our company-wide compliance. I knew our customer success team had been meeting with customers to discuss their own compliance changes, but me? From my desk in the marketing department, there were a few basic questions I wanted answered in easy terms. A lot of people affected, even this close to its enactment, are still at this level of understanding – they’re sitting at their desks thinking, “break this down.” So let’s keep this simple.
What does GDPR do?

It protects EU residents’ personal data online. This means that companies must provide protection for this data. As mentioned above, this applies both to data within EU countries and data exported outside of the EU.

What is personal data?

Personal data is any kind of data that reveals identifying details about an individual. This can include everything from basic data like names and addresses to more complex details like political leanings.  

What kind of protection is necessary?

In order to stay compliant, you must have a system in place for personal data to be purged. The GDPR offers some new roles for businesses to help, the most important of which is the data protection officer. This role defines the company’s strategy on keeping data secure and stored in a GDPR-compliant manner.

What if I don’t want to make changes to my current system?

You’re going to face steep fines – up to either 20 million euros or 4 percent of global annual turnover, whichever is higher. It’s costly and time-consuming to account for GDPR, but the EU has ensured that non-compliance is not to be done lightly.

I keep hearing about this “right to be forgotten.” What is that?

The right to be forgotten is a clause in the GDPR with huge implications. Residents of the EU have the right to have companies purge their data from their systems – the right, in other words, to be forgotten by that system.

The GDPR will change how data is processed and stored in a truly permanent way. You’re hopefully well on your way to compliance, if not already fully compliant. Do your research (maybe on Zift’s Help Center article?) and be prepared.

The post GDPR Made Simple appeared first on Zift Solutions.

She identified two distinct schools of thought in her year-long search for a solution to help manage her partner program. One school of thought focused on the more traditional partner relationship management side of partner marketing. The other trended toward channel marketing and management, preferring demand generation and pipeline.

Neither of these schools of thought is inherently more correct – Lazar favored using elements of both to create an ideal middle ground, but wasn’t sure that would be a possibility. Then two major companies in this sphere came together under one name, and Skillsoft easily chose Zift Solutions as the middle ground Lazar had been trying to find.

Zift was the standout option for its flexibility for Skillsoft’s future. The many configurable elements to Zift’s Channel as a Service platform made it an appealing option for Lazar to handpick what Skillsoft needed to start building a world-class partner program.

Visit ChannelVisions.tv to hear more from thought leaders in channel marketing and management (CMM) and partner relationship management (PRM).

The post Channel Visions: Channel Technology Built for Growth appeared first on Zift Solutions.

• Became the first and only provider of Enterprise Channel Management with the launch of Channel as a Service
• Joined forces with Relayware to deliver leading Partner Relationship Management capabilities to our customers and establish the largest channel partner ecosystem worldwide
• Acquired Elastic Grid to provide superior creative services, broader APAC coverage and global in-country support
• Expanded our customer base by nearly 50% and increased the number of partner users on our platform by +85%
• Exceeded 2B in combined data points and partner transactions for use in analyzing and fine-tuning demand gen, partner programs and campaigns for more ROI

Clearly, our focus and follow-through on delivering seamless, end-to-end Enterprise Channel Management is resonating, as more than 80 percent of channel chiefs now rely on Zift.

What’s Next — And What’s in it for You?

According to Forrester, 75% of global commerce is now sold via indirect channels. As channels become more important, more organizations than ever are seeking purpose-built channel software and solutions to capture more revenue and drive greater channel success. With our unique and holistic approach, Zift has become a true channel standout. (Take a look at what Forrester’s Principal Analyst of Global Channels, Jay McBain has to say about this is in his recent blog: Eight Channel Predictions for 2018.)

I believe this is because in addition to the best integrated channel marketing and partner relationship management (CMM + PRM) technology, Our Channel Center Of Excellence delivers unrivaled channel expertise, proven processes, and best practices that we bake into our solutions.  We back it all up with our extensive services and training options.  No one provides more channel-focused solutions, support and insight to drive channel success.

But we’re far from done. Zift is continuing to invest in even more innovation and expansion in the coming year to address the continually evolving channel challenges. We’re expanding our creative services and training offerings. Plus, you’ll see targeted solutions for new, evolving and mature channel programs coming soon via Channel as a Service.

I hope you’ll take a moment to catch up with Zift’s progress and growth trajectory by reading our latest press release here. Then, keep coming back to Channel Chatter throughout 2018 to learn more about Zift’s forward vision and unmatched ability to align and integrate the purpose-built technology, services and strategic insight modern channel leaders need to succeed. We’re always listening and learning from you, too. Let us know in the comments section below what you have planned for 2018 and what you would like to see from Zift to help you achieve your channel-based goals.

The post How Zift Became the Global ChanTech Standout: What’s Next and What’s In It For You appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Three channel experts from Forrester Research, visual analytics leader Qlik® and Zift joined forces to share their insights on integration. We’ve talked about integration a lot here in Channel Chatter. That’s because Zift believes strongly that integration is absolutely vital to channel success. In this new webinar, our experts took a deeper dive, exploring three key elements of integration: Function, Process and Technology.

Step 1: Integrate Functions to Boost Performance & Results
Toni Adams, SVP of Partners and Alliances at Qlik, was up first to talk about function. Toni emphasized how integrating critical functions, like sales and marketing, can boost channel performance and results. He noted that the key to unlocking the true potential and value of channel partners is an integrated extended team, with coordinated interplay between sales and marketing teams. Organizations must align and integrate functions to ensure every phase of a partner’s sales cycle is supported with simple, predictable, and profitable action.

Step 2: Integrate Processes to Create a Seamless Partner Experience
Next up, Zift’s Laz Gonzalez spoke to the importance of integrating key processes to create a seamless channel and partner experience. Far too many partners feel like they’re working with different companies as they are moved through the processes of recruitment, onboarding, training and activation. Laz stressed that if channel organizations can’t move partners through all of these processes within 90 days, the likelihood of success over their lifecycle is very low. Channel leaders must integrate all of these processes to create one seamless, consistent partner experience from initial interaction through demand creation and beyond to really push the needle on partner performance.

Step 3: Integrate ChanTech to Stay Ahead of the Curve
Forrester Principal Analyst Jay McBain then took the ball to discuss how and why channel technology must work together to improve adoption, productivity and ROI. He pointed out the average channel manager is attempting to oversee a vast array of activities and partners every day. To get a handle on everyday functions and processes, they are cobbling together a variety of disparate technology solutions. And they are failing. Jay stressed that it makes much more sense to have a robust set of integrated tools that address challenges across the entire channel lifecycle and also work with the legacy systems and infrastructure in place today. Because your channel is growing, influencers are changing and buyers are evolving, an integrated approach to channel technology is the only way to stay ahead of the curve.

Learn More
I encourage you to watch the on-demand webinar to learn more about these three distinct branches of integration from three true channel experts, each of whom brought a unique perspective to the discussion. Far from a crowd, I think you’ll find that, when it comes to integration and channel success, three is indeed a magic number.

WATCH NOW

The post 3 is a Magic Number: Driving Higher Channel Performance through Integration appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Go Worldwide with WeChat 

Zift is helping channel organizations extend their social media reach by adding support for WeChat®. Haven’t heard of it? WeChat is the most popular social network in China, with a user-base of over 800 million active users – who spend an average of 90 minutes on the platform every day. (That’s a lot of people and a lot of time on one social network!)

For organizations interested in global dominance, WeChat is vital. It’s the premier platform for businesses focused on engaging buyers in Asia-Pacific regions and a powerful way to monetize social media outreach on a worldwide scale. With an official WeChat account linked to Zift, you can broadcast messages that include photos, videos, collateral and more.

For WeChat, Keep in Mind:

• WeChat is a mobile-first platform, so consider what you are sharing. Messaging should be short, crisp and clear. Avoid overly detailed descriptions or complex images, which can be difficult to see on mobile devices. Use links to connect followers to more in-depth content they can read later from their laptop or desktop.
• Form a following. Use incentives and rewards to rapidly build and accelerate account following. This could include discounts, exclusive content, free demos and more. Providing your audience with a reason to follow you and acknowledgement when they stay makes for more interest and sales.
• Segment your followers. Manage and target audiences by segmenting followers by location, language, stage of the sales cycle, gender and more. You can setup and use keyword auto-responses on WeChat to sort followers into groups. Then reach out with content specifically relevant to their interests and demographics.

Don’t forget to continue to use your other social media channels to stimulate discussions, demonstrate expertise and enhance lead generation efforts. Using Zift you can start a discussion on one platform, then amplify it through WeChat to develop stronger APAC-based online communities and a global digital presence.

Are you already using WeChat? Can’t wait to get started? Find out more about Zift support for WeChat here and share your favorite social media platforms and experiences in the comments section below.

The post Prepare for Global Domination: Zift Adds WeChat appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The post Aligning Channel Technology with Channel Best Practices appeared first on Zift Solutions.

By delivering everything that B2B organizations need to build and grow more profitable partner programs in one platform, we’re doing something that’s never been done before. But we certainly didn’t go into this without clear knowledge that channel organizations needed and were asking for help beyond our best-of-breed Channel Marketing and Management.

The fact is, Zift is expanding its focus with CHaaS, and stepping up to do more, because our customers have taught us through experience it’s the right thing to do.  We’ve listened to them, understand their challenges, examined over a decade’s worth of channel partner marketing data (more than one billion marketing transactions) – and are absolutely committed to making it easier to market, sell and drive productivity through the channel.  

Lack of Integration Undermines Adoption & Success

One thing I remember well from our analyst briefings prior to launching CHaaS was being asked, “Why the focus on the buyer’s business and not harping on features and functions as channel software companies often do?”  At Zift, rather than becoming overly enamored with the technologies underlying Channel as a Service, we’re focused on the business issues. While technology has swiftly appeared to help channel organizations navigate today’s marketing and sales landscape, complexity has also crept in. The lack of integration between all of the siloed applications channel organizations are using to manage marketing, sales and operations has contributed directly to poor partner adoption. Moreover, integration challenges extend beyond technology components and applications.

Three Levels of Integration

Anyone can say they “integrate,” but integration goes beyond getting software applications to speak to each other.  It’s about helping suppliers align sales and marketing, supporting complex processes in a seamless fashion and, yes, there are important components that do require application-level API’s – but this shouldn’t be the only focus.  Here are three specific levels of integration vital to channel program success:

Functional Integration: This entails streamlining and automating  key functions of Marketing, Sales and Operations departments, so that teams can work together more efficiently and effectively to plan, recruit and support channel partners. Without functional integration, channel programs will falter, regardless of the technology you put in place.

Process Integration: With Process Integration, channel leaders examine and integrate all of the disparate processes they deliver during the course of a channel program or even across the partner and customer lifecycle. Zift Channel as a Service supports the integration of both internal and external processes, such as distributing leads and even helping organizations work with third-party agencies to enable better visibility, control and optimal results from multiple processes.

Tools and Application Integration: The nuts and bolts of integration, Tools and Application Integration ensures that systems work well together. This certainly applies to integration  between multiple applications, such as Channel Marketing and Management (CMM), Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Marketplace incentives. Of course these need to work together seamlessly. Which is why Zift has built a dedicated development team to ensure individual Channel as a Service components work together flawlessly – and integrate with the systems and infrastructure organizations and their partners already have in place.

Evolving DNA to Support Both Suppliers & Channel Partners

All of this underscores the point that Zift isn’t just focused on integration at the technology layer.  Our DNA has also evolved to match the broader needs of our customers through Channel as a Service.  We’ve onboarded experts, expanded our development team, strengthened our customer success and channel engagement teams, all of whom are all focused on helping not just our supplier-side customers, but their partners as well.

To support multiple levels of integration, all Zift CHaaS implementations are accompanied by self-service or managed services options, which can include Strategic Account Directors, Customer Success Teams, premium hotline support for partners, Concierge Services, partner outreach and more, to deliver continual support and ensure success. We’ve also established a Channel Center of Excellence (CCOE) to provide best-in-class direction, strategic insight and support and I’ll be sharing more details about Zift’s CCOE in upcoming blogs.

The Big Picture

With Channel as a Service, Zift is looking at the bigger picture – and leading channel organizations should be, too. That means taking a hard look at your channel program, portal, marketing automation solutions, tools used to plan and manage partner relationships, and more. Everything should be on the table!  It means carefully examining your processes to see what’s lacking and what can be improved. It also means remembering that process precedes technology – but people come before anything else.  

The post Why Process Should Precede Technology appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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.

The post Stepping Up to Solve the Integration Challenge appeared first on Zift Solutions.

It is easy to think of automation as simply a way to facilitate some of the less mission-critical parts of the marketing and sales process. But the truth is that channel marketing automation can greatly benefit your lead generation strategies when used to their full potential.

Let’s take a quick look at three ways channel marketing automation can be used to generate more leads.

The Power of Email Campaigns 

Long understood to be a great lead generation strategy, email is still a top way to get more leads. Give your channel partners the email content and campaigns you’ve created to use in their own marketing efforts.  It’s that simple.  Not only does it foster a unified brand message, it also makes your partners happy that they don’t have to start from scratch.  A platform can make it easy for you, the supplier, to give them the content but also provide the partner flexibility to personalize parts of the message for their specific needs. From there, more automation allows you to segment your target audience and send emails targeted specifically to where the customer is in the buyer journey. This would be virtually impossible to do manually, given the scope of your customer base.   This level of personalization in your email campaigns leads to a better customer experience, which in turn helps to generate highly qualified leads.

Social Media Marketing Automation

Forbes observes: “Businesses that anticipate future behavior can address unique concerns via different sales and marketing approaches.”  Social media is one of the most powerful mediums but it comes at a cost.  Channel partners, especially smaller ones, often lack the time and resources to do it well.  Similiar to share email campaigns, automate your social media syndication to keep a steady stream of content running on social sites.  By going on step further and using analytics tools as part of your social media syndication program, you can see which channel partners are using content effectively, and what your social reach is across the channel community. Armed with this information, you can design social media campaigns that appeal to both your channel partners and customers.

Web Content Syndication

Few would argue the fact that a well-designed landing page is the key to quality lead generation. Marketing automation tools enable you to design and test landing pages and web query forms to ensure they are optimized. And if you have some type of dynamic content syndication, you can target content based on website visitor behavior or characteristics, increasing conversion which means more good leads.

It All Comes Back to Leads

You’ve automated content delivery to your channel partners.  You’ve got more leads.  Now what?  You want to know what’s happening with those leads.  With easy integration to mission critical systems such as Oracle, Salesforce, Sage, and more, you can get insight into lead activities and track results with automated closed-loop reporting.

And then you can really watch your garden grow.

The post Want to Grow Your Leads? Automate, Automate, Automate appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Zift’s Chief Strategy Officer Laz Gonzalez served as our host, welcoming and pulling insights from powerhouse panelists:

• Maria Chien, Service Director, Channel Marketing Strategies, SiriusDecisions
• Kevin Espinosa, Digital Experience Manager, Caterpillar, Inc.
• David Johnson, Director of Product Marketing, Oracle/Oracle Marketing Cloud

The group quickly keyed in on the fact that having easy, organized access to prospects and customers via modern marketing automation platforms has really transformed channel marketing – but serious gaps remain. They noted that new, unique and, sometimes, blended technology is required to overcome current challenges and empower the full potential of marketing through a network of channel patterns.

Addressing Adoption Challenges

Panelists dug into the reasons why portal and program adoption remains such an ongoing problem within the channel. They shared perspectives on the critical importance of the partner experience along with best practices for mitigating adoption challenges.

While today’s technology streamlines adoption, the burden ultimately falls to people and processes to create a personalized partner experience that extols the benefits of channel programs overall. Laz emphasized that, to capture mindshare and loyalty, partners really need to be treated like leads. The group also encouraged channel marketers to deliver prescriptive guidance and be proactive with concierge services to help partners drive higher performance.

Today’s Tech Moves Marketing Forward

Leading-edge marketing automation platforms lend themselves well to solving key channel challenges. During the second half of their discussion, our panelists dove into the transformative power of today’s technology, including the power of cloud-based open platforms that integrate well with established infrastructure and systems.

Regardless of the level of user experience, new applications, software and technology solutions should work within or in tandem with the systems and tools sales teams and partners are already using, be it in an enterprise or SMB environment. Of course, new technology should be accompanied by built-in support, partner services and training to get them up and running quickly, demonstrate benefits to end users – and keep them moving forward with new solutions.

A Must-Watch

This panel provides a great opportunity to map the steps and tech you can use to address the needs of high and low-touch partners with varying marketing resources and capabilities. With real-world industry examples and best practices applicable to both the channel and the direct-side, this is a must-watch webcast for marketers.

WATCH THE WEBCAST

The post Automation Fusion: Blending Platforms to Drive Direct and Indirect Channel Revenue appeared first on Zift Solutions.

We really are committed to educating our customers and prospects, and want them to understand TCMA is a journey. Because we’ve helped so many channel organizations chart a course to TCMA, we know that it takes more than a sales-oriented meeting to launch a program that will deliver results and ROI. It takes strategic planning, defining benchmarks, education and sometimes soft launches to do TCMA right (all of which is second-nature to us here at Zift).

Those who succeed with TCMA have taken the following steps before purchasing and implementing a solution:

1. Make a Plan

Identify your goals and determine exactly what you want to measure. TCMA requires careful planning and it should not be pursued as a reaction to current channel trends. By working with stakeholders within your organization and informed, education-minded vendors to create a comprehensive plan for TCMA from the start, you’ll be in a much better position to discuss your needs, select the right solutions and develop a plan for implementation.

2. Determine Your Budget

Before evaluating available TCMA solutions, it’s a good idea to figure out how much your organization is willing to invest. Then you can start to build the business case in order to get stakeholders and management to support the full scope of TCMA. Share this budget with vendors as well; it’s helpful for vendors to know your planned Year-1 budget.

3. Examine More Than Technology

Educated buyers know that it takes more than just technology to be successful. Research available options that align with your vision and strategic plan for TCMA. Then do some reading to see what established analysts like SiriusDecisions and Forrester Research have to say about organizations and solutions in the TCMA market. Then ask all the vendors on your short list, the same questions: Do they have the support resources to make you successful, not just today, but into the future? Can they see your long term vision and support it with a platform that plays nice with the other tools you use every day? After go-live, who can you turn to for help, best practices and making the most out of your investment? What about the existing customer base? Do they have a strong community of customers that you can talk to directly about their success?

4. Evaluate Your Partner Community

TCMA isn’t a match for all channel partners. You’ll need to evaluate the maturity of your partner community before simply providing them with access. Take time to talk to your partners in order to determine how many would use and benefit from solutions like Content or Social Media Syndication, Automated Lead Distribution Management, Email Campaigns, Online Advertising and more. The Zift and SiriusDecisions webinar, “5 Key Ingredients for a Positive and Profitable Partner Experience” speaks to this topic directly, offering tremendous insight and direction for mapping the journey to partner experience excellence and selecting the right TCMA tools for your partners.

5. Get Organizational Buy-In

Far from a “one-and-done” solution, TCMA is a process that requires organizational buy-in and ongoing internal support to succeed. You’ll need a senior executive sponsor that you can work closely with to communicate your goals to the entire company and carefully evaluate whether you have the available resources to manage and support TCMA on an ongoing basis before proceeding.

6. Ask the Experts

Once you’ve done your homework, you can confidently work with a TCMA vendor who has the experience, best practices and proven partner participation to help you navigate the journey successfully.

Zift has worked with thousands of channel organizations, and wants to help you, too. No matter where you are in the process, you can count on us to get involved early on to help you develop your strategy, establish performance benchmarks and even implement a program to ensure that you can meet your specific objectives for TCMA.

Aimie Vargas

As Director of Sales, Western Region at Zift Solutions, Aimie works with companies to help them drive more revenue through their partner network, increasing leads and pipeline, and capitalizing on full-view analytics of how well their channel is performing.

The post 6 Steps to Consider Before Purchasing & Implementing a TCMA Solution appeared first on Zift Solutions.

If you have since decided to take the plunge and are now a proud owner of a CRM system, congratulations! You are probably very excited, but also possibly a bit overwhelmed. Working with new systems or technology can be a bit daunting if you aren’t exactly sure of all the tips, tricks and best practices.

To make sure that you are able to take full advantage of this investment (and not become increasingly overwhelmed in the process), there are a few things to keep in mind.

If you’re a CRM rookie or even a long-time user looking for a refresher, here are some ways that you can make the most of your CRM:

1. Get Buy-in from your Sales Team

Make sure that your team is ready to tear themselves away from their sticky notes, spreadsheets, stacks of business cards, etc. that they are currently using to keep track of their sales leads. If your CRM is going to be a success, your whole team must be ready to get on board.

2. Get Proper Training

Most CRM companies, depending on the level of service you have purchased, give you access to a CRM training representative. Make sure that you avail yourself of this resource and get proper training for your team members. If training is not readily available from a CRM representative, make sure you have a designated in-house expert who can train the rest of your team (and by expert, I mean someone who is handy with Google and willing to take time to do some research).

3. Take Advantage of Integrations

One of the great things about new technology is the ability to integrate with systems you already use. Most CRM systems will give you the opportunity to sync with your email, calendars and dozens of others apps or services that you are already using as a part of your sales process.

4. Automate

Take routine tasks, like follow-up calls and emails, and automate them through your CRM. You can set up your activities to fall on a certain cadence so that you do not have to worry about knowing when to follow up on an account. This eliminates human error and allows your sales team to focus more on the sales process and less about the details.

5. Customize

Most CRM systems will give you the ability to customize your experience within the CRM to fit your business needs. This will allow you to use your own industry jargon that relates to your business, create structures that make sense for your sales cycle and more.

6. Reporting

Do some research into the reporting capabilities that your CRM system has available. There is a wealth of information that you can take from your sales process, and with all of your data in this centralized hub, you can capture valuable metrics on your sales performance. Use reporting to prove value to your stakeholders, improve the sales process or look into other ways to help your business grow.

7. Continue to Learn

Once you have trained, set up your automation rules and made your customizations to your CRM system, your journey isn’t over just yet. Make sure that you continue to learn more about your CRM capabilities through your CRM sales representative, online forums, help centers or through blogs and webinars. As is the case with most things in life, the more effort you put in, the more you get out.

Your Turn…

What tips and tricks have you been using to make the most of your CRM?

The post How to Make the Most of Your Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Tool appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Any business that has seen a significant amount of growth will tell you that for all of its perks, it did not come without the inevitable growing pains. As your business grows, you will quickly discover that you need to find a better, more scalable way to interact with your customers to compensate for your growth.

But, how do you know when you’re ready?

The good news is that if you pay attention to a few clear signals, it can help save your company from some of the pain. Adding a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage your growing business is a great first step in building out more efficient processes that grow with you.

Here are seven tell-tale signs that indicate it’s time for you to get serious about CRM:

1. No centralized source for information

If you find that you or your sales team are using Google sheets, spreadsheets, post-it notes on your computer, stacks of business cards on your desk, etc. to keep track of your sales leads, you just might benefit from CRM.

If you have multiple places where you keep your sales information, you are not alone. Research has shown that 61% of employees say that they have to search through four or more different systems to retrieve information.

CRM allows you to have a single view into all information relating to your sales process and keep it in one central database that is updated in real time.

2. Little or no visibility into the sales process

Even the most seasoned sales reps can find themselves missing appointments or forgetting to follow up with prospects without the proper systems in place. Without a centralized place to gather this information, your management team will be in the dark about these types of issues (that is until they start seeing it affect their sales numbers).

Don’t let your company’s sales leads fall through the cracks. CRM can give you insight into every step of the sales process, keep salespeople accountable and provide valuable details about the attainability of your sales targets and goals.

3. Tedious, manual reporting

Manual reporting is time-consuming and not scalable. If you are spending a great deal of time creating manual reports and finding that it takes more time than it is worth – chances are you could benefit from some automation.

CRM can allow you to run customizable reports based on the information that is relevant to your business in only a few steps. Automating this will give you more time to focus on the most important part of reporting – analyzing the data.

4. Loss of Data

Keeping information outside of a centralized location can make it very easy to lose valuable data that should be shared with your team.

One area where data loss can have a big impact on your business is through employee turnover. If you have a salesperson leave the company, and you don’t have a CRM system, your leads could walk right out the door with them. Having all of your leads data in one place helps to ensure they belong to the company, and not the outgoing salesperson.

5. All customers receive the same experience

Your customers expect you to understand their business needs as well as they do. They have also come to expect personalized service.

If your prospect/customers are having to repeat themselves every time they call your business, they will not feel a great deal of trust in your ability to handle their needs.

Customer-facing employees should have easy access to all prospect/customer information: past calls, emails, meetings and other activities, etc. to inform their interactions.

Having the ability to personalize and tailor the sales process to the prospect’s specific needs can also make for a much better relationship with that prospect.

A CRM system can give you the ability to target prospects based on their interests, needs, concerns, location in the sales process, geography, industry and more. This will allow you to give your salespeople the best opportunity to sell to these prospects, while giving your prospects a better, more personalized experience.

6. Inconsistent Sales Process

An occasional trap that many companies find themselves in is an inconsistent sales process. If each person on your sales team has a different process, with different messaging or follow-up timing, it becomes a bit of a mess.

A recent study by CSO Insights, found that salespeople spend only 25-30% of their time selling, with the rest spent on administrative work. Standardizing your sales process can make it so that your sales team can focus on what brings in the money.

Now, let me warn you, this is not as clear cut as just getting a CRM for this one. Of course, creating a consistent sales process takes more effort than just implementing CRM. But to really achieve consistency, you will need everything CRM provides to automate your follow-up activities. You can also use CRM to house templates and messaging for your sales team to send for initial follow-up.

7. Lack of Scalability

It’s safe to assume that your business is interested in growing and making a profit. If you are still using spreadsheets and post-it notes as your methods of organization, there is a definitive limit to the amount that your company can grow. If you do not have an organized method to look into your sales pipeline, how can you accurately assess your growth strategy? A post-it note is not going to give you that insight.

Without this centralized method of sales information, you are at risk of not allocating appropriate resources to the correct places, making it difficult to grow your business in a scalable, efficient way.

Your Turn!

How has CRM helped your company to make the next step in continued growth?

The post 7 Signs You Desperately Need a CRM System appeared first on Zift Solutions.

If you find the answer isn’t obvious, you’re in good company. With so many vendors claiming their system is absolutely vital to work with partners – and so much at stake when it comes to optimizing channel revenue – it’s understandable why many struggle to determine which system(s) will best meet their partner engagement needs. The last thing you want to do is waste valuable resources, invest in another system that won’t deliver value, or worse, confuse or alienate partners.

So let’s break down the real differences and overlap between CRM, PRM and CMM to determine why or if you need all three.

Decoding the Basics

CRM: Customer Relationship Management systems manage and analyze customer interactions and data across the customer lifecycle with an eye toward strengthening customer relationships. Some of the most popular CRM systems include Salesforce.com® (SFDC), SugarCRM®, Microsoft® Dynamics, Sage®CRM and Zoho®.

PRM: Partner Relationship Management systems are designed to help vendors manage their partner relationships. Popular examples of commercially available PRM systems include Salesforce®PRM, SAP® PRM and Relayware®. Some organizations also design and build their own custom PRM solutions or partner portals.

CMM: Channel Marketing and Management solutions allow you to coordinate multiple complementary marketing activities with partners, like email campaigns, online advertising and co-branded sales collateral as well as automate key marketing processes, including lead distribution management, content syndication, social media, analytics and reporting.

Critical Differences, Similarities and Overlap

Both CRM and PRM systems offer real value for tracking customer and partner activity, as well as registering deals, highlighting the sales “bend” of these systems that are more transactional in nature. They do not offer CMM, which has proven to be essential for empowering channel partners with personalizable co-branded campaigns and demand generation activities while maintaining partners’ privacy.

In keeping with the spirit of sales vs. marketing enablement then, one finds most CRM and PRM systems have joint business planning for Customer and Partner Account Managers (CAMs and PAMs) to help maintain and manage relationships with current and prospective customers and partners, which are typically absent from CMM systems. PRM portals also offer a layer of sales training and certification that CRM systems and CMM platforms do not. They often have a full database of sales staff and are designed to deliver educational content to aid in the sales process, which is considered secondary to the marketing function CMM provides.

Some PRM systems also have content repositories and management capabilities regarding versioning and refined reporting on usage, which is sometimes more in depth than what CMM currently offers though the differences are nominal these days. PRM systems are somewhat ahead of the game on deal registration, which is typically tied to Salesforce.com and delivers better rules and tighter integration than CMM platforms offer and I don’t see that changing for the foreseeable future.

To be sure, there is some overlap between CRM, PRM and CMM. PRM, in particular, provides everything an organization needs to register deals and engage partners with lead distribution. Zift’s CMM Platform also offers Lead Distribution Management, which makes it easy to automatically deliver sales qualified leads and sales data to partners as well as see what partners are doing with the leads you provide. Most PRM portals offer the same type of workflow routing, notifications and lead pushing technology that Zift provides with one notable difference. Zift allows partners to flow leads directly into their own systems of record, which portals do not.

Even with overlap, the different systems ultimately serve different purposes and that’s the rub. CRM and PRM are focused more on the sales function, while CMM is aimed mostly at marketing. The bottom line: CRM and PRM systems currently hold a critical place in the channel, which starts and ends with the customer and partner management, training, education, lead distribution and deal registration. CMM does the essential groundwork of actually delivering the content and marketing capabilities partners require for demand generation.

The post The Big Question: Do I Really Need CMM If I Already Have PRM or CRM? 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.

As an Account Manager for Zift Solutions, I know firsthand that a powerful technology platform can do great things, particularly when it comes to automating co-branded marketing, streamlining distribution of leads and marketing assets, enhancing visibility across the sales lifecycle and measuring results.

However, there is more to channel marketing success than technology alone. That’s why Zift pairs its technology with Expert Services and a proven Success Framework to help Suppliers see the bigger picture and get the most out of the Zift platform for their channel partners and their channel marketing program overall.

Start with Strategy

No channel marketing program is going to succeed without a clearly defined strategy. You must determine exactly what you want from your channel partners and what they need from you. Then you can outline how you will both achieve those goals. After working with thousands of the world’s leading channel marketing organizations, Zift has a stronghold on Channel Program Strategy and our Expert Services team works with you directly to help you determine the best methods to meet critical sales objectives and reinforce your brand while maximizing the impact of interactive marketing.

Campaign Coordination Comes Next

Campaign Coordination moves strategy into action. Developing the right campaigns for channel partners and selecting the right marketing techniques and tactics takes insight and expertise. Zift’s Expert Services shine in this capacity, extending your team and providing hands-on support to tackle a host of Campaign Coordination tasks, including:

• Creating, designing, launching and adjusting co-branded campaigns for use by partners
• Refining assets and creating re-usable templates
• Establishing and tweaking workflows and lead routing rules
• Defining and creating management reports
• Much more

Drive Adoption

Technology won’t gain a real foothold within your Channel Marketing Program unless Partners make it part of their daily routine. Zift’s Expert Services team takes time to understand the needs and personality of your Partner community, so that when you roll out the Zift platform, it’s accompanied by Partner Adoption Services, complete with training, clear communication and partner events, to generate enthusiasm and engagement from the start.

Empower Your Partners

Even the most enthusiastic of partners may need a little guidance and handholding to make the technology you provide to them really sing. Zift Concierge Services delivers hands-on prescriptive marketing support to your partners to help them get the most from the platform and ensure that everything launched through your partners still complies with your brand standards. This is a great way to empower partners, as Concierge Services does the heavy lifting of campaign creation and execution, then works directly with partners throughout campaigns to ensure proper follow up with prospects to maximize results.

Think Globally

We do. That’s why Zift delivers Global Partner Support. No matter where your Partners live and work, they get the support they need to succeed. In-Language Support is easily accessible and currently available for more than 130 countries using Zift Solutions around the globe.

Measure Success

To see just how new technology is impacting the success of your channel marketing efforts, you must measure results. Zift makes that easy with Account Management and Closed Loop Analytics, which allow you to capture, use and share meaningful data across the channel. It allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of campaigns and optimize the impact of your channel marketing dollars.

“Zift Expert Services has helped us get the best results from the platform and our partners. They not only got us started on the right foot, but have also become a powerful extension of our team.”

Cynthia Caramico,
VP Marketing & Inside Sales,
Avaya

It’s About Teamwork

Technology doesn’t work in a vacuum and, with Zift, neither do Suppliers. Zift fulfills your needs with an array of services engineered to match your desired level of support. Expert Services ensure that everything gets done efficiently, with maximum impact, without adding more to your to-do list. Ongoing meetings help to define objectives and determine the services best suited to your organization and individual needs. We work together to refine plans and action items, so that you’re always getting the most from your technology and investments.

Learn more about Zift’s proven Success Framework, and let us know what you’re pairing with technology in your channel marketing program in the Comments section below.

The post Get The Most From Technology: Seeing The Bigger Picture appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Cargill says, “If you want to manage yourself and/or your team to optimum sales success in 2015, here are the steps that you should take:”

• Selling time: Make sure you remove any and all non-sales tasks from your sales team.
• Shorten the sales cycle: Take into consideration the total time required to get one new account.
• Utilize automation tools: Your website should have a visitor identification package attached to it. You should also utilize autoresponders. CRM can be a wonderful tool if, and only if, it’s properly implemented and training is maintained. Closed-loop marketing can and should be automated, as it will help you stay in touch with hundreds of prospects and give them each of them the perception that you are reaching out to them one at a time.

I’d like to focus on the automation “step.”

Why?

Because specific features from automation tools are being used to address the other two steps. Automation can shorten the sales cycle and enable sales to ‘sell’ – breaking down the barriers and eliminating friction, allowing sales to focus on the most important and valuable opportunities.

I’ve seen great success with partner sales teams, when they have the right tools within the environment that they feel most comfortable. This means bringing the tools into the Sales Automation, CRM and Marketing systems that they use everyday. Not creating extra work, rather empowering sales to do more within the systems they login to everyday.

Five Specific Automated Features That Superpower Sales Teams

1. Through Partner Marketing Automation (TPMA)

This is the ability to execute email, social, search and content rich campaigns through partners to their end audience – considering the unique needs of prospect and customer audiences.

The majority of partner sales teams we encounter, struggle to get regular campaigns out-the-door on a regular basis. (Nevermind utilizing basic multi-touch, persona based and trigger campaigns). They are buried in day-to-day sales activities and simply don’t have time to focus on funnel building activities.

With TPMA solutions, Partners can quickly find relevant campaigns that align with their sales goals – and schedule campaigns into the future, so they can focus on lead follow-up and SELLING. Additionally, with our nurturing capabilities, we can grow opportunities over time and provide a steady stream of leads through the year.

2. Instant Notifications and Reports

This is the ability to instantly notify sales when a lead demonstrates sharp interest in a product, industry focus or business need; or take specific actions on the site or within a campaign.

Look for solutions that offer the ability to monitor all prospect activity and trigger notifications (via email or direct into CRM) direct to sales. This feature helps sales to focus on the most interested and qualified prospects, as they raise their hand.

Interest level change notifications are among our most popular and widely used reports.

This feature will send an email alert to a member or group of sales people, when a contact reaches a new level of interest. This is configurable, but it normally takes 2-3 unique interactions with content, email clicks, or campaign activities for a contact to achieve a new level of interest.

3. Website Analytics Reporting

This is the ability to monitor and report on all pages of your website – tracking both known and anonymous visitor activity. Be careful here, simply counting webpage hits and clicks is not enough – you have to go the extra step and be able to report a few more layers deep. Also, this data must be shared with sales on a regular basis to support their selling activities.

Modern solutions offer a simple code snippet that can be added to footer of your website. Instantly, you’ll begin to track all site activity of anonymous (using reverse IP lookup) and known contacts. All activity will be reported at a company/account level through systems reporting and via email on a daily basis.

Sales will look for these reports each morning – savvy sales reps will identify patterns and use the data to move deals to close.

4. Digital Body Language and Topic Level Interest

This is the ability to track, score and report all marketing activities at an individual contract level. The ability for sales to click on a prospect or customer and see a marketing story.

With a single click, these solutions offer sales visibility into all email, social, content, web page and event activities that an individual contact has completed. Additionally, systems tend to organize this interest into topic categories that align with specific products, industry focus and business needs. It’s like being able to know what products or focus the prospect is interested in, before making the first call.

This approach allows sales to be more contextually relevant and impressionable on initial contact.

5. Closed Loop CRM Integration and Reporting

This is ability to tie revenue, pipeline and sales activity directly to specific marketing programs.

The best solutions offer CRM connectors and integrations with many leading Sales Automation and Marketing Automation platforms. Imagine being able to open your CRM system and know specifically which marketing campaigns have contributed most to lead maturation and sales progression.

The point here is that automation and automated tools are only as good as you can prove their value. Meaning, if activity leads to positive revenue – do more of those things.

If you can’t tell, if you can’t measure, if you can’t connect the loop – you’ll never know if what you’re doing is worth the effort.

The post How Automation Can Transform Channel Partner Sales appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Join us in welcoming guest blogger, Chris Becwar, Director of Marketing and Strategic Alliances at CCI Global Channel Management.

Having worked in and around tech channels for a while now, it’s been fascinating for me to watch how tech vendors use the enterprise technologies they tout to their customers and partners for running their own businesses.

While the leaders of the world’s top IT channel organizations have been busy over the last five years touting the benefits of SaaS enterprise solutions to their partners and customers, they’ve been hiding a painful secret: their personal experiences trying to leverage cloud enterprise platforms for running, and growing, their own channel organizations has often been very painful.

With a rallying cry of ‘cloud or bust’, major tech vendor CEOs and CTOs have signed up for enterprise-wide CRM, marketing automation and ERP software suites that made bold promises to automate everything sales-, marketing-, and finance-oriented, including the channel. And usually this has been done with little or no review or buy-in from the actual channel organization.

These projects have started out with a lot of fanfare and high expectations, but the honeymoons haven’t lasted long. Once it’s become clear that the ‘channel’ or ‘PRM‘ portions of these offerings are actually designed for SMBs with no more than a few hundred partners, the buyer’s remorse sets in and it’s time to ‘pay the piper’…the ‘piper’ being a major consulting firm, to build something custom with the application that can accommodate the full global complexity of the company’s indirect programs and operations. Initial build-outs tend to string out well beyond a year, with huge amounts of internal stakeholder time, and hourly pay, spent managing the project and all the people involved.

Once these systems are built, the pain really starts to snowball as the cost, time, and lost sales opportunities mount quickly. These projects tend to be:

• Astronomically expensive to manage, maintain, and repair. (Have you checked the hourly rate of a development consultant lately?)
• Not configurable in any adequate way as an organization’s channel structure and priorities change from year to year. In fact by the time they are built, they tend to already be out of date for the ever-evolving needs of their users.
• Inadequate as ‘systems of record’ that in many cases are not even remotely ‘financial-grade’ because of the ability of any admin to manipulate the pages and data.
• Consistently built by third-party developers that have little to no background, expertise, or interest in channel management best practices or global financial best practices.
• A place where innovative new ideas to improve internal and partner-facing processes ‘go to die’ because of the massive queue and expense of other maintenance requests for the system.

To be fair, software and services organizations ‘born in the channel’ have had their own challenges historically. Although they’ve tended to be more purpose-built by people who truly understand channel, they’ve often been bespoke, desktop applications that can’t evolve or integrate seamlessly with other, more complementary, systems. And they don’t carry the ‘name brand’ cache that their internal champions might prefer to tout with their boss when trying to sell these initiatives internally.

But the playing field has quickly evolved and cloud solutions purpose-built for large, global channels have been evolving and expanding quickly. The beauty of the cloud is that it tends to level the playing field for companies that deeply understand a certain business niche or industry to develop powerful tools that meet the unique business requirements of their clientele.

These new ‘born in the channel’ systems:

• Are purpose-built by channel practitioners deeply familiar with, and dedicated to, the unique needs and realities of the channel
• “Play well” with other internal systems and share data easily
• Put a heavy focus on scalability, through the global needs of a Fortune 500 player

So as channel teams close a painful first chapter in cloud automation and, one by one, give up on their customized ‘Frankenstein’ systems, a new generation of tools is rising from the ashes. Innovative, truly scalable channel solutions for through-partner marketing automation, PRM portals, deal registration, incentives/MDF management, and joint planning are changing the game.

Now that sounds like a cloud-rallying cry to actually get excited about!

Sound interesting? Watch our latest webinar: Embracing the New Era of End-to-End Channel Automation. You’ll learn more about these ideas and specific ways to implement solutions designed to hold your partners accountable, measure results and capture more channel sales. Click here to watch now.

The post Embracing the New Era of End-to-End Channel Automation appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The Summit’s lineup of keynote speakers, complete with Former Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton, Marketo Chairman and CEO Phil Fernandez, and Senior Vice President and CMO of GE Beth Comstock, was also impressive as were their thoughts on this year’s theme of Innovation in the Nation.

Partner portals are failing – but why?

There was one discordant note though for me from the show that came from one of the track presentations I attended and wanted to provide my thoughts on it.

The presentation was around channel marketing and portals. While the presenters noted that portals are failing to engage channel partners, they pointed to content as the problem. Moreover, they encouraged vendors to look for “an agency of record” rather than an integrated technology platform and a proven Through Partner Marketing Automation (TPMA) solution to solve channel marketing challenges.

After working directly with Marketo and thousands of channel marketing and sales professionals over the years, I must disagree.

The fact is, partner portals don’t work as a root cause because they force partners to leave the environment where they work day in and out and log in to yet another application environment to manage leads and opportunities.

Certainly content is important but is systemic to engagement with partners and is quickly fixed when one implements the right channel marketing automation solution. And it’s been my experience that the vast majority of channel partners don’t need another agency to hold their hands while charging exorbitant fees for services they don’t require. Instead, they need leads and prospecting insight automatically delivered within the systems they use every day.

“Measure twice and cut once.”

If you’re ready to extend Marketo to work with your channel partners then look for a certified Marketo Integrated LaunchPoint partner to ensure that your Lead Distribution and TPMA are actually integrated, so that you can seamlessly distribute leads and prospecting data directly into Marketo.

Before you make any decisions – it pays to do the research and follow the old adage – “measure twice and cut once.” When evaluating partners I suggest, keeping these vital points in mind:

1. Channel marketing automation is tough and very few do it well. Select an established partner with a strong reputation and proven technology to automate lead distribution and reporting as well as enhance visibility across the sales lifecycle.
2. Don’t be fooled by agencies with thin layers of technology and lots of costly services underneath. Look for a complete, integrated channel marketing solution that doesn’t require more work from your partners.
3. Expect integrations with Marketo to actually work with Webhooks and Marketo’s new REST API to push technology triggers, automate revenue processes and capture new opportunities. The right partner will help you take advantage of all of the latest Marketo features and capabilities.
4. Ask for live instances of real customers using their integrations to extend Marketo usage along with KPIs that demonstrate results.

Your Marketo investments matter. Choose a partner that truly extends your Marketo investments with seamless integration to supercharge channel sales efforts.

Did you attend the Marketo Summit last week? If so, what were some of your highlights? Let us know in the comments section below.

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

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The post Marketo Matters: Choosing the Right Partner 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.

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

Not too long ago, the direct sales teams, internal to the vendor, were receiving far more attention than any indirect/channel business. Vendors are starting to realize that using a direct sales force is prohibitive in comparison with the cost of using channel partners. So vendors are now investing huge resources into channel partner marketing.

Partner channels are very complex and in order to understand them, channel marketers have to base their decisions from real numbers and not rely on trial and error.

[Enter Analytics: Stage Left]

All website owners understand the value of website analytics, but in the world of channel marketing, how can it be leveraged to benefit both the channel marketer and the channel partner?

A Different Animal

Your normal analytics platform will provide data about activity on that website such as number of visits, time on site, bounce rate, exit rate, pages/visit etc. But, what about who was visiting? Who took that action? Not only that, but as a channel marketer I’m flying blind if I have zero insight into how my channel marketing efforts are really playing out.

Here’s how shared analytics through a partner demand center can help you gain the visibility needed to help your partners:

1) Understand How Your Money is Used

According to Forrester’s recent forecasts for 2013, approximately $1,357B will go through the IT channel and about $63B is allocated towards channel marketing. That’s an estimated 30% increase in spend for this year. But did you know that an estimated $25B will go unused?

WOW.

Vendors pump cash into their channel without seeing how it’s really spent. How can you understand your expenditure without have a 360 degree view of how it’s been used?

Channel partners need support with their marketing and need up-to-date product information, so leaving them to their own devices does not work. But using a platform that helps them market more effectively and helps you understand if they’re using the funds is a god-send!

Bottom-line: Shared analytics provide you with simple data that shows how engaged your partners are and if they are using your funds in an effective manner.

2) What Marketing Resources Work

Are you able to scale marketing resources for your entire partner network? Well, that’s another post in itself. But, if you are using a partner demand center then what resources, that you have provided, are being used? Do you know what resources are right for your industry and partners? If so, what are producing results?

Bottom-line: Unless you have a system in place to see which of your resources or tactics are effective with your partner community, then you’ll continue to waste money in areas that do not produce ROI.

3) See KPIs

When time is of the essence, high level statistics are all you’re able to work with – so channel marketers will look at key performance indicators (KPIs) to give them a quick overview of how their program is performing. In some instances, you’ll want to dive in deeper to understand what is and what’s not working.

Bottom-line: Shared analytics provide an excellent way for channel marketers to see all statistics as well as those KPIs for measuring performance and growth.

Until you have these systems in place for your channel program, you’re not really able to understand your ROI. It also limits your ability to automate information sharing as a channel marketer to your channel partners.

We would love to know your thoughts on shared analytics. Would it benefit you? How else could it be used? Let us know by using the comments section below!

The post 3 Ways Shared Analytics Helps Gain Control & Visibility into Your Channel appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Today we would like to welcome Rick Wilson as our guest blogger. Rick is a distribution strategy expert, writer, educator, advisor, and speaker.

A new generation of marketing automation tools is not only improving the efficiency and effectiveness of established channel ecosystems, it’s creating fresh opportunities for long-frustrated manufacturers to re-think how they go to market, and put in place higher-performing distribution channel structures without sacrificing cost or profitability gains.

Let’s consider the once mature analog circuit market that is experiencing a renaissance in growth as a new generation of smaller industrial and medical device makers seek out new chip components for their innovative products.  Like many markets in the current environment, the routes-to-market for analog chips are highly consolidated around a small handful of low-cost national distributors with little capacity or incentive to provide hands-on, high-touch product expertise and customer assistance to these smaller customers.

The information required by smaller customers is relegated instead to online ‘data sheets’ of technical specifications. But after years of focus on digital chip technology, current device development engineers at small- to mid-sized manufacturing customers lack a deep understanding of analog technology just as they find themselves buried under a long-tail avalanche of technical promotional materials.

This customer knowledge gap means most product and purchasing engineers at smaller manufacturers simply default to familiar legacy brands or suffer through costly trial-and-error component selection. For them, the analog chip supply chain is cumbersome, risky, time consuming and inadequate. What they crave instead is a more effective way to tap into analog product engineering information, expertise and support with the same level of hands-on assistance that small, local value-added resellers have long provided in other technology markets.

Innovative circuit manufacturers investing in new analog product differentiation recognize this need to change the end-customer’s buying experience, but feel trapped by current large-scale, commoditized distribution channel options. Conventional wisdom has long held that the demand creation capacity and competence a more fragmented network of locally-based, high-touch distribution channel partners would provide to smaller customers is simply unaffordable and a strategic non-starter. While not the whole story, today’s new Marketing Automation solutions are a big part of how a forward-looking chip manufacturer looking to change the rules of engagement could streamline the economics of complex information dissemination through a new system of smaller, more local distribution channel partners.

Critical application- and vertical-market specific technical content, along with promotional campaign design and structuring would still be centralized at the manufacturer for low-cost development. But new promotion automation tools would be leveraged to certify and incentivize specific channel partners to match with each application, promote the marketing program itself for ease of channel adoption, and orchestrate end-customer online search optimization and retargeting mechanisms that drive new leads and incremental higher-margin demand opportunities to the best partner with the right services and expertise. In this new scenario, the follow-on promotional activity of an army of local channel partners would be leveraged to rapidly expand the chip manufacturer’s earned media clout in a confusing and crowded analog marketplace. Mindshare with channel partners would climb naturally as they experienced more profitable demand generation through the manufacturer’s marketing programs.

But best of all, end-customers would learn about and select the product manufacturer’s solutions in a more efficient and effective way. At the end of the day, smarter use of technology to create more customer-driven distribution will always win.

The post Marketing Automation Opens New Distribution Doors 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.

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.