The company has been named an overall leading provider of Through-Channel Marketing software. Zift Solutions has also earned recognition as the top provider for small businesses, meaning it is the easiest to do business with, is most likely to be recommended, and has the highest quality of support, amongst other factors. Zift’s newest recognition is as a Momentum leader, meaning that the company’s ZiftONE platform ranks in the top 25% of their category’s products by G2 users.

Within the Partner Management Software category, Zift Solutions has once again been recognized as an overall leader, a leader for enterprise companies, mid-market companies, and small businesses. Zift also earned a badge for being a Momentum leader in the PRM space. The company has received 20+ user reviews with an average 4.0-star rating.

“Our ongoing market expansion and the increasing adoption of our ZiftONE platform by numerous companies have led to the continued positive recognition by G2,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “We extend our gratitude to the users of ZiftONE for their unwavering support and valuable feedback as we continue to provide the leading PRM and TCMA applications.”

Zift Solutions is the only product in its market to be built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform provides its global customer base with top-to-bottom funnel management that aligns channel sales, marketing, and enablement around growth. Customers include Dell, Cisco, Nutanix, and more. To learn more about Zift Solutions and ZiftONE, inquiries can be directed to this contact page.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry and fueled by the recent $70M capital investment by Investcorp, Zift has been named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Zift Solutions Featured in G2 Summer 2023 Reports appeared first on Zift Solutions.

In a 2022 webinar between Zift and Dell Technologies’ Sarah Locke, Global Marketing & OEM Partner lead for Social Media, Locke provided general best practices to follow for through- and to-partner social media engagement. She also shares what to consider when building out a social media strategy for channel partners. Today, we’re revisiting Locke’s info-rich webinar and providing an overview of partner engagement how-to’s.

How to drive channel partner engagement

Make engagement easy

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software, like ZiftONE, makes it easy to drive engagement with channel marketing functionality. Especially with Zift, channel programs can access a centralized platform for more streamlined communication. Share information quickly with partners and filter by partner type to put the right content in front of the right people – all at the right time. Targeted and timely content will be more likely to reach the right type of partner, which in turn makes them more likely to engage with what you’ve shared!

Offer training or guidance

As the saying goes, teach a partner to fish and they’re fed for a lifetime. No partner can tap into their full engagement potential without first gaining access to crucial training. Zift’s Channel Learning capabilities put the power in partners’ hands through a Learning Management System (LMS). Training can be delivered via LMS to provide educational experiences based on partner tier or organization role. Create quizzes or courses, then monitor your partners’ progress to see what information they’re really taking with them. Channel Account Managers (CAMs) and Partner Marketing Managers (PMMs) should also be trained to give partners what they need. An educated partner is one who knows what you’re talking about, and will then go on to share your messaging.

Align social posts with active campaigns

Meet your partners where they already are by identifying their active campaigns. What topics or themes are they working on for you? By aligning social posts with these topics of conversation, your content not only seems more purposeful but also will aid in partner engagement.  

Partner engagement extra credit

Do you want to get an A+ in equipping your partners and enabling engagement? Locke goes on to encourage these additional tips to set them up for success:

• Show partners how to build a strategy and plan
• Show them how to use popular platforms like Twitter
• Show them what engagement means to you
• Show them how to listen to their prospects and customers
• Engage with your partners’ posts
• Involve your employees in their posts and content

What to consider when building a channel social strategy

Know your audience

It’s likely that some – or all – of your partners will fit into one of three approaches to social media:

1. They’re intimidated or confused by it
2. They aren’t even sure what social is or how it can help them
3. They’re busy and confident in what they’re already doing… and want to be left alone!

By understanding these three “partner types”, you can navigate mindsets and build a social strategy accordingly. Locke says that she primarily focuses on the first two audience types since they are most likely to want (and receive) guidance. 

Show partners how you do it

For channel partners who are confused by social media or don’t know what it is, simply showing them what you know can be the most helpful place to start. Locke takes 15 minutes each morning to review social media platforms for anything she may have missed from the night before. Setting up a Google Meets or Zoom call would be a great way to walk partners through the basics of social media platforms, their notifications, and other functionality.

Explain the ROI 

For partner type #2, they will want to know that social media engagement leads to ROI. It can be tough to prove this, but a good way to do so is through transparent relationships. Establish a strong relationship with partners that is built on trust and honesty. Yes, this takes time. It’s well worth it, though, when your partners trust you and hear it from you that social media engagement is worthwhile.

Reach as many partners as possible

With ZiftONE, syndicate partner content with the click of a button so that you can reach as many people as possible. This makes it easy to write content on behalf of partners, schedule the content, and share a variety of information (industry news, product information, and so forth) through their accounts. You can even place hashtags in the content, so you know your partners’ post will have the appropriate reach. Outside of content syndication, your own employees can become your social advocates – as can your corporate accounts. Tap into the power of employees and corporate accounts to talk to partners and support their efforts.

Ready for more?

For more social media strategy and tips, be sure to follow Sarah on these platforms:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Social4Sarah
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlocke/

The post How to (Truly) Drive Channel Partner Engagement Through Social Posts appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Giulia explained that Rockwell’s customers are engaged by technology partners, digital partners, distributors, and more. Her webinar kicked off by sharing the ZiftONE benefits that have been most critical to engaging one particular partner type –  distributors:

Alignment

By aligning Rockwell’s Sales and Marketing teams, the company promotes the same things at the same time. Giulia shared that Rockwell has seen an increase in demand and accelerated sales conversations as a result. ZiftONE’s alignment means that users can gain:

• Increased visibility into pipeline data, as well as the ability to take actionable insights away.
• The achievement – and maintenance – of data hygiene.
• Easy content sharing that partners need in a single platform.
• The ability to see where leads are going, enabling users to then respond accordingly.

Brand Messaging

ZiftONE makes it easy for a consistent, branded voice to be displayed across all types of content. In turn, this demonstrates the value of the partnership between Rockwell and its distributor teams. ZiftONE users love that its channel marketing functionality leads to:

• Accelerated rollouts and maintenance of partner engagement through the fast-tracking of content uploading and updating.
• Access to an easy-to-use, data-rich, continuously updated Partner Portal.
• A consistent competitive edge against others battling for the same partner mindshare.

Time Savings

Self-service content and campaigns within ZiftONE are not only easy to find, but they’re easy to use. This means that distributors spend less time recreating Rockwell’s content and more time making sales. Measurable time savings come from: 

• Highly targeted single-touch or multi-touch campaigns that can be tracked, measured, and adapted on-the-fly based on prospect responses.
• The ability to demonstrate precisely how your marketing activities link to deals through ZiftONE’s Deal Attribution reporting.

Enablement

Lastly, Giulia explained that Zift’s technology helps their distributors become more effective marketers. A single portal for digital marketing campaigns, execution, and analysis means that sales are made more effectively. By relying on Zift, users get exactly what they need to drive revenue through the channel, manage partner pipelines, execute field strategies, prep sales reports, and more:

• Activate partners by ensuring access to the right product portfolio information at the right time in the right way.
• Equip your Partner Account Managers (PAMs) and Channel Account Managers (CAMs) with real-time data that enables them to invest more time collaborating and co-selling with partners who are trending behind established targets.
• Make the most of quarterly business reviews (QBRs) with partners to shine a spotlight on what’s working — and point the right resources (timely buyer feedback, new strategies, additional support, etc.) to what’s not.
• Connect with partners’ CRM systems to access valuable end-to-end insights from deal registration to close.

Thank you to Giulia for presenting this info-rich webinar on Rockwell’s wins from using ZiftONE. If you’d like to follow Giulia and Rockwell, check out the following pages:

• Giulia Barazzutti’s LinkedIn
• Rockwell Automation’s LinkedIn
• Rockwell Automation

The post How to Increase Partner Engagement with ZiftONE appeared first on Zift Solutions.

D’Angelo has more than 20 years of experience in global channel sales, advancing industry-recognized channel teams, sales results, and partner programs for fast-growth companies in both the networking and security space. Most recently, Anthony served as the Global Channel Chief for Cato Networks, where he built a world-class channel team and more than tripled channel-led sales results. Prior to his position at Cato Networks, he was the Director of Global SD-WAN Partner Sales at Cisco Systems, where he oversaw partner sales for Cisco’s SD-WAN product line.

“Our entire organization is excited to have Anthony join the team,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “His extensive experience in building and leading high-performing channel teams will be invaluable as we continue to help our customers achieve their channel marketing and sales goals.”

 “I’m thrilled to be joining the amazing team at Zift Solutions. As a Channel Chief, I know firsthand how important a well-designed and fully utilized PRM can be,” said D’Angelo. “As a leader in the space, ZiftONE helps businesses increase revenue and improve productivity, ultimately leading to sustained growth and success. It has always been my go-to PRM and I am excited to work with clients to ensure they get the very best results with Zift Solutions.”

D’Angelo’s appointment as the Head of Customer Growth comes at a time when the company is experiencing rapid growth and expanding its customer base. His passion for enhancing customer experience will undoubtedly bring significant value to the company’s partner management and marketing automation solutions.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry and fueled by the recent $70M capital investment by Investcorp, Zift has been named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Channel Chief Anthony D’Angelo Hired at Zift Solutions as Head of Customer Growth appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Hey, Jenine! Thank you for stopping by our Employee Spotlight series. To get started, can you tell our readers about what you do here at Zift?

Thanks for taking the time! I’m excited. I create content for both Zift and our clients. I help make sure that everything goes well as far as management coming up with new, different ways to use social media.

Yes! I know I always appreciate the beautiful videos you create for ZiftONE.

Thank you so much. You know, I have fun being creative. I love the fact that Zift allows me to create.

While we’re on that topic, I was wondering if you could share a recent project you’ve worked on and are especially proud of.

Yeah, so right now my manager Ben and I are working on a project that utilizes animated GIFs for social media posts. The goal is to help our clients determine whether GIFs result in a higher click-thru rate for their content. Ultimately, this will help clients make the most of their Service Points so that when we are curating content for them, we can not only guarantee content that works but guarantee content that is actually generating ROI. I’m trying to do my part to research GIFs right now, then moving forward we can create optimal social media processes.

Love it! That fits perfectly with my last question, actually. As you know, ZIft is always focused on giving our customers the best experience possible. Do you have any recent examples of something from your department that has been completed with customers top of mind? It sounds like that GIF project is one great example.

I try to experiment a lot. You never know until you try, right? Recently we chose a handful of customers for a custom curation project over the course of three months. We wanted to see how partners utilized our content, how they customized the messaging, and what worked best in terms of engagement. This informed our approach to creating content for Zift clients. You know, I have my Master’s degree in new media journalism which is all about social media – so this is something I love!

The post Employee Spotlight: Jenine Williams appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Throughout his career, Mariano has held key positions in various industries, including serving as a management consultant for Caledon Consulting and as Customer Experience Design and Insight Director at the Royal Bank of Canada. As the founder and CEO of GetLift Agency, he established one of North America’s leading B2B and channel management agencies. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Services for Uberflip Software. He has more than two decades of experience scaling and transforming technology companies for customer success in mainstream markets.

“We are thrilled to welcome Cosmo Mariano to the Zift Solutions team,” said Gordon Rapkin, Chief Executive Officer. “His background in customer experience design and strategy will bring a fresh perspective to our customer journey and value delivery. Cosmo’s role, and the unity of a Customer Operations Team, is just one piece of our continuous commitment to serving ZiftONE customers.”

“I could not be more excited to be joining Zift,” Cosmo Mariano added. “As Chief Customer Officer, I look forward to applying my wide range of knowledge and experience to the ZiftONE user base as we continue to prioritize customer delight.”

Mariano’s initiatives have consistently delivered impressive results, increasing value for customers, employees, and stakeholders by focusing on outcomes. His leadership skills have led to accelerated transformation and exceptional project success rates. A lifelong learner, Mariano continually enhances his skills through various professional programs, like the Stanford Corporate Innovation Program, Product-Led Growth, and IDEO business design.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry and fueled by the recent $70M capital investment by Investcorp, Zift has been named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Zift Solutions Announces Cosmo Mariano as Company’s Chief Customer Officer appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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This is the fifth quarter in a row that Zift Solutions has been featured as the number-one provider of Through-Channel Marketing Software. The company has also earned recognition as the top relationship provider for small businesses, meaning it is the easiest to do business with, is most likely to be recommended, and has the highest quality of support, amongst other factors.

Within the Partner Management Software category, Zift has once again been recognized as a Leader in Small-Business, a Leader in Mid-Market, and an overall Leader. The company has received 20+ user reviews with an average 4.0-star rating.

“As we continue to expand our market presence and more companies adopt our ZiftONE platform, the G2 Spring reports are a recognition that our innovations are leading to very positive results for our customers and their partners,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “Thank you to ZiftONE’s users for their support and reviews. It is especially exciting to see our placement as the top relationship provider in Through-Channel Marketing Automation, proving that Zift’s team is always willing to go the extra mile for our customers.”

Zift Solutions is the only product in its market to be built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform provides its global customer base with top to bottom funnel management that aligns channel sales, marketing, and enablement around growth. Customers include Dell, Cisco, Nutanix, and more. To learn more about Zift Solutions and ZiftONE, inquiries can be directed to this contact page.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry and fueled by the recent $70M capital investment by Investcorp, Zift has been named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Zift Solutions Featured in G2 Spring 2023 Reports 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.

Research shows that gender-diverse teams offer companies improved problem-solving tools, broader thinking, and better solutions. This directly translates into outperforming competitors and higher earnings. It’s been a slow process, but women are now represented throughout the tech industry and act as role models and mentors to new generations of women entering the field. 

Zift Leaders Offer Advice and Support to Young Women in Tech

In celebration of International Women’s Day, March 8, Zift Solutions asked a few of our talented leaders, what career advice would you give your younger self? What advice do you have for women starting a career in IT?

On Finding Your Place

“Tap into as many people as possible to find out what they do and why they like it. Explore all the available possibilities. Believe it or not, some people are glad to help you as you start your career. Find those people and build relationships. Now more than ever, career opportunities are only limited by your imagination.”  

• Laura Crawford, Director of Human Resources

“There are three elements that will make you happy in your job. The company, do you like their vision, products, and culture? Do you trust your manager, and will you learn something valuable under their guidance? Do you like the job role, what you are doing every day? 

My advice to my younger self is if you have all three of those things, treasure them because they don’t come along often. If you have two things, work on making the third element better. If you have zero or only one of the above, don’t stay too long where you’re unhappy. There are always other opportunities.”

• Gwyn Edwards, Director of Partnerships and Alliances

“I would tell my younger self that there is more than one path to follow. Consider your priorities and find a career path that allows for a work/life balance. And travel first!”

• Lissa Johnson, Director of Customer Success Operations

On Success and Advancement 

“Don’t hold back because of a hypothetical situation. I passed on early career advancement opportunities because “I’m thinking about starting a family” or “I might need to care for a sick parent soon.”  

The farther along you are in your career, the more power you have over work-life challenges.  With advancement, you gain better control of your time. Push forward, and when a personal situation arises, you will have the flexibility to handle it.”

• Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer

“I’ve been privileged to work with some of the brightest minds on the planet even though my career took a completely different direction than what I envisioned in college. I’ve found IT and the channel space welcoming to women, and it’s an industry where you can succeed and grow in your career. 

My advice is to take chances. When you come to that fork in the road, taking the safe path isn’t always a bad choice, but the riskier option could take you somewhere better than you imagined.”

• Gwyn Edwards, Director of Partnerships and Alliances

“Embrace the possibility of failure. All success comes with risk. To win big, you must be willing to fail big. I’ve had lots of wins but also lots of failures. I learned from all of them, and I’m glad I took risks.”

• April Samuelson, Director of Product Marketing

On Skill-Building and Mentors

“Success in the IT channel means understanding the go-to-market realities of the business. The channel with the lowest cost-of-acquisition or cost-to-support wins. Make sure you have the financial analysis skills needed to understand channel performance vs. other routes to market. That may mean finding a mentor or filling skill gaps with additional training.”

• Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer 

“Picture yourself living your best life – what does that look like? Work is just one part of this picture. Create your plans in pencil and put your values in pen. Plans will change, and this is okay. People who love you want the best for you, so leave the fear of judgment behind. Live your values and if you find yourself in a situation that doesn’t align with them, get out the eraser and pencil in a new plan!”

• Laura Crawford, Director of Human Resources 

“The IT channel is a great place for women.  Gravitate towards other female leaders who encourage you and give you a path for growth.” 

• Lissa Johnson, Director of Customer Success Operations

Are you interested in pursuing a job with Zift? Click here to view open positions.

About International Women’s Day

The first official National Woman’s Day was held in New York City on February 28, 1909. Soon after, the concept of a “woman’s day” caught on in Europe. The first International Woman’s Day was held on March 19, 1911, drawing more than 1 million people to rallies worldwide. 

Today International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day is also a call to action for gender inclusion and equality.

Many organizations and people celebrate IWD by:

• Celebrating women’s achievements
• Raising awareness about women’s equality
• Lobbying for accelerated gender parity
• Fundraising for female-focused charities

Learn more about IWD on the official website: https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

The post International Women’s Day: Career Advice to Our Younger Selves appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions’ award-winning ZiftONE software delivers a comprehensive, modern platform that aligns channel marketing, channel sales, and channel operations. ZiftONE’s customers consist of national and international brands with renowned channel programs. Its customers are served from three offices: Oxford, UK, Hoboken, New Jersey, and Cary, North Carolina.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Investcorp Technology Partners as we enter this next stage of growth,” said Gordon Rapkin, Chief Executive Officer of Zift Solutions. “Investcorp demonstrated a strong understanding of our business and the potential of the markets we serve. They are the right partner to support our international expansion given their global expertise. We look forward to working with Investcorp to continue our growth journey and capitalize on the fast-growing channel technology sector, as well as on the value it provides in helping organizations scale their own growth.”

ITP’s investment will help accelerate Zift’s go-to-market strategy, continue expansion into international markets, and further support the company’s growth. ITP has established a market-leading position of investing in lower mid-market technology companies with a specific focus on Software, Data / Analytics, Cyber Security, and Fintech. The investment in Zift represents the second investment from ITP’s global fund, Investcorp Technology Partners V.

“Building and growing an effective channel program that engages partners is a critical, constant challenge for channel leaders,” added Andy Drummond, Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer for Zift Solutions. “There is enormous potential in channel technology to meet these needs. We are excited to have the support of Investcorp as we deliver additional innovation and enhanced services to move the market forward.”

“Our investment in Zift aligns with ITP’s mission to support high-growth companies with proven products and end markets,” said Gilbert Kamieniecky, Head of ITP. “Zift’s solutions help to solve an increasingly complex issue for marketing and sales-driven businesses, making relationship management simpler for companies across industries. We’re excited to be partnering with Zift and helping the Zift team take the business to the next level.”

“Investcorp Technology Partners is pleased to be investing in Zift,” stated Julian Bennet, Managing Director, ITP. “Gordon Rapkin and the Zift Solutions team have shown a tried and tested method for partner relationship management, revolutionizing the way companies can manage their marketing data. We look forward to working with Zift on their further growth, both in the United States and in markets worldwide.”

Atlas Technology Group and Wyrick, Robbins, Yates, and Ponton served as advisors and counsel to Zift Solutions. This transaction is subject to customary regulatory requirements and is expected to close at the end of January.

About Zift Solutions 

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

About Investcorp

Investcorp is a global investment manager, specializing in alternative investments across private equity, real estate, credit, absolute return strategies, GP stakes, infrastructure, and insurance asset management. Since our inception in 1982, we have focused on generating attractive returns for our clients while creating long-term value in our investee companies and for our shareholders as a prudent and responsible investor.

We invest a meaningful portion of our own capital in products we offer to our clients, ensuring that our interests are aligned with our stakeholders, including the communities that we operate within, towards driving sustainable value creation. We take pride in partnering with our clients to deliver tailored solutions for their needs, utilizing a disciplined investment process, employing world-class talent and combining the resources of a global institution with an innovative, entrepreneurial approach. In January 2022, Investcorp issued its 2021 Responsible Business Report which outlines its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) highlights for 2021 and specific initiatives the Firm implemented to meet its goals: https://www.investcorp.com/esg/.

Investcorp has today 13 offices across the US, Europe, GCC and Asia, including India, China and Singapore. As of January 2023, Investcorp Group had US $50 billion in total AUM, including assets managed by third party managers, and employed approximately 510 people from 50 nationalities globally across its offices.

For further information, visit http://www.investcorp.com/ and follow us @Investcorp on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

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Here’s a quick recap:

• What is a Partner Ecosystem?
• Why Do Channel Partner Programs Need a Partner Ecosystem?
• What Types of Partners Exist in the Ecosystem?

Later in this piece we’ll discuss non-transacting partners’ role in the ecosystem and how they impact a partner program’s pre-sale and post-sale activities.

What is a Partner Ecosystem?

A partner ecosystem is a community of companies that play a role in delivering business outcomes to their customers. The ecosystem encompasses a range of pre-sale, sale and post-sale activities that extend far beyond just the transaction between a technology provider, sales partner and end customer.

Why Do Channel Partner Programs Need a Partner Ecosystem?

The survey results for our recent partner ecosystem blogs identified these key reasons programs should develop an ecosystem:

1. Partner Ecosystems Foster Faster & More Effective Co-Marketing & Co-Selling
2. Partner Ecosystems Present Another Route to Customers and More Sales
3. Partner Ecosystems Create More Complete Solutions Through Purpose-Built Integrations
4. Partner Ecosystems Integrate the Partner Program with the Provider Company
5. Partner Ecosystems Improve Partner Experience (PX)

What Types of Partners Exist in the Ecosystem?

There are six primary types of partnerships within a partner ecosystem, including:

• Technology Members – Also known as an integration partnership, a technology alliance partnership is the partnering company’s products integrated to deliver additional value to the customer. Companies pursue technology partnerships if their platforms benefit from the additional capabilities and features of the partners’ solutions.
• Strategic Alliances – Sometimes referred to as strategic partnerships, strategic alliances align the long-term goals of two or more companies. These are multi-department commitments with clearly articulated goals and investments for both organizations. Companies may enter these partnerships because they have the same end customers or plan to enter a new target vertical with complementary solutions.
• Business Channel Alliances – A channel alliance is an arrangement where a vendor engages a partner to resell, manage, and deliver the vendor’s product to market. The partner makes money through vendor referral fees, margins or commissions and by selling complementary services. The vendor benefits from the partners’ existing customer relationships and a faster go-to-market timeline. There are a few different types of business alliance partnerships, including:
  • Resellers
  • Value-added resellers (VARs)
  • Systems integrators (SIs)
  • Agency partners
  • Business process outsourcers (BPOs)
  • Managed service providers (MSPs)

• Transaction & Transaction-Assist Channels – These partnerships facilitate transactions between a vendor and an end customer. Unlike business alliances, these partners only facilitate the purchase in exchange for compensation.
• Influencers – Influencers refer to entities that “influence” the decision-making of an end customer to purchase a vendor solution but are not directly involved in the transaction. These partnerships are typically comprised of these companies:
  • Alliance partners
  • Consultants
  • Ambassadors
  • Advocates
  • Affiliates

• Retention Channels – Retention channels refer to partner companies who are involved in helping to retain the use of a tech vendor solution by proxy through the delivery of the partner company’s services. Companies that typically fit into retention channels include:
  • Digital agencies
  • Healthcare companies
  • Construction companies
  • Legal or compliance companies
  • Transport companies
  • Accounting and CPA companies
  • Management consultants and other professional services

The Role of Non-Transactional Partners

The non-transactional partners within an ecosystem are best looked at from a pre-sale and post-sale lens. They do impact vendor deals and generate and retain revenue, just not in the traditional sense that most partner programs are accustomed to. Channel companies following legacy models primarily centered solely around the transaction itself will need to incorporate non-transactional partners in the design of their programs.

Jay McBain, Chief Analyst for technology market analyst firm Canalys, described a trifurcated channel as part of his channel predictions for 2020 while at Forrester. The trifurcated channel broke down into three segments:

• Influencer channel → Pre-sale
• Transaction channel → Sale
• Retention channels → Post-sale

More than 80 percent of potential partners a program can attract will show up before or after the sale, so strictly transactional channel sales models must be abandoned for a company trying to maximize the ROI of their indirect sales initiatives.

Pre-sale activities are primarily conducted by an influencer channel which typically consists of affinity partners, referral agents, affiliates, advocates, ambassadors and alliances. News media, vendor rating systems and channel experts are significant influencers in partner ecosystems.

An example of an influencer channel partner would be a popular niche tech podcast that recommends or pushes a particular vendor’s solution to its listeners.

A second example would be a local business association or chamber of commerce that raises awareness about their member companies to each other in newsletters, events and other communications to promote collaboration and partnership.

Post-sale activities typically involve companies that are part of a retention channel which typically includes agencies, consultants, law firms, accountants and other types of professional services. These companies often make direct use of tech or software vendor products and, by extension, keep the vendor solution present in the client environment long after the initial transaction and implementation occurred.

A straightforward example of a retention channel partner is a marketing firm that helps ensure continued use and renewal of the HubSpot marketing automation platform.

Another would be an accounting firm that utilizes QuickBooks to handle their clients’ bookkeeping year after year.

Non-Transactional Partners Introduce Complexity to Program Fundamentals

Clearly, the ecosystem model has brought multiple new layers of complexity into partner programs that didn’t exist before.

For example, how do you compensate a retention channel partner versus an influencer channel partner on a long-term deal? Which partner ultimately had a more significant impact on your ROI? Looking at hard numbers would tell you over time that the retention partner is more impactful, but you possibly wouldn’t have the customer in the first place without the influencer partner. In a legacy transaction-oriented model, basic compensation questions like this are easier to answer.

Looking further upstream when marketing your solutions, which partners do you choose to invest MDF in? How do you stretch your existing budgets further when opening up your program to all these new partner types?

A Partner Ecosystem Needs Clear Data & Metrics to Determine ROI

What do all these new questions and complexity mean for your program? A greater emphasis on data, metrics and tracking of partner engagement and how they’ve affected a deal to determine revenue attribution and which partners to invest in long-term.

A partner relationship management software platform like ZiftONE^TM can help your program scale to handle a global partner ecosystem with all six partner types and give you the insight you need spanning the entire trifurcated channel model.

The post The Unsung Heroes of Partner Ecosystems: Non-Transactional Partners appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The post How Do Partner Programs Create High-Quality Channel Marketing Programs? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

This is the fourth quarter in a row that Zift has been featured as the number-one provider of Through-Channel Marketing. Within the Partner Management category, Zift has been recognized as a Leader in Small-Business, a Leader in Mid-Market, and has once again received 20+ user reviews with an average 4.0-star rating.

“We are honored to receive this recognition from G2 and our users,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “As we continue to innovate the ZiftONE product, we look to our customers to guide us to ensure that their needs are not just met but exceeded. Inclusion in the G2 Winter 2023 reports shows us that this is happening as intended.”

Zift Solutions is the only product in its market to be built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform provides its global customer base with top to bottom funnel management that aligns channel sales, marketing, and enablement around growth. Customers include Dell, Cisco, Nutanix, and more. To learn more about Zift Solutions and ZiftONE, inquiries can be directed to this contact page.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Zift Solutions Featured in G2 Winter 2023 Reports appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Zift Solutions’s CEO Gordon Rapkin was interviewed by the MarTech Outlook publication regarding ZiftONE’s innovative approach to Channel Marketing. His interview can be found in the latest print edition of MarTech Outlook’s Channel Marketing magazine.

“We created ZiftONE to work as a unified, comprehensive solution. Our objective is to enable marketers to do everything from demand generation, lead building, and deal management through the full range of marketing channels,” Rapkin shared in the interview. “[ZiftONE] also enables [users] to view their ROI, marketing activities, and business analytics from a single source.”

This acknowledgment from MarTech Outlook is one of many industry-wide recognitions that Zift Solutions has received this year. In 2022 alone, Zift has received a Tech Cares award from the national brand TrustRadius, has won a People’s Choice Stevie® Award from the American Business Awards®, and was presented with a Globee® Award in the Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Operations category.

“At the core of these awards and honors is Zift’s ongoing commitment to innovation,” says CEO Gordon Rapkin. “We are proud to receive recognition for our hard work. This is a sign of great things to come from Zift Solutions.”

More information on the Top Channel Marketing Solutions Provider award can be found at the MarTech Outlook website or at https://www.martechoutlook.com/.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions Named a Top Channel Marketing Solutions Provider in 2022 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Partner programs should consider using a PRM software platform to support their partner program for these key reasons:

1. A PRM Platform is a Single Source of Truth
2. A PRM Platform is the Path to Partner Program Scalability
3. PRM Software Protects Your Partner Program from Staff Turnover
4. PRM Software is Customizable to Fit Your Partner Program Model
5. Your CRM Software Can’t Take the Place of a PRM Platform
6. A PRM Platform Provides Indirect Sales Pipeline Visibility and More

1. A PRM Platform is a Single Source of Truth

A high-quality PRM is a foundation on which vendors can build their programs. Providers can use the PRM as the one-stop shop for partners to engage and do business, including:

• Deal registration
• Account management
• Training
• Collateral
• Demand-gen campaigns
• MDF
• Centralizing KPIs, partner data and administrative functions on a dashboard
• Enabling deal registration for partners to claim leads
• Processing and fulfilling orders
• Analyzing financial performance, such as detailed pricing and sales data
• Integrating with customer relationship management (CRM) software and popular third-party applications

PRM software streamlines and strengthens partner program business processes to deliver mutual sales growth for providers and their indirect selling partners by:

• Organizing and orchestrating data
• Storing and sharing assets
• Tracking indirect sales transactions
• Qualifying indirect sales partners for program incentives and promotions
• Facilitating ordering and provisioning of provider solutions to partner-sourced end customers

The best PRM software offers utility and convenience vital to partner engagement. Suppliers strive to be easy to do business with, so it’s imperative that they aggregate systems, tools and platforms into a single location, so partners don’t need to remember multiple URLs and logins.

The impact of the PRM extends beyond the partner program and represents your entire company to partners. The PRM effectively provides a baseline understanding to partners of how your program, products and company work. In the same way your website is the face of your business to end customers, your PRM is the face of your program to partners.

Not having a PRM is a competitive disadvantage in today’s marketplace. If you’ve not invested in a PRM, you risk looking “small,” especially if market-leading competitors have had them for several years. Appearing “small” and under-resourced brings up a host of uncomfortable questions from partners about your capacity to serve customers, the size of your staff, your geographical reach, the reality of your 24/7/365 support commitment and how you’re reliably tracking partner deals if no partner management system is in place.

2. A PRM Platform is the Path to Partner Program Scalability

Scaling a partner program in a post-Covid economic environment requires online and digitally focused methods for partners to engage with your program; PRM software makes scalability a reality.

With the rise of remote work and flexible work schedules, partners will require tools, like a self-service PRM, that fit their plans and priorities. As partners get busier and sign with more suppliers, they need the freedom to self-serve requests instantly. Partners want to access training, create marketing campaigns or co-branded collateral, and even see and manage their pipeline and booking reports at their own pace and schedule.

Competing in a digital-first selling environment is a crucial driver of PRM software use for partners. Marketing and demand-gen tools are in high demand and partners are turning to suppliers’ PRMs to execute campaigns.

Scalability is critical for partner programs, especially for partners selling volume-based services. Most partner programs aim to scale and recruit many partners to keep the pipeline full. There are some exceptions depending on vendor business models and target accounts, but generally, it’s a numbers game, especially since not all partners will be productive. You can’t scale at a reasonable pace to service hundreds or potentially thousands of partners without a PRM software platform to automate program processes for you.

3. PRM Software Protects Your Partner Program from Staff Turnover

The channel is rife with constant personnel turnover, especially with channel account managers switching companies every 18 months. While you want to replace these front-line positions as quickly as possible, 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.

4. PRM Software is Customizable to Fit Your Partner Program Model

Partner programs have various business models for all types of partners, some of which include:

• Affiliate Partners – Affiliate partners have cultivated access to an audience uniquely invested in a specific topic and follow them to understand and keep up to date with that subject. Alliance partners typically will earn commissions.
• Referral Partners – Referral partners typically send a prospective customer to a vendor and receive a one-time commission for each closed deal.
• Agent Partners – Agent partners receive recurring commissions for sold deals. They typically perform all sales and marketing functions while the vendor performs the deployment and provides the service to the end customer.
• Distributors – Distributors and TSBs aggregate partners for vendors and vendors for partners. This removes administrative headaches for vendors in managing with partners, and partners typically get higher compensation and greater protection than they would on their own.
• Value Added Resellers (VARs) – VARs, or solutions providers, get a vendor product at wholesale, add a profit margin and sell it to end customers with their value-added services or solutions over the top.
• Service Delivery Partners – A service delivery partner enhances the value of a vendor solution by providing presales consulting, installation and management of services to customize them to end customers’ unique needs.
• Technology Alliance Partners – Technology alliance partners offer complementary technology to the provider’s solution. This partnership combines two (or more) products or services as a solution for the end customer.
• Fulfillment Partners – Fulfillment partners help providers manage administrative and contractual needs of selling products at scale. These partners primarily manage order fulfillment of a high volume of transactions at a low rate.
• Cloud Service Providers – Cloud service providers offer an element of cloud computing (IaaS, SaaS or PaaS) through hosting a vendor solution in the cloud to improve speed, security, flexibility and other forms of optimization.
• Managed Service Providers (MSPs) – Managed service providers will proactively remotely manage end customer IT infrastructure, typically under a monthly or annual subscription model. MSPs frequently function as a form of outsourced IT and would layer a vendor solution into the tech stack they offer the end customer.
• White-label Resellers – Also called wholesale partners or private-label resellers, white-label resellers will take a wholesale provider solution and sell it to their customers as their own solution under their brand. White-label resellers typically encompass a partner profile of traditional resellers, VARs and MSPs – so they can fit into more than one partner type.
• Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) – OEMs embed provider products into their own solutions and sell them to end customers under their own brand, just like white-label partners.
• Global Systems Integrators (GSIs) – GSIs build computing systems by combining vendors’ hardware, software, networking, and storage products and solutions.
• Strategic Partners – Strategic partners will fit the role of multiple partner types listed above, but these will typically be partners that deliver the most revenue and provide the most direction and input to vendor strategies.

Quality PRMs can conform to several different partner program models. Some models, like wholesale programs, can’t function without a PRM system. In this example, a white-label partner needs to be able to order services at will and then immediately communicate timelines for deployment to an end customer as if it’s their service. Programs only achieve fast turnarounds at scale like that through the automation technology that PRM platforms provide.

5. Your CRM Software Can’t Take the Place of a PRM Platform

Suppliers may wonder why their company’s partner program can’t simply use their CRM to track deals and email to recruit and manage partners. The problem is that a CRM isn’t purpose-built for partners and is not on par with a PRM platform’s capabilities.

Proper PRM solutions will provide new partner recruitment, onboarding, enablement, communication, sales and marketing support, business management, incentives, demand generation, deal registration, content library and the data necessary to showcase which partners are leveraging the tools so you can adjust to ensure partners take the right actions at the correct times.

Your CRM allows your salespeople to manage their funnel, commissions and deals. PRM is for partners to manage their funnel and access marketing materials. They’re two completely different audiences with different aims.

6. A PRM Platform Provides Indirect Sales Pipeline Visibility and More

How do you determine whether your partner program is successful? There are many factors, but sales and pipeline are at the top of the list. However, partner programs face a high hurdle of tracking deals, proposals, prospects, leads and each stage of a sales funnel from hundreds or thousands of partners. Tasking channel managers to manually monitor and track these metrics isn’t efficient.

PRM software platforms are the key to providing your program with the information you need for proper sales and pipeline forecasting. PRMs are equipped with analytics dashboards and report generation functionality that makes it easy to gauge the success of your partner program. The PRM software delivers sales pipeline visibility across your partner base.

Plus, 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. These sales enablement resources can take months and tens of thousands of dollars to develop. The PRM can give you the visibility you need to see how your partners use them and determine whether there’s ROI on your efforts.

Below is a representation of reporting from the ZiftONE PRM platform:

What Are the Benefits of Using a PRM?

	Rapid Growth for Partners in Revenue Channels
	Increased Marketing Productivity
	Channel Activity Oversight with Tracking of All Metrics
	Real-Time Channel Partner Feedback
	Automation of Partner Recruitment, Onboarding, Training and Enablement
	Automated Lead Routing

The post Why Should Your Partner Program Use a PRM Platform? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The women on this year’s list lead from a variety of positions across the C-suite and beyond, from CEO to CISO and CHRO, to SVP and Director of Software Engineering. What they have in common is a demonstrated track record of success tackling the greatest challenges the industry has to offer. 

“It’s a true honor to be included on this list along with so many influential women in the SaaS space,” said Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer and recipient of The Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS of 2022 award. “I look forward to continuing to participate in this growing industry and nurturing the next generation of winners into 2023 and beyond.”

The software-as-a-service market continues to expand, with some expecting the global SaaS market to grow at a CAGR of 25.9% from $143.8 billion last year to a staggering $720.4 billion in 2028. More companies seeking to digitize more parts of their operations has led to stiffer competition between SaaS providers. 

The accomplished women on this year’s list have been instrumental in leading their companies to innovation and success in everything from document generation to enterprise resource planning, education administration, cybersecurity, and other software categories. Please join us in celebrating The Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS of 2022.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post CRO Heather Tenuto Named to the Top 50 Women Leaders in SaaS of 2022 List appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Hey, Laura! Thank you for stopping by our Employee Spotlight series. To get started, can you explain what Zift Solutions does?

Hey, Kelsey! I’m glad to. Zift Solutions has the people, places, and processes needed to deliver the best Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Channel Marketing Management software in the industry. Both Channel Marketing and Partner Relationship Management enable suppliers and partners to align on goals, communicate program progress, and effectively reach ROI goals.

Thanks for that. Can you tell our readers what your job entails?

As a Human Resources professional, you might expect me to say that I have a people-centered approach to my work. Really, I want to bring more than that to my day-to-day at Zift Solutions. What comes to mind is integrated balance: finding ways to bring Zift’s people and business together in harmony. Through fostering an environment where people can be their authentic selves and also find fulfillment, I help nurture employees who are proud of their contributions while simultaneously driving corporate goals.

As you know, Zift is always focused on lifting our employees up. Simply put, we want to be the best employer we can be. What do you think defines an organization as a top employer today?

When it comes to being a “top employer,” there are many lenses through which an organization can be measured: benefits and compensation, culture, diversity, trust, communication, etc. A metric that’s often overlooked is whether or not an employer can attract and retain engaged employees who feel deeply connected to their work. These are the companies that would correctly be identified as a top employer.

Here at Zift, it’s certainly exciting to win awards and receive recognition within the industry. What really highlights us as a top employer, though, is the employee feedback that we receive from our annual employee survey. We consistently receive survey results expressing how deeply our compassionate, supportive community is appreciated. Employees feel they’re living out a culture of respect, integrity, and fun. A leadership team that fosters transparent communication makes it easy for employees to connect their work to customer satisfaction and completed organizational goals. At the end of the day, wouldn’t a top employer be a place where people have fulfilling work, understand the value of what they’re doing, and work with people they genuinely enjoy?

Can you tell us about a recent initiative in the HR department that you’re most proud of?

We started a Professional Development Series a few months ago. This series consists of a voluntary lunch n’ learn that covers a variety of topics, including personal development, financial acumen, and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives. Hosting these types of sessions, thanks to the help of allocated Professional Development funds, shows employees we care about developing their professional and personal growth.

What is the next objective in Zift’s journey to improve the employee experience?

Our next objective is to develop action plans based on those employee survey results. We’ll use this direct feedback to improve our overall employee experience.

From an HR perspective, what is the biggest challenge facing Zift? How are you planning to overcome it?

I see us facing two primary challenges: 1) maintaining our company culture in a virtual world and 2) continuing to foster a culture of inclusivity as we bring in new talent. When it comes to overcoming these challenges, this isn’t going to be a situation where we just check a box and move on. Nurturing employees and company culture requires constant attention and fresh ideas. Right now, our Professional Development Series has helped keep the excitement going within the company. This was just one example of applying fresh ideas to the company. We have more work to do by tapping into our employees and employee survey results.

Going back to that concept of integrated balance, it’s all about listening to employees and engaging with them. This is how companies find solutions to challenges, like staying connected and effectively onboarding new employees in the virtual world.

The post Employee Spotlight: Laura Crawford appeared first on Zift Solutions.

What you may not know is that there are common best practices for launching these portals. By following a set of suggested best practices, suppliers can sell their products better and develop more productive partners. We’ve found that starting off on the right foot is more likely to lead to long-term portal success, so these best practices are especially important for teams getting started with a brand-new partner portal.

Below, we’ve rounded up eight best practices for both internal teams (that may include Partner Account Managers or Channel Account Managers) and partner teams to follow from the earliest days of portal implementation. 

For  internal teams:

• Develop a Clear Communication Plan
• Host a Launch Webinar
• Hold Office Hours

For partners:

• Follow a Communication Plan
• Host a Launch Webinar
• Create User Guides or Guided Tours
• Hold Office Hours
• Follow a 30/60/90-Day Onboarding Plan

Channel Partner Portal Best Practices: Internal Teams

Members of internal teams, whether they’re a Partner Account Manager, Partner Program Manager, or Channel Account Manager, need to understand the value that comes with a new partner portal. The more they’re able to learn about their portal, the more effectively they can facilitate the success of channel partners. Our suggested best practices will help internal teams become more successful communicators to partners and ensure a foundational knowledge of the portal.

Develop a Clear Communication Plan

Right off the bat, suppliers should communicate early and often with their entire organization on the value of a new portal. If you’ve moved from one partner portal to another, like ZiftONE, there should be clear change management information exchanged between all members of the team. Remember what they say: clear is kind! Clear communication and expectations for this new partner portal will hold everyone accountable to the same standards.

Host a Launch Webinar

Launch webinars should be set up for internal teams to provide an overview of the new portal. Ideally, this webinar would be a high-level tour that pieces together what lives in the portal–and where. Internal teams need to be educated on the key features of the partner portal and how they will impact day-to-day operations.

Helpful hint: If your internal team is going to be training partners on the portal, this is a great opportunity for providing training information.

Hold Office Hours

If you’re getting started with the ZiftONE portal, our team provides Zift-hosted Office Hours to answer questions and demonstrate product features. We suggest hosting these one-hour meetings on a regular cadence, whether that’s monthly or every other month, to make the most of your new partner portal. Suppliers can open Office Hours up to an unlimited number of internal team members.

Channel Partner Portal Best Practices: Partner-Facing

Similar to partner portal best practices for internal teams, our partner-facing best practices revolve around clear communication and knowledge transfers. While some of these suggested tips are specific to ZiftONE users, they all get down to the same idea: an enabled partner will do their job better than any other type of partner.

Follow a Communication Plan

Whether you’re 6-8 weeks into using your partner portal or at the earliest days of a portal launch, you should be communicating the value of a new portal with your partners. Within a communication plan, share:

• How the portal can be accessed
• What partner expectations are
• How to register new users

Don’t forget that you can use social media as means for promoting the new portal to partners! You can promote material that contains overall portal benefits–and for those in ZiftONE, your Service Points can be used for these types of to-partner communications.

Host a Launch Webinar

From the beginning of working in a new portal, you should be doing everything you can to get partners excited about their new work environment! A launch webinar is a perfect way to do this. Suppliers can utilize these to share important information on platform benefits, explain ease of use, and pass along tips for how to get started. ZiftONE Service Points can be used for a customer-hosted, Zift-led demo of the platform to take the work out of your hands.

Create User Guides/Guided Tours

As a supplier, your job is to make it as easy as possible for partners to get started with your new portal. A great way to do this is to create user guides or guided tours within the portal. Easy-to-digest materials will make using (and understanding!) the portal simple. While you could take matters into your own hands and create guided tours through a platform like Loom, ZiftONE customers can use their Service Points to have guided tours created for their teams.

Hold Office Hours

Just like we suggested for internal teams, Zift-hosted Office Hours are a great way to answer questions from your partners about their new portal. Partners can drop into these one-hour sessions hosted on a regular cadence to address platform-related questions on content or features.

Follow a 30/60/90-Day Onboarding Plan

Finally, setting up a 30/60/90-day onboarding plan for your partners to follow will continue the path to partner implementation and success. Partners will be more strongly equipped to explain the supplier’s value proposition and products to end customers. 

Ultimately, it’s a supplier’s job to educate partners on your company’s value proposition in an organized way through training courses, collateral that represents your brand and positioning, and portal pages that explain how to get the most out of their relationship with you. If these boxes are being checked and best practices are followed, you’re already on the right track.

Curious to learn more about how Zift Solutions can help you launch a successful partner portal? Contact a member of our team.

The post Best Practices for Launching Your Partner Portal appeared first on Zift Solutions.

bChannels understands the challenges facing partner and vendor ecosystems, acting as an extension of one’s team and connecting partners with customers. bChannels provides campaign guidance, alongside ZiftONE platform support and expertise, providing program optimization that helps simplify and accelerate campaign activities and generate the highest return on investment.

“As we renew our partnership with bChannels and The Channel Company, we look forward to a continued commitment to serving customers and their channel programs,” said Gwyn Edwards, Director of Partnerships and Alliances at Zift Solutions. “With the combination of bChannels’ marketing expertise and ZiftONE’s market-leading PRM capabilities, customers can be sure they are receiving best-in-class assistance in their channel efforts.”

“Our combined marketing expertise and partnership of over 10 years lets our joint customers remove administrative burdens allowing them to focus on strategy while extending reach and increasing partner engagement,” said Stephanie North, Global SVP of Agency Services at The Channel Company. “Together, we are focused on one thing: ensuring marketing dollars are spent on effective programs that help penetrate further into the market.”

To learn more about the partnership between bChannels and Zift Solutions, and discuss how you can make the most of it for your channel program, please contact Gwyn Edwards at the Zift Solutions website.

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About bChannels

bChannels is a global technology marketing agency with employees in every major region. Experts in to-partner and through-partner marketing, our focus is only on technology and only on channels, making us the choice of leading brands in the market to accelerate the growth of their partner revenues. Our channel experience is built over 22 years from a history of channel program design to today’s product offers. Our coverage is unique with partner marketing experts that provide local language, cultural and business understanding. Now as a part of The Channel Company, which is celebrating its 40th year, we continue to empower the growth and evolution of the technology industry through an unrivaled suite of innovative global marketing services: Events and Communities to foster business growth, Strategic Marketing and Insights to accelerate your time to market, Agency Services to transform your marketing strategy, and Editorial and Media to ensure you’re first to know about the latest technology channel news.

About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Zift Solutions Announces Partnership with bChannels to Further Drive Channel Success 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.

The post The Power of the Ecosystem in Your Channel Partner Program appeared first on Zift Solutions.

“Zift Solutions has earned a 2022 Tech Cares award for demonstrating a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility,” said Megan Headley, VP of Research at TrustRadius. “Zift is committed to ensuring a diverse and inclusive workplace and regularly sponsors organizations that work towards this goal. The company and its employees have also made consistent donations to help refugees from war-torn regions.”

“We work tirelessly to foster a supportive, positive workplace culture that puts social responsibility at the core of what we do. It is exciting to see fellow technology companies embrace these initiatives–and be recognized for their work,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “Thank you to TrustRadius and their 2022 Tech Cares Awards for featuring this important responsibility.”

To be accepted for the TrustRadius Tech Cares Award, each nominated organization had to be a B2B technology company that demonstrated impactful CSR initiatives in one of the following categories; volunteerism, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, charitable donations and fundraising, support for in-office and remote employees, or environmental sustainability initiatives. Everyone was welcome to nominate an organization for this award, including those who work for or with the company. All nominations were thoroughly vetted by the TrustRadius research team, and supporting proof was provided by the nominated.

At Zift Solutions, we’re proud of our Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives. This year we’ve implemented the Zift Diversity Committee and made commitments to supporting those affected by the war in Ukraine. For more information, please contact us at this page.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

About TrustRadius

TrustRadius is the most trusted research and review platform for business leaders to find and select the right software for their needs. Decision-makers across industries rely on verified, peer-based guidance and research from TrustRadius. Vendors engage and convert high-intent buyers by telling their unique story through rich reviews. Over 12 million visitors a year create and engage with high-quality review content and data on Trustradius.com. Headquartered in Austin, TX, TrustRadius was founded by successful entrepreneurs and is backed by Mayfield Fund, LiveOak Venture Partners, and Next Coast Ventures.

The post Zift Solutions Earns a 2022 Tech Cares Award From TrustRadius appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Zift Solutions was listed as the number one provider of Through-Channel Marketing. This is the third quarter in a row that Zift has received this ranking. Within the Partner Management category, Zift has been recognized as a Leader in Small-Business, a Leader in Mid-Market, and has once again received 20+ user reviews with an average 4.0-star rating.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be recognized by G2 as we continue to develop ZiftONE and prove ourselves as industry innovators,” said Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “Customer care is central to all that we do at Zift. We’re glad to see evidence that our continued innovation and attention to customers is paying off with supportive reviews and high category placement.”

Zift Solutions is the only product in its market that is built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform provides its global customer base with top to bottom funnel management that aligns channel sales, marketing, and enablement around growth. Customers include Dell, Cisco, Nutanix, and more. Recently, Zift announced its $16.5 investment funding from AshGrove Capital to continue to innovate the ZiftONE product.

To learn more about Zift Solutions and ZiftONE, inquiries can be directed to this contact page. Additionally, Zift will be attending The Channel Meet-Up, ChannelPro SMB Forum (Southwest), and Ascent Conference. Interested parties can stay up-to-date on Zift’s upcoming events at this page.

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit www.ziftsolutions.com.

The post Zift Solutions Named Industry Leader in G2 Fall 2022 Reports appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Originally Published: April 12, 2021

The best way for a supplier to waste time and money is to go through the extensive process of recruiting partners, then invest even more in onboarding those new partners, and then simply leave them to their own devices and hope for the best. Hope is definitely not a strategy!

What is a Channel Partner Engagement Strategy?

A channel partner engagement strategy is a plan to create a successful collaboration between vendor companies and their indirect sales partners that helps each organization achieve its revenue goals.

We’ve broken down how to create a channel partner engagement plan in 30, 60, and 90 days in one of our blogs here.

Why is Channel Partner Engagement Important?

For over forty years, suppliers have embraced the channel because it’s the most efficient way to reach the large audience they need to reach to be successful. This makes channel partners truly the supplier’s sales and marketing arm, an integral part of their company.

Partners, especially in the information technology and communications (ICT) channel, often can be the gatekeepers to the accounts that tech vendors want to serve. Seventy-three percent of all IT sales are indirect, according to IPED Consulting’s Channelytics. Engaging and partnering with an IT consultant can often be a requirement for serving the large enterprise you have set your sights on selling. In some ways, the partner themselves is really the primary decision-maker suppliers have to sell their solution to.

As Henry Ford, Peter Drucker, Thomas J. Watson, and others have said, “nothing happens until someone sells something.” This is why enthusiastically and effectively engaging and embracing channel partners is so critical to any supplier’s success. Channel partners must be managed just as you would any individual direct salesperson you might hire.

In fact, there’s even more to be gained from a new partner. The salesperson you hire may have an account base to bring with them when they come aboard, though they may be precluded from contacting them. Potentially, the partner has several existing account bases, as many as they have salespeople on staff. Properly motivated and effectively managed, those salespeople start selling for you much further along the sales cycle since they’ve already built relationships with those customers.

Great partners are more than just revenue producers. Closest to the customer, they’re often where your best ideas for new product applications, features, and improvements come from. Fully engaged, great partners help your company grow and evolve.

What to Consider When Creating a Channel Partner Engagement Strategy

Building excellent partner engagement involves more than creating a great relationship with a single point of contact. There are several relationships in multiple departments between vendors and partners which need to be cultivated, each of which contributes to greater success for all, including:

• Upper management must buy into the partnership enthusiastically for explosive growth to be possible. This may require getting a few quick wins accomplished early. Consider bringing highly qualified leads or even sales that your direct sales force closed for the new partner to deploy.
• Sales professionals can help you with those early wins. Make time to review their existing account base with each of them to uncover the best opportunities for quick closes. They know their customers. When they learn about your product, they’ll quickly connect it with those of their customers who would be most interested. While working with them, be sure to show them the money. Best to focus on their best margin opportunities, likely to be their own company’s services that surround and support your product.
• Technology services people are often the ultimate decision-makers in partner organizations regarding which products and external services are included in customer proposals. They can be your best advocates within the partner organization and are often overlooked by short-sighted suppliers. Salespeople also leverage the credibility of the pre-sales technical expert to help convince customers to go with their suggested solutions.
• Operations teams can be your biggest ally or your most significant impediment. The easier and more accessible you make it for them to assure proper configuration and accurate ordering of your products, the more they will smooth the path for you.

Having an ongoing engagement plan with each of these critical departments in your partner’s organization is essential. The channel manager’s primary responsibility is enablement. When sales teams feel confident in their ability to sell and professional services implements flawlessly with orders flowing easily through operations, executive management buy-in will skyrocket.

Other areas for partner programs to optimize for the highest level of partner engagement include:

• Partner Onboarding – Channel partner onboarding is a multi-step, months-long process to introduce and integrate new partners into your partner program. Your partner program onboarding is the first encounter your new partners have with your company after the sales process has ended and contracts have been signed. The quality of your onboarding process will determine whether they buy in to the competency of your organization or engage with a competitor selling a practically identical product. You can create a first-class onboarding experience by:
  • Establishing simple and repeatable processes that are consistent for each partner type you serve
  • Designating an employee in your organization as responsible for the partner’s entire onboarding process and to operate as a single point of contact for the partner company
  • Monitoring and tracking onboarding performance and feedback by gathering metrics and data from your partner relationship management software platform

• Partner Alignment – Depending on the types of solutions you sell, it can be difficult to recruit new partners, so oftentimes vendors can place unrealistic pressure on making each new partner accretive. This pressure is only justified if you have true goal alignment with your partner from the beginning. Take care to only allocate engagement resources to strategic partners who show clear signs of mutual investment in the partnership.Plus, be upfront about your solution strengths and weaknesses to your partners. Unless you’re selling an “all-in-one” set of solutions to encompass an entire enterprise IT environment, you can’t be everything to everyone. Give them critical information about your solution to communicate to end customers, including:
  • • Effective solution applications and use cases
    • Industry verticals for the best fit
    • Onboarding and deployment timelines
    • Customer resources and availability of support
    • Potential return on investment
    • Solution pricing

• Partner Incentives & Rewards – Top channel partner programs increase engagement by offering attractive incentives to partners beyond basic deal compensation, including:
  • Bonuses or discounts to increase margin for deal registration
  • SPIFFs on partner-sourced deals that meet certain parameters, like contract length and volume, or for bundling multiple services into a single deal
  • Quarterly and annual contests for valuable prizes and experiences for reaching sales targets
  • Partner awards programs to publicly recognize partner achievements
  • President’s Clubs to take advantage of exclusive exotic trips
  • Partner advisory board membership to influence the direction of the provider company
  • Market development funds (MDF) for reaching tiered revenue thresholds

• To-Partner Communications – Partner communications are vital to relationship development, trust-building, and revenue generation. Their purpose is to recruit, engage, enable and retain partners. Follow these best practices to optimize your communications:
  • Make to-partner communications about your partners instead of your company and products
  • Customize to-partner communications for partner types and titles
  • Be direct and to the point in to-partner communications
  • Be purposeful about the frequency and format of to-partner communications
  • Use multiple delivery channels for to-partner communications so partners can consume content where they prefer

• Competitive Intelligence – Partners have several vendors selling similar solutions knocking down their doors to access their customer bases. Keeping tabs on how the competition is compensating, incentivizing, enabling, and supporting their partners is key to competing and not losing the next big deal.

You Are Not an Infinite Resource

The continuing success of your channel managers rests in reminding them that they’re not infinitely elastic. That is, they can only manage a certain number of partners effectively. This depends upon many factors, including the complexity of your products, and is sometimes difficult to assess. The best first step is to understand which partners are truly partnering with you and which have simply signed up opportunistically for a single deal.

The Pareto Principle applies here. 80% of your success will come from less than 20% of your partners. How do you know which partners have the potential to be great and which don’t?

How to Measure Partner Engagement: 5 Metrics That Matter

There is a terrible tendency for channel managers to become “pipeline police” and partners resent it. When all they do is show up asking for an updated pipeline report, there’s no exchange of value between the two companies, and partners feel it.

Pipeline leads to the one empirical metric, the desired end result, which is always revenue. Even here, however, the metric must be treated conditionally:

1. Driven Revenue is not the same as “sales performance.” The category of “non-transacting partners” is becoming more popular. These are partners who have determined that product sales don’t fit their business model for a variety of reasons. The logistic overhead is too high. Extending capital is too risky. Product sale simply doesn’t fit their intended brand identity. These partners drive sales of a supplier’s product by proposing projects including them, but the actual sale is conducted by another company, perhaps a catalog fulfillment house or distributor.
2. Truly active pursuits should come onto your channel managers’ radar when they exceed 80% likelihood. The mistake many make is to track each and every suspect a partner has touched. That’s where the perception of “pipeline police” begins. You want to offer as much help and support as possible to deals that stand a very good chance of closing. Your deal registration program makes this substantially easier to track.
3. How much of your money are they spending? Or more precisely, how much are they taking advantage of the resources you make available? A partner who spends no market development funds is likely not marketing at all. A partner who never invites your channel manager or pre-sales specialists on joint customer calls shows no interest. It’s possible they’re as self-sufficient as they claim, but that sufficiency should show up in the number and quality of truly active pursuits they report.
4. Customer experience combines historical performance with current and anticipated future state observations. Since you and your partner are extensions of each other, it’s perfectly valid to ask customers, “how are we doing?” Craft your interactions to focus equally on the past, present, and future to get a more fully rounded picture of how well your partners represent and support your products.
5. Partner experience is every bit as important as customer or employee experience and requires measurement as such. With the high cost of acquisition for new partners, losing a quality partner is damaging on so many levels. Does the partner feel valued? Is your product a vital part of their brand? Are your people treating them respectfully? It takes so much to build a relationship, yet so little to damage one. Make sure your people know you’re measuring your partners’ evaluation of them.

“Partner” connotes a relationship, and relationships are built between people. Much of your analysis will never be empirical, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. Great partners seek suppliers whose channel managers truly manage the relationship and help them manage their own companies. These five metrics will help you anticipate challenges and manage expectations accordingly. Your channel management team knows intrinsically who your best partners are. They can feel it.

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Zift is honored to be ranked a leading provider of Partner Relationship Management by G2, the largest software marketplace with unbiased, validated buyer reviews.

With ZiftONE, you can align your channel marketing, sales, and operations like never before.

We’d be happy to show you how our platform and team can help your channel partner program. Contact our team to learn more today.

The post The 5 Partner Engagement Metrics That (Really) Matter appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Through Provider Locator, channel partners can contact approved agencies, technology partners, and service providers that have familiarity with a supplier’s corporate identity. By doing so, suppliers can trust that listed agencies will maintain a foundational understanding of their brand and of the market in which they work. 

Providers can now create their own comprehensive services profile to promote their offerings. In Provider Locator, partners can search for what they need within their geographical area and then connect with the providers that specialize in their language and business practices. Working directly within the supplier’s partner portal, partners can request services.  The supplier is able to track valuable information and data about how many inquiries (leads) are generated for the providers, as well as which partners are reaching out.

“As more global companies embrace partner ecosystems, they are presented with challenges connecting their transacting partners with the right resources–whether that’s marketing agencies, service providers, technology partners, or other companies that can help influence ultimate purchasing decisions,” Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions, said. “At Zift, we’ve recognized the need to support these companies as the definition of a partnership expands and partner programs grow into ecosystems on a global scale.” 

Provider Locator is available now as part of the ZiftONE solution. Current ZiftONE customers are encouraged to contact their Customer Success Manager (CSM) if they are interested in accessing this new feature. 

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About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post ZiftONE Provider Locator Connects Partners with the Right Resources appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The Channel Futures MSP Summit will be taking place in Orlando, Florida at the Caribe Royale hotel from September 13th to 16th. Their featured Women’s Leadership Summit, hosted in partnership with the Alliance of Channel Women, will be highlighting influential women leaders in the channel. Featured speakers will host sessions to provide insight into their careers, as well as to share how colleagues can continue to uplift women in the channel. 

CRO Heather Tenuto’s speaking opportunity will be focused on building channel leadership skills, particularly those related to financial matters. Attendees will leave the session with actionable insights for reading and understanding P&L statements. Tenuto’s speaking event will be taking place on Tuesday, September 13th from 1:45 PM to 2:20 PM.

“As a woman in the channel, sharpening my financial literacy skills has been the make-it-or-break-it key to my success,” said Heather Tenuto, Chief Revenue Officer at Zift Solutions. “I look forward to sharing information on how all members of the channel can begin speaking the language of business. Thank you to the Women’s Leadership Summit for providing the opportunity to speak on a subject so near to my work.” 

The Women’s Leadership Summit event is open to all people attending MSP Summit. Click here to register. For those who have not yet signed up for MSP Summit, head over to this webpage. 

About Heather Tenuto

Throughout her career, Heather Tenuto has helped tech companies accelerate revenue through both direct sales and channel partnerships. Her two passions come together in her role as Chief Revenue Officer at Zift Solutions, where her mission is to help companies achieve real channel success. Previously, Heather served as VP of SMB Sales and Indirect Channels at Office Depot, and Vice President of Channels at ShoreTel. Prior to ShoreTel’s acquisition of M5 Networks in 2012, she spent five years at the SaaS start-up in several roles leading sales and marketing efforts. Before that, Heather brought her innovative sales and education experience to businesses in industries including technology, manufacturing, retail, agriculture, and healthcare in both enablement and direct sales roles. Heather has a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University and a Masters of Arts from City University of New York.

About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions’ Heather Tenuto a Featured Speaker at MSP Summit Women’s Leadership Summit appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Each year, Channel Futures honors leaders within the IT channel who drive diversity, equity, and inclusion in their professional efforts. This year’s recognition comes after a thorough review by Channel Futures team members. To see the full list of honorees, review this DE&I gallery presented on the Channel Futures website. 

Demar Amacker has been with Zift Solutions since May 2021, when he started as the Director of Revenue Operations. In that time, Demar has been promoted to the Senior Director of Business Operations, where he reports directly to Zift’s Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer. Demar was named a Top 25 Revenue Operations Leader in the 2022 Heroes of RevOps Contest.  

“In the last four months alone, Demar has made tremendous strides leading Zift’s Diversity Committee as our company increases its efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Andy Drummond, CFO/COO at Zift Solutions. “We are thrilled to see his efforts recognized at the channel-wide level and look forward to seeing what the future holds for him.”

“It’s an honor to be included in this year’s DE&I 101 list,” added Demar Amacker. “As someone wholly committed to expanding efforts that support diversity in my professional and personal life, I look forward to continuing this work and sharing it within the channel.”

Zift Solutions sends a warm congratulations to all named recipients of this prestigious award.

About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions is the only Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) tool built as one to work as one. The company’s ZiftONE platform manages the flow from onboarding to enablement, lead generation to marketing, all the way through sales. Backed by the most experienced team in the industry, Zift was named the only leader in both Channel Marketing Automation and Partner Relationship Management by Forrester Research and a market leader in Partner Management Software and Through-Channel Marketing Software by G2. For more information, visit Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions’ Demar Amacker Named To 2022 Channel Futures DE&I 101 List appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions Receives $16.5 Million Growth Funding to Expand Market Leadership appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Are you ready to reduce complexity with a seamless Partner Relationship Management experience?

With the Zift Solutions and Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration, companies with channel partner programs can now easily manage their data between two platforms. Channel sales leaders, marketing leaders, and administrators can all expect to find a simpler user experience that enables partner and deal management in one place.

This solution offers the ZiftONE features customers know and love: a hyper-personalized, easy-to-use partner portal, through-partner marketing, partner enablement, and much more.

With ZiftONE for Dynamics 365, you get an app that is preconfigured and reduces complexity. The integration will automatically update as new features are added to ZiftONE, offering a seamless experience.

Now, you can:

• Manage data and deals in Dynamics 365.
• Make the most of turnkey installations to map ZiftONE fields to Dynamics 365 fields.
• Manage partner roles and groups in Dynamics 365.
• Filter your view in Dynamics 365 to show only your partners.
• Grow your partner program.
• Manage your partners–better than ever.

Check out the full benefits of ZiftONE for Dynamics 365 on this page.

The post ZiftONE + Dynamics 365: Streamline Your Marketing Efforts appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Originally Published: September 21, 2021

When you start to build out a channel program for your business, it’s crucial to understand each part of the process. There’s no such thing as a bad question at this stage. For example, many channel newbies may wonder about Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software and how it comes into play.

What is Partner Relationship Management Software?

According to Channel Mechanics, a PRM is:

A combination of software, methodologies, best practices, templates, and workflows that manage and automate the business processes and relationships between companies and their channel partners. Some refer to PRM as Channel Management or Channel Automation software.

That’s a succinct definition for PRM software, but let’s flesh this out further:

The best PRM software platforms aim to drive mutual sales growth for suppliers and their indirect selling partners by:

• Organizing and orchestrating data
• Storing and sharing assets
• Tracking indirect sales transactions
• Qualifying indirect sales partners for program incentives and promotions
• Facilitating ordering and provisioning of provider solutions to partner-sourced end customers

Typical capabilities of PRM tools include:

• Storing shared resources in a content management system (CMS)
• Integrating with customer relationship management (CRM) software and popular third-party applications
• Distributing provider-sourced and partner-sourced leads
• Tracking allocation and use of marketing development funds (MDF)
• Tracking and attributing promotions for select partners, partner types, and product lines
• Analyzing financial performance, such as detailed pricing and sales data
• Housing a library of partner sales and marketing materials
• Centralizing KPIs, partner data, and administrative functions on a dashboard
• Enabling deal registration for partners to claim leads
• Training and certification on how to sell, order, provision, and procure provider services
• Processing and fulfilling orders

PRM Software is Not the Same as CRM Software

Your company’s partner relationship management (PRM) software and customer relationship management (CRM) software are not interchangeable platforms in your tech stack.

CRM is a technology platform meant for managing your organization’s relationships and interactions with existing and prospective end customers. It assists with contact management, sales management, the productivity of individual salespeople, commissioning enterprisewide, and more.

Make no mistake, a CRM platform is a mission-critical tool for every business but doesn’t have the functionality of a PRM platform. A high-quality PRM enables vendors to automate and scale the following functions:

• recruiting and onboarding new partners
• enabling existing partners through communications, sales, and partner marketing support
• qualifying and registering partner deals and incentives

While your CRM and PRM are separate systems, they are complementary and should be integrated, so vital sales data from the CRM connects and feeds into the PRM – giving your company a complete picture of your partner program’s return on investment (ROI).

ZiftONE^TM, for instance, integrates with leading CRMs such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365, which was just announced in June 2022.

4 Pricing Considerations When Selecting PRM Software

One of the first questions most PRM buyers ask is, “How much is this going to cost?” This question has a complicated answer, but we’re going to share some guidelines for considering its ultimate cost.

Channel programs come in all shapes and sizes, so your approach to managing your partner community may differ greatly from another supplier’s approach. Accordingly, a PRM isn’t a “one size fits all” buying decision. Most channel programs start out small with only a handful of partners and an expectation of growth. At this stage, most partner programs can be managed using existing assets, such as a website, spreadsheets, and a CRM. There’s no need to think about investing in a PRM if your existing tools and a little manual effort will get the job done.

A rule of thumb is to start thinking about a PRM platform when you have more partners than fill up a single page of a spreadsheet, or usually about 20 partners. Once you get past a handful of relationships, partner management becomes more complex. To do a good job of it, you’ll need a system to automate most of the work.

PRM Software Considerations

1. What Type of Channel Partner Program Are You Managing?

Is your partner program supporting resellers, referral partners, or services providers? Who will generate the leads – you or your partners? This will determine if you need marketing automation, lead distribution, and/or lead registration. Will your partners facilitate transactions, or will they refer opportunities to your sales team? The answer to this question will establish your need for price books, deal registration, and perhaps special pricing and configuration support.

2. What is The Scale of Your Program?

How many partners are in your program? Is it tens, hundreds or thousands of partners? Perhaps more importantly, what do you anticipate it their numbers will be in the next few years? Investing in a PRM is a big decision, and you want to ensure that whatever system you choose will support your needs today and in the future. Typical enterprise software replacement cycles are between four and seven years, so your planning ought to go out at least that far. You don’t want to make a cost-based decision today that will force you into a costly replacement decision just when your program starts to grow.

3. What is The Geographic Scope of Your Channel Partner Program?

Where are your partners and their customers located? Will your need to support multiple languages and/or multiple currencies? Will you manage geographic regions with separate teams, and will they have different partner requirements and tiering? Will the goods and services vary by geographic area? Will you need to segment your content and marketing materials by geo? All of these considerations go into evaluating PRM software. Even a small channel program can face these complexities, forcing you to consider PRM platforms that would otherwise be aimed at much larger organizations.

4. What is The Engagement Level of Your Partners and The Scale of Business They Will Be Transacting with You?

The level of partner engagement and revenue contribution directly impacts your PRM journey. Some programs have lots of partners that rarely interact with their suppliers – sometimes called the “long tail.” Others have lots of partners that are active, but the value of their activity is low – perhaps they refer to small accounts. The average selling price for your offering and the average contribution from your channel partners will influence your level of investment in a PRM and the sophistication of your platform needs.

Most programs generate 80% of their revenue from about 20% of their partners. These are actively engaged partners with the scale to move the needle. The other 80% of the community has a hit-or-miss track record. Are you buying a PRM to support the revenue-producing 20%, or do you plan to use your new platform to more efficiently engage the 80% or both? The implication of the answer to this question will impact how you cost-justify PRM software licensing fees.

Outside of pricing considerations, you’ll need to evaluate the different types of PRMs available to you. Stay tuned for our next piece on the range of PRMs on the market. Gathering a holistic view of PRM tools will help you determine the best system for your unique needs.

Zift is honored to be ranked a leading provider of Partner Relationship Management by G2, the largest software marketplace with unbiased, validated buyer reviews.

With ZiftONE, you can align your channel marketing, sales, and operations like never before.

We’d be happy to show you how our platform and team can help your channel partner program. Contact our team to learn more today.

The post What is Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Software? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

That may leave you wondering what to do about the other 80% of your channel partners. Do you invest more time in them? Do you cut them from your program? Do you assign particularly persuasive agents to seek them out and re-ignite their enthusiasm?

Which Inactive Channel Partners Are Still Worth Your Time?

Channel partners who haven’t been active with you for some time may be idle for any number of reasons:

1. They may have gone out of business
2. They may have been acquired
3. They may have changed their name
4. They may have gone to your competitor
5. They may be unaware of the opportunity you offer them

Do You Offer Your Channel Partners an Opportunity?

Fundamentally, the definition of “opportunity” has changed dramatically for channel partners. A few still call themselves “resellers” but many have commenced their transition in the direction of becoming a managed service provider (MSP).

• Some have successfully completed that transition and are running brilliant practices that sell and provide excellent services to a broad cross-section of businesses and other customers.
• Some are still taking training, hiring skilled people, and still developing their methodologies and their service catalogs.
• Some have had “MSP” stamped on their business cards and are trying to figure out what’s next.

The easiest way to determine which category each of your dormant partners fits into is to visit their websites. Those that are still highlighting their line card should likely be cut from your program unless they’re generating sales. 

It’s hard to identify an MSP in the middle, but when you’re looking at the website of a true expert MSP, you’ll know it. Most of their content is about their services or the great outcomes their clients enjoy. Most every paragraph begins with the customer, not themselves. They’re all about the customer, all about solutions, and all about value.

You Only Represent an Opportunity to Those Who Know Their Business

The partners you should invest time or effort in re-engaging with are high-quality service practices that build trust with their customers before they build anything else. You know you can feel good about having them represent your solutions.

Learn Their Language

Once you’ve identified partners who have successfully transitioned to MSP, look for those whose verticals are aligned with your products, or who feature products adjacent to yours. This will mean they have customers who would benefit from your products.

Next, speak to them about the wide variety of services they can wrap around your products. Ideally, the service opportunities that are really meaningful to them include:

• The ability to consult on your products
• The ability to design your products into their projects
• The ability to configure and provision services for your products
• The ability to deploy your products
• The ability to install, implement, and integrate your products
• The ability to train users on the use of your products
• The ability to obtain service and support agreements for your products that generate monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Be sure to add the words “for a fee” to the end of each of these and, bingo, you’ve built a list of the opportunities your product represents to the right channel partners.

Your Path to Improved Product Sales is Paved with Channel Partner Services

Think about the relationship in the healthcare industry between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. For the most part, doctors are not actively selling pharmaceutical products. But they are prescribing the ones they prefer. That should be instructive to your effort to re-engage inactive partners. If you can convince them to configure your solution into their projects instead of your competitors, you can re-engage them and build great success together.

The post What Can Be Done to Activate Inactive Channel Partners? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

When you were recruiting your channel partner, the partner provided information that convinced you they would be a great sales resource. Now it’s up to you to ensure they’re equipped and prepared to “hit the ground running” as soon as possible. The more efficient your onboarding process is, the faster they will start creating revenue. The more thorough your onboarding process is, the greater the amount of revenue they’re likely to bring.

While onboarding a partner is similar to hiring a new employee, it’s important to remember that it’s more like hiring several employees at once. There will be salespeople, pre-sales support engineers, marketing people, technical people, back-office people, a whole new team. They need you to show them where everything is. Where can they get product information? Who can they work with to discuss competitive pricing situations? How do they get questions answered?

Even before that, they need to know what’s expected of them, and what they can expect from you.

Understanding the Partner Onboarding Process 

The plan begins with a frank discussion of expectations. You and your partner are best served when this discussion focuses on your existing account base. You’ll also be helped when you identify which clients are interested in your product and/or services. There are two key reasons for this:

1. One of your key objectives should be to help your partner taste success as early as possible and then continue succeeding going forward.
2. It really is at least five times easier to sell to an existing client than it is to create a new one. You start more than halfway through a typical sales process. You’ve already met the client, gotten to know them, understand their needs, and you’ve even gained their confidence. All that’s left is to present a new solution, overcome objections, and close. 

What Really Matters in Partner Onboarding

In today’s channel, it’s just as important to train the technical team as it is to train and motivate sales. Your channel partner may have few expectations of margin production from your products. They know their competition and that some competitors will discount down to basis points.

Their own services, especially ongoing managed services, are where your partner really makes their money. The more you prepare them to configure, provision, install, deploy, and support your solutions, the more money they can make, and the more enthusiastic a partner they will become. The more your Partner Program supports their servicing efforts the more they will value your partnership.

It’s also to be sure you’ve made yourself as easy as possible to do business with. Purchasing, accounts payable, and other back-office departments should be very clear about how to process transactions with you. Don’t surprise your partners with hidden return or exchange policies. Document your terms and conditions, as well as present them upfront during onboarding.

Done right, effective partner onboarding leaves your new partner feeling like a true partner in every sense of the word. They are part of your organization. You’re on their team. You have their back, and they’re going to enjoy tremendous success selling with you.

5 Partner Onboarding Best Practices from Real Channel Programs

Great partner programs come not only from vendors of all sizes. 

1. Putting a Value on Influence

First established in 1989, the Citrix partner program was among the first to include a referral program that actually paid partners for influencing a purchase decision even though the actual purchase went to a catalog or warehouse fulfillment seller. This recognition of the relationship between the expert partner and the ability to close deals has been practiced by many others since. It recognizes that the much lower overhead characteristic of distribution organizations makes it possible for them to easily and substantially underprice expert channel partners. 

2. Quick-Start Guide

Acumatica has made great strides in the ERP market in part because of the organized, disciplined process they have for partners. Their Quick-Start Guide provides concise step-by-step instructions in getting an Acumatica environment up quickly and running so partners can “start their development efforts in earnest.”

3. Predictable Fixed-Length Onboarding

Acronis describes theirs as “a 90-day step-by-step onboarding developed for your success. Partner care specialists will guide you through everything from enablement to launch and forward growth.” By clearly defining each step, they make the partner onboarding experience predictable and plannable.

4. Business Training and Support Beyond Product

Recognizing that partners must be successful MSPs before they can be successful partners, Datto continuously provides MSP training, including the business, sales, marketing, and other aspects of running a successful MSP.

5. Supplier of Tools

Nintex began as a systems integrator. They quickly realized their intellectual property could be packaged as products and offered by other systems integrators. This rapidly transformed them into the Microsoft SharePoint tools and templates provider they are today. Taking the model a step further, they train their partners to use their products on behalf of end customers. While customers may never actually purchase licenses from Nintex, the partners make that investment and use the tools on behalf of their customers, creating a strong new revenue stream for themselves. More and more software providers are adopting this model and incorporating this into their onboarding processes.

More Onboarding Resources

Onboarding is the most critical step in the channel partner roadmap. For more information and insight into building superior onboarding programs, talk to your Zift Solutions representative or contact us at this link.

The post Ready to Move Past Recruitment? 5 Partner Onboarding Best Practices to Set Partners Up for Success appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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.

To-, through-, for-partner communications… In the world of channel marketing, there are so many ways to reach partners as a means of enabling engagement. 

You may already be familiar with some of these methods, but today we’re here to clarify what exactly to-partner communications means and why it matters. Better yet, keep reading for the recent ZiftONE features that can make improved to-partner comms as easy as pressing a button.

What Counts as To-Partner Communications?

To get started, let us clarify: to-partner communications is anything created and sent to sales partners. 

These can be created for a variety of reasons, including:

• Sales recruitment
• Sales enablement
• Sales retention
• Sales engagement

Remember that to-partner communications differ from through-partner communications with that one little word… “through.” Through-partner communications are designed to be passed through partners.

Typical to-partner communications include information like:

• Training
• Compensation and incentives
• Partner program benefits
• Industry updates
• Product information
• Partnership management meetings like channel program QBRs

To-Partner Communications: Why They Matter

To-partner communications matter because they are absolutely essential to engaging with channel partners. Yep, you heard that right: You can’t engage channel partners without adequate to-partner communications! You need to regularly be bringing partners to your portal for peak engagement.

To paint a clear picture, let’s consider the three biggest benefits of to-partner comms.

They build trust with your partners

As is true for all relationships, communication builds trust. You can’t create trust with your channel partners without communicating effectively. Effective to-partner communications should show that you understand your partners and the challenges they face, and are committed to helping them. Showing this, and actually backing it up in how you treat partners, is how you develop trusting relationships. 

They bridge the gap between partners, their organization, and yours

It’s likely that you already have plans in place to grow your partnerships. These plans depend on to-partner communications!

For example, say that you’re hosting a webinar for sales partners. Effective to-partner communications would close the gap between communicating when and where your webinar is being held, delivering content, and then following up afterward.

They generate revenue

Strong communication with channel partners means that you are more likely to successfully capture mindshare. By doing so, partnerships are more likely to be ROI positive.

Best Practices: To-Partner Communications

Remember, effective to-partner communications should follow nine general best practices:

1. Focus to-partner communications on your partners. (This should be a no-brainer, but remember your audience!)
2. Tailor to-partner communications specifically for partner types. The more granular, the better. Personalization in marketing typically pays off quite well.
3. Make to-partner communications succinct and purposeful. Get to the point! Your partners’ time is valuable, as is yours.
4. Consider the frequency of your communications. You don’t want to overwhelm partners with constant communication – but you want to give them enough to stay top of mind and ensure they have enough information to feel confident with your offerings.
5. Timing matters most. Consider when the best time to reach partners is – then send!
6. Play up the types of content you share. Variety is the spice of life.
7. Try to use new channels for delivering your content.
8. Measuring success is both an art and a science. This can be a hard won-battle that may need some finetuning.
9. When it comes to hard metrics, consider the usual suspects. Open rates, replies, etc. 

 

Get Started with To-Partner Communications Today

Creating successful to-partner communications doesn’t have to be hard. If you’re a ZiftONE customer, we have a couple of recent product updates that you can make the most of starting today.

To-Partner Emails and Pop Ups

Customers can now create emails to partners and add pop-up messages within their existing portals. Use drag and drop functionality to build partner-facing messages. To get to this feature, click “Emails and Pop-ups” on the Partner Management menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on the communication type that you’d like to build, then click edit under “Content” to begin building your message. Messages can be filtered to specific partner groups, so you can reach specific audiences.

 

In these messages, customers can add images, content blocks, and much more. Pre-made templates mean that your logo and footer are already loaded into emails. (All of this can be edited; just click the three dots on the main Emails & Pop-Ups menu!)

More information on our to-partner emails and pop ups feature can be found on this Product Update page.

Partner Portal Posts

This latest Zift feature enables dynamic content (like blog posts and product articles) to be added directly to partner portals. Better yet, Portal Posts mean you can create a searchable collection of stories, updates, and news articles.

This important to-partner communication addition places content directly in partners’ hands so they can know what’s happening at your company. As we’ve said, to-partner communications should be purposeful. Partner Portal Posts shares only the most relevant and timely content

To create a post, go to “Posts” on the Partner Portal menu within ZiftONE. You can drag the feature page “Portal Posts” into your site structure, then add posts in an existing page.

If you have any questions on how to use Portal Posts, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or check out our training video on Customer ONE.

For more information on general best practices for to-partner communications, check out our takeaway video:

The post Successful To-Partner Communications Are Easier Than You Think appeared first on Zift Solutions.

One question we frequently receive from our customers here at Zift?

“How do I create a partner engagement plan that works?”

Stakeholders at all levels of the channel have asked us this million-dollar question. As we’ve mentioned before, partner engagement results in stickier and more successful programs, so we know asking this question pays off!

Since more and more companies rely on their partners for indirect sales, having a partner engagement plan and strategy in place is crucial to ensure success. Additionally, partners and resellers usually have multiple suppliers. This makes it even more important for suppliers to establish an engagement plan to build partner loyalty.

When creating and executing a partner engagement plan, we’ve found that there are a few key tips to keep in mind.

8 Tips for Creating a Successful Partner Engagement Plan:

1. Build Strong Relationships

Building relationships is important in all aspects of life, both personally and professionally. When solid relationships are built, all involved parties achieve some level of satisfaction and value.

This is easier said than done; there are instances where a relationship is a one-way street and only one involved party is gaining value while the other is getting nothing. This concept also applies to suppliers and their channel partners. Treating channel partners as an extension of the supplier will only strengthen that relationship.

2. Develop Partner-friendly Programs and Content

Take some time to understand partners’ challenges and be sure to structure channel programs to address those challenges and needs. This will only help drive partners to sell the products and services to the end customer and increase ROI. 

If channel partners are not receiving relevant marketing materials from a supplier, focus will shift to a different supplier that is taking their needs into account.

3. Foster Consistent Communication

As in any relationship, fostering consistent communication is key. If partner outreach only happens when new content which they may or may not be interested in is available or out of the blue when announcing a new product, it is likely that the partner will brush it off or ignore it altogether. 

Keeping partners up to date on upcoming product releases or changes to existing products or solutions enables them to keep their customers up to date as well. 

Channel partners should be encouraged to: 

• stay current, 
• adopt new technology early, and 
• be fully supported to retain their reputation as collaborative trusted advisers.

4. Get Partner Buy-In

Show that you care and that you’re listening to their needs and challenges. Your partners are only as successful as the tools you make available to them, especially when implementing a partner engagement process. Pushing out a bunch of direct marketing materials might not be relevant to your partners. 

Partners take notice if you’re providing materials that don’t suit their needs. So if they notice that as a trend, the end goal of increasing sales for both parties won’t be met and partners will begin to lose trust. If partners have the opportunity to provide input, they will be more likely to participate in programs.

5. Get Channel Managers’ Buy-In

Channel managers play an integral role in providing partners with the tools and education they need to utilize marketing materials from the supplier. Demonstrate the value of programs to channel managers and provide them with the resources they can use with partners and resellers to keep partners engaged. The more program advocates, the better, and this will result in increased leads, more sales, and improved ROI.

6. Structure a Partner Enablement Framework

Enabling your channel partners goes hand-in-hand with engaging them. Without a well-designed partner enablement framework in place, any attempt to increase engagement with your partner community will fall short. Conversely, a solid partner enablement framework will result in:

• Shorter sales cycles
• Higher conversion rates
• Better quota attainment
• Accurate forecasts
• Scale inside the partner organization
• Lower partner attrition

What exactly does a high-quality partner enablement framework include? Key components of partner enablement include:

• Partner Training – Your partner onboarding process should include training to:
  • Demonstrate market demand and the problems your products solve
  • Identify the niches or vertical industries in which your products excel
  • Show how your product helps your partners’ customers
  • Remind the partner what they gain from selling your solution
  • Alert the partner to SPIFFS and end-customer promotions
  • Explain how partners can get sales support when needed

• Provider & Partner Goal Alignment – Identify your company’s ideal partner profile (IPP) and keep it in mind during partner recruitment, so that new partners are more likely to align with your company’s goals. Engaging a partner who has a fundamentally different business model or typically sells into verticals in which your solution is not a fit is a waste of time for both parties.

• Partner Incentives – Partner incentive programs are a critical part of partner engagement and enablement both in the short-term to jumpstart sales and also over the long-term to retain production. Incentive programs typically include:
  • SPIFFs on product sales
  • Bonuses on revenue milestones
  • Luxury rewards like trips and for sales performance
  • Public recognition through awards and exclusive membership in Presidents’ Clubs and partner advisory boards
• Sales & Marketing Collateral – Physical and digital materials that enable your partners to sell your solutions are critical to partner enablement. Not only does it give you control over the messaging, it’s also likely that your company has greater resources to create marketing materials than do your partners, who often have small or no marketing departments.

Partner enablement materials include:

• Informative Provider Website
• Sales or instructional videos and tutorials
• Product flyers and brochures
• Campaigns in a Box (CIBs) or Partner Marketing Kits (PMKs) comprised of:
  • Email Campaigns
  • Call Scripts
  • Voicemail Scripts
  • Blogs
  • LinkedIn Message Templates
  • Landing Pages
  • SMS Text Messages

• Ongoing Communications – Proactive communications with partners is your responsibility. Partners are juggling dozens of similar providers in the marketplace and don’t have time to reach out to you to see what your newest promotion is or if you fixed a hiccup in your customer onboarding process. You must tell them through regular communication, which may include:
  • Monthly Partner Newsletters
  • Product Bulletins
  • Promotional Email Campaigns
  • Channel-specific Social Channels
• Partner Enablement Software – Your partner program needs a scalable partner relationship management (PRM) platform to automate and manage partner enablement so that partner engagement — and your company’s revenue — skyrocket.

Download our one-pager on creating a repeatable partner enablement framework at the link below:

DOWNLOAD ONE-PAGER

7. Track & Measure Channel Partner Engagement

Your channel partner program will need a process for measuring partner engagement levels, so your team knows when to continue investing time with a partner and when to part ways. Common metrics to measure engagement include:

• Pipeline and revenue
  • Number of leads generated
  • Number of leads converted to prospects
  • Number of prospects converted to customers
• Participation in QBRs and planning meetings
• Portal and content use
  • Number of logins
  • Number of downloads
  • Number of deals registered in portal
  • Etc.
• Participation in training or certifications earned

8. Get in the Trenches to Sell With & For Your Partners

Your competition spares no expense to enable your partners to sell their solutions instead of yours. In fact, some partner programs take the responsibility of selling to end customers and are selling for their partners. They’ll go to market, get leads through account-based sales and marketing campaigns, and then hand them off to new partners or partners with whom they’d like to nurture relationships.

To compete with programs that turn the provider-partner dynamic on its head, you’re going to need to follow suit, even if you can only hand off leads to select partners that meet certain criteria or only a certain number of deals after onboarding.

Partner engagement is in large part about creating a trusted and loyal relationship between your company and your partners. There’s no more effective way to fast-track partner loyalty than sending deals their way, especially at the very beginning of the relationship.

Plus, these initial provider-led deals can serve as a valuable training exercise for new partners. Working side by side through the sales process on a lead you handed to the partner enables them to practice selling your solution with you. Then, you can take the training wheels off and let them start selling on their own after the first few deals have closed.

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Bottom line, partner engagement is essential to creating partner loyalty. Putting channel partners in a position where they can become experts on the suppliers’ products and solutions will enable them to go to market with confidence, build their sales funnel, increase revenue streams, and produce an overall increased ROI.

Ready to learn more about partner engagement?

Are you interested in reading more about this topic? Head over to the Channel Learning Center. Here you’ll find answers to your top questions related to partner engagement.

The post 8 Key Elements of a Successful Partner Engagement Plan appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Winners of the crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards, as well as all other winners in the 20^th ABAs, will be celebrated during a gala awards banquet on Monday, June 13 in New York City.

The People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products are a feature of The American Business Awards in which the general public can vote for their favorite new products and services of the year.  More than 46,000 votes were cast in people’s choice categories this year.  All new products and services nominated in the ABAs’ new product categories were included in people’s choice voting.

More than 3,700 nominations were submitted to this year’s American Business Awards for consideration in a wide range of categories, including New Product or Service of the Year, Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year, Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year, and Startup of the Year, among others.

In January, Zift announced the launch of its Virtual Event Campaigns capability on the ZiftONE platform. This product was nominated for, and won, this year’s People’s Choice Stevie Award in the Relationship Management Solution category. The Virtual Event Campaign offering is a first-of-its-kind marketing capability. It allows ZiftONE’s customers to promote webinars and other virtual events directly through their partners with registration attribution and lead tracking capabilities. 

“ZiftONE Virtual Event Campaigns measure where registrations are coming from, create standardized and co-brandable event promotions, and integrate data that identifies and scores leads and tracks the buyers’ journey,” says Gordon Rapkin, CEO of Zift Solutions. “It is an honor to have this capability recognized by The American Business Awards voters.”

Details about The American Business Awards, the list of People’s Choice Stevie Award winners, and the complete list of Stevie winners in this year’s ABAs are available at www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

About Zift Solutions

Founded in 2006, Zift Solutions has a decade and a half of experience delivering Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and Through-Channel Marketing Automation. 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

About the Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, and the Stevie Awards for Great Employers. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

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By bringing innovative concepts, strategic business planning and comprehensive channel initiatives to life, these extraordinary women support partners and customers with exceptional leadership. CRN celebrates these women, who are so deserving of recognition, for their constant dedication to channel excellence.

Gwyn Edwards runs the Zift ZONE Alliance Program which connects Zift customers to a growing ecosystem of trusted and certified agencies, applications, and service providers, all of whom drive channel success. Gwyn is a seasoned channel leader with 30+ years of channel experience for a wide range of companies – from high-growth start-ups to industry giants like Nortel and Oracle with mature partner programs. Gwyn has created and managed a wide variety of Go-to-Market models including OEMs, VARs, System Integrators, Two Tier Distributors, and Service Providers.

“We couldn’t be more excited to see Gwyn’s accomplishments, as well as her dedication to serving Zift and our alliance partners, rewarded,” says Heather Tenuto, the Chief Revenue Officer at Zift Solutions. “Gwyn’s commitment to building channel relationships shines through in all that she does.” 

“We are proud to once again recognize the remarkable leaders on this year’s Women of the Channel list. Their influence, confidence, and diligence continue to accelerate channel success significantly,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “Their accomplishments will inspire others, and we look forward to witnessing their future contributions to the channel.”

CRN’s 2022 Women of the Channel list will be featured in the June issue of CRN Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/WOTC.

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.

About The Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end-users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com 

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

 © 2022. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC.  All rights reserved. 

The Channel Company Contact:

Jennifer Hogan

The Channel Company

jhogan@thechannelcompany.com

The post Gwyn Edwards from Zift Solutions Named on CRN’s 2022 Women of the Channel List appeared first on Zift Solutions.

There are vendor managers, channel managers, marketing managers, and even product managers, who join and participate in social media groups. You’ll find them showing up in MSP-related groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks. You’ll find them active on Twitter. They are often seen answering partners’ questions posed in these groups. Some ask questions of the group, seeking insight into partner channel thinking. They announce upcoming events and other special news.

They also kid around. In the truest sense of the word, they become friends with their partners and others who will soon become their partners. They attract partners to their program simply by being there. Some partners feel they come to know these vendor managers through their interactions on social media.

Social Media as a Conduit of Communication

This is one of the most effective ways to use social media: as a conduit of communication between community members. This became even more pronounced during the time of isolation created by the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has long been there. As people have less and less time available to get on telephone or even video calls with each other, messaging to each other is the next best thing.

Many channel community leaders have seized the opportunity to create their own sub-communities to which other channel partners are attracted. This has helped propel some members of the channel community to positions of strong leadership.

Similar opportunities are available to vendor leaders if they are willing to get familiar with the medium and its tacit many rules.

Social media is a nurturing environment. There is no “hard sell” there. Participants don’t come to be sold, and they will quickly leave if they feel they are being taken advantage of. They want dialogue and discussion. Topics may be as diverse as “what’s the best platform for managing multi-cloud” to “what’s the best way to caramelize onions for onion soup?”

There’s also no rank in social media. When the CEO of one of the world’s most popular software platforms shows up, he is greeted much like anyone else. Any deference, or volume of responses, is driven by the fact that this leader helped so many people build their businesses and make their fortunes. What better reason to show appreciation and respect? When he falls ill he is treated to many good friends checking in on him to see how they can help. He’s a person to them, not a figurehead or a position.

How You Can Better Engage on Social Media

Channel chiefs and other C-Level executives have the same simple paths to the benefits of social media interaction as anyone else. You can go on to LinkedIn or Facebook or any other network you care to join and search for relevant groups. All you need to do is to click “Join” on those that interest you and you will either immediately be added or added after group administrators approve you.

An even faster path might be to ask your staff, your managers, or some of your partners to invite you to the groups they participate in. Most of these groups make it easy for members to invite new members.

Once you’ve joined, start visiting the group regularly to scroll through and see what people are saying. You’ll notice several things.

One is that some people are simply far more interesting than others.

Another is that some participate more frequently and more fully than others. These folks may be worth reaching out to directly using private messaging available on the site.

You’ll find that some conversation threads become lengthy as more and more people comment on the original post. Spend some time investigating these posts to figure out why they were so provocative. If you really want to bring value and obtain a response, bring these kinds of worthy discussions to the group. This is how to become a “thought-leader.”

Be realistic in your approach to all this. Social media isn’t the only means to communicate and connect with your community. Not everyone participates in social media. Leaders who are accessible and encourage community activity are usually those who are most respected, and most successful.

The post The Benefits of Connecting With Partners On Social Media appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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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.

Most anybody working in IT has experienced a real-world version of this. Not selling ice cubes to Eskimos, but pretty close to it. The salesperson walks into the room, sits down with the prospective customer, and immediately starts talking about how wonderful the product they want to sell is. They haven’t asked a single question, and may not know much about the customer, but that doesn’t stop them from launching into their pitch.

Sales Enablement: Need to Know the Need

The fifth of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People advises us to “Seek to understand first, before making yourself understood.” 

This advice should come right after “greeting” in every sales process. In particular, salespeople should seek to understand their potential customer’s business, its goals, its operations, and its needs first. It may very well be that this customer doesn’t need what you planned to sell, but as you actively listen and learn about the customer, there will likely be a wealth of new knowledge that helps you understand exactly what this customer wants to buy!

Therein lies the difference. Too many salespeople worry too much about what they want to sell, when they should be concerned with what the customer needs or wants to buy.

Perhaps you heard that your customer had security issues and came in prepared to sell them a firewall. The best protection in the business. Stateful inspection. The works. You practiced your pitch and are pumped up to pump it out to them. Then you ask what their problem is and they tell you they seem to be having a lot of people logging into the network that shouldn’t be able to. They suspect someone has gotten hold of some of their passwords.

Your firewall won’t protect against that. In fact, they tell you they’re quite happy with their current firewall. What they need is a multi-factor authentication (MFA) solution. It just so happens you have a great one, so you shift gears and pitch your MFA solution.

Use “Buy” Words Instead of “Sell” Words

You immediately launch into your MFA pitch. You talk about how many of your customers you’ve sold this to, and they all love it. You talk about how quickly it provides a passcode, how often it generates a new one, how unguessable the sequence is, and even how easy it is to receive it on their mobile devices.

Forget about any pitch that positions your product ahead of your customer. This isn’t about how incredible your product is – it’s about how it’s the right fit for your customer’s needs.

Pivot the conversation towards the reasons previous customers decided yours was the right MFA solution to buy. They felt confident the passcodes were each unique and uncapturable by cyberthieves. They saw the economy in having passcodes sent to their users’ mobile devices. They were impressed by the reviews you shared with them from previous customers.

The Ultimate “Buy” Word

People seldom buy “features.” In fact, they seldom buy “benefits” either. Speeds and feeds sound great on paper, but that’s not what customers are looking for when they buy anything.

Value

Customers don’t really even “buy” anything, especially business customers. They invest in the value they anticipate receiving from using your product or services. “Value” is what they’re looking for. How much value can they bring to their own bottom line in terms of increased revenue and decreased cost? How much value can they bring to the fulfillment of their overall mission statement? If that mission statement talks about bringing value to their community, how can this product or service contribute to that?

“Value” truly is the ultimate “buy” word, a word you should use often in your conversations with them. When you talk about value, you’re speaking the customer’s language in terms they can readily understand and appreciate.

Advice to Share

Hopefully, as you read this, you found yourself saying that you should be telling this to each and every one of your partners. You absolutely should!

As you do, remember that customers are similarly driven by value. You can talk commissions with them, incentive plans, SPIFs, or other promos, and some will resonate with that. But the best of them are more concerned with the value they can bring to their customers than the SPIF you can pay them. There’s more long-term value in delivering real value to a customer than in broadcasting your latest sale. 

Help your partners lose the “sell” words, learn the “buy” words, and start talking to customers about real value.

The post Which Came First? The Question or The Answer? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

To celebrate Zift’s sixteenth anniversary, we’re interviewing Lionel about the early days of operations, his proudest moments within the company, and where he imagines Zift heading next.

Thanks for joining us on the blog today, Lionel. Since you’re in the unique position of knowing the company from the beginning, I’m curious to hear what the early days of Zift were like?

Lionel: To be honest, they were hard. When you’re just getting started with a business, you’re working on finding a market, the right product fit, money, and everything else that comes with the territory. There are a lot of hours that need to be spent building the company up – and not a lot of people to fill those hours. 

At the same time, though, the early days were fun. We were just trying to figure it out and had to think fast on our feet. There’s something to be said for the excitement of being young and scrappy.

I would imagine there’s been a considerable amount of change to the business since 2006. What are the biggest ways you’ve seen the company evolve in the last 16 years?

Lionel: I see the biggest growth reflected in the people who make Zift what it is. We started with two employees and now have more than a hundred. With each level of growth that a company achieves, there are new challenges and rewards that arise.

Think about it this way, if you have anywhere from one to 30 people on staff then you can make culture work with the personality of who’s on board. Once you have over 30 employees, though, there needs to be a real shift towards investing in culture. 

After a business reaches a certain level of revenue, too, there will always be a newfound level of responsibility. Companies grow and the focus on professionalism grows, too. It’s been exciting to see Zift step up to the challenges of growth and focus on both our employees and customers at the same time.

What has been your favorite part of being at Zift from day 1?

Lionel: Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated by this idea of building something. I was always curious if I could see success in that way or forge a path for myself by creating a product. My favorite part of being at Zift from the beginning is – hands down – seeing the thing that I created grow into what it is today. Yes, there were sleepless nights and a lot of time spent getting Zift built up. But it’s all been worth it a hundred times over.

Along those lines, what are you most proud of accomplishing in the last 16 years at Zift?

Lionel: Since the earliest days of Zift, we’ve had more than 300 people employed by the company. I feel proud to have built something that created that many jobs. Zift has created opportunities, not just for our customers but for our employees as well.

One last question for you, Lionel. Thinking of all that you’ve accomplished with Zift in 16 years, where do you see the company going next?

Lionel: Our company – its people, processes, and services – is all backed by a framework for extraordinary success. If we can continue to execute on our goals, serve our customers well, and be a market leader then I see us growing into an even bigger company than we are today.

The post Zift Solutions Celebrates its Sixteenth Anniversary appeared first on Zift Solutions.

In addition to learning from experts, industry leaders, and innovators, channel events provide valuable networking time with presenters and guests, opening the door to future collaboration opportunities.

Find Zift Solutions at These 2022 Channel Events

Heading to any of the following 2022 channel events? Be sure to stop by the Zift Solutions booth at the following key events to pick up some impressive swag!

1. Channel Partners Conference and Expo
2. Alliance of Channel Women @ CPExpo
3. SaaS Connect
4. B2B Summit
5. Women of the Channel (West & East)

1. Channel Partners Conference and Expo (CPExpo)

*Find Zift at Booth #2444*

When? April 11th-14th

Where? Las Vegas, NV 

The Channel Partners Conference & Expo, co-located with the MSP Summit, is a four-day event where partners can connect with technology suppliers to advance their businesses and harness knowledge that accelerates new revenue and growth. 

Psst… Still need to buy a ticket? Get a discount courtesy of Zift at this link!

2. Alliance of Channel Women: ACWConnect Live!

When? April 11th

Where? Las Vegas, NV 

ACW’s signature event, ACWConnect Live!, is a biannual get-together with more than 200 members and prospective members. This unique event kicks off the Channel Partners Conference & Expo with a two-hour event that’s part reunion and pep rally, part networking, and part education.

3. SaaS Connect

When? April 27th-28th

Where? San Francisco, CA

Connect to meet, network, learn from, and close deals with business development, partnership, marketing, platform, reseller, channel, and distribution experts across SaaS.

4. Forrester’s B2B Summit

When? May 2nd-4th

Where? Austin, TX

Hosted by Forrester, B2B Summit North America is the premier event for B2B marketing, sales, and product leaders to empower their strategies, fuel the revenue engine and drive the business forward.

5. Women of the Channel

When? WOTC West – November 16th-17th

Where? Palm Springs, CA

When? WOTC East – December 6th-7th

Where? New York, NY

The Women of the Channel Leadership Summits are the meeting place for women from across the IT channel looking to advance organizational diversity, make unmatched connections, and empower and cultivate women leaders.

Stop By, Say Hi, Score Swag at the 2022 Channel Events

Say hello and meet a few of our high-profile channel analysts, business leaders, digital marketing experts, and successful channel engagement managers. We have vital information to share necessary for scaling your business, maintaining a healthy partner ecosystem, and surpassing your 2022 revenue goals. Plus, you won’t want to miss free goodies! 

More Essential 2022 Channel Events 

1. ITEXPO
2. Channel Futures MSP Summit
3. Best of Breed Conference

1. ITEXPO

When? June 21st-24th

Where? Ft. Lauderdale, FL

ITEXPO is where telecom and IT professionals, C-levels and business owners, developers, and the channel learn in conference sessions and conduct business with hundreds of manufacturers and solutions providers.

2. Channel Futures MSP Summit

When? September 12th-15th

Where? Orlando, FL

This event brings together 500+ channel partners, and suppliers focused on best practices and industry evolution in managed services.

3. Best of Breed Conference (BoB)

When? October 10th & 11th

Where? Atlanta, GA

The Best of Breed (BoB) Conference meets the evolving needs of the IT channel’s most prominent, fastest-growing, and most progressive solution provider organizations and the top technology vendors and distributors.

Best Virtual Channel Events in 2022

1. Channel Focus
2. Gartner Marketing Symposium Expo

1. Channel Focus

When? April 6th-7th

Where? Online

For 25 years, the Channel Focus event has helped attendees understand new Channel trends, develop state-of-the-art Channel programs, and develop industry-leading Channel Sales and Marketing strategies.

2. Gartner Marketing Symposium Expo

When? May 23rd-25th

Where? Online

At the virtual Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo™ 2022 conference, attendees benefit from unparalleled, expert guidance on topics such as customer experience, marketing strategy, digital innovation, social media, CMO education, and more.

For more information on Zift Solutions and to access the latest channel events and news, visit our blog.

The post The Top 2022 Channel Events and Conferences appeared first on Zift Solutions.

1. The first camp says, “Just get me a meeting with them. I’ll close for you.”
2. The other camp prefers partners on autopilot. Just add product and let them sell.

Who Has it Right?

When I hear a channel manager say, “I’ll close for you,” I know it’s time for them to let loose of the proverbial reins. Some channel managers crave an additional level of control; by doing so, they don’t show trust for the sales ability of their channel partners. As we’ve said before, trust is the most essential element of any partnership.

If you’ve found yourself taking over your partners’ meetings one too many times, it’s either time to recruit new channel partners or develop methods for providing adequate onboarding and sales enablement. Nearly as far back as the Zift blog runs, we’ve touched on the importance of both enablement and recruitment in channel partner relationships.

If, at the end of the day, you really do prefer to handle selling yourself, a quick Google of “calling services” will put you in touch with agencies that are able to set those appointments for you. You don’t need channel partners for that.

Autopilot

In retail they often say, “Pile ‘em high and watch ‘em buy!” This is a mentality that just doesn’t apply to professional business-to-business selling.

It may be possible to identify a few truly awesome salespeople working in partner organizations who are like sponges in absorbing everything they need to know about your product or service, and then very powerful at presenting compelling pitches to customers and closing sales all on their own. If you’re working with one of these, thank the stars daily.

More often, though, you’ll likely need to inspect what you expect, and constantly be providing motivation and inspiration among your channel partners. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, channel partners have plenty of other things to focus on. There are many products and suppliers vying for their attention and seeking to monopolize their time and selling effort. That’s your job, and your counterparts’ job too. You are absolutely in competition for shelf-space in salespeople’s minds.

Beyond this, and perhaps even more important, your best and most productive channel partner relationships happen when you and that partner consider yourselves extensions of each other’s companies. They’re an extension of your sales force. You’re the principal they’re proud to represent. You have built trust. You recognize that you and your channel partners are working together for mutual benefit. The customer is the top priority to both of you. That’s what it looks like when it’s working.

Remember, that doesn’t just maintain itself. You must pay attention to it. You must nurture it. You must keep making sure it’s still there and strong as ever. Stronger. Growing.

Show Off the Partnership

Even in the best partnerships with the most self-sufficient partners, there’s a big dividend in visiting customers together. Buddy calls. Joint calls. Whatever you want to call them.

When you show up at a customer’s office with your channel partner, the customer identifies you more as one with each other. They associate your brands, your reputations for quality. You powerfully validate your partner with your mutual customer. When a channel partner brings a manufacturer in to simply ask the customer, “How’s it going?” they are immediately impressed with both of you. This is all goodness. You can’t pay for this kind of customer goodwill. Priceless.

People Who Need People

As Streisand says in her famous song, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Even your best, most self-sufficient channel partners still benefit from your visiting with them. Don’t leave them forever on autopilot and expect it to last. After all, balancing the respect of independence with relationship-nurturing is the name of the game when it comes to successful channel partner relationships.

The post How to Build the Most Productive Channel Partner Relationships appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Gwyn Edwards, our Director of Partnerships and Alliances, recently sat down with Glenn Robertson, CEO and Channel Chief of purechannels, for an open conversation on all things partner experience.

Keep reading for Glenn’s thoughts on what PX is, how to achieve a positive partner experience for your channel program, what its future looks like, and much more.

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Gwyn: Thanks for joining us, Glenn. We’d like to kick the conversation off by mentioning that you’ve been flying the flag for partner experience for a long time now. There’s a lot written about this topic, so – to clarify – what exactly is partner experience?

Glenn: That’s a good question. For several years Purechannels was among the early pioneers encouraging this extension of customer experience to partner experience. I included it as a key part of a paper I wrote in 2019 about the emergence of partner power and the future of MDF. 

There can be a lot of complexity and unnecessary complication when it comes to partner experience. Simply put, partner experience is about keeping partners happy so that they will sell as much of your stuff as possible. Then, they’ll sell more of your stuff than competitors’ stuff. That’s as simple as it can be broken down. 

In addition, partner experience is the culmination of many different things coming together to influence positive or negative behavior from partners – which has a direct effect on selling. Beyond being about just one thing, partner experience is a culture, a belief system, and an understanding that everything you do as a vendor and distributor will have an impact on your partners.

If vendors focus on partner experience for their own reasons, it’s going to have less of an impact.

Gwyn: What should vendors (and distributors) be aware of? How can changing partner experience impact them?

Glenn: It’s important to remember that partner experience can impact a vendor and a distributor both in a positive and negative way. If we relate it back to Newton’s law, then every action has a reaction. This is very true in partner experience which is why understanding your partner’s and their businesses, people, and needs is essential. If you think about it, every interaction that you have can impact partner experience. Whether that’s online, offline, face-to-face, or over the phone that interaction plays a role. It’s part of why PX seems so complex; there’s a lot that goes into it.

Gwyn: Is there a perfect pathway to partner experience?

Glenn: If only, right? [laughs] Really, though, there is a way to optimize partner experience and it’s relatively simple. Simply listen to your partners. Embrace their needs. Understand that your channel is less about you and more about your partners and the experience they get from you. 

We hear from some people, “Oh, our partners never respond and they don’t do anything!” But when you think about it, that’s actually more about what you as the vendor or distributor is doing. If your partner isn’t performing for you, it’s very likely that they’re doing it for someone else. This is all about the fact that they’re getting a better experience elsewhere.

So yes, when we talk about “Is there a perfect pathway?” There is. Listen to need, accept differences, and recognize there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to partners. Ask partners what their experience is like and then continue to follow up on these questions. 

Gwyn: Hasn’t partner experience been a thing for years now? Why is it just getting so much airtime now?

Glenn: Partner experience has existed for years now, but we’ve only recently put a name to it. Some of this has to do with the fact that over the past 10 years, partners have begun to get power. They’ve become choosy. Then, with the pandemic, this has accelerated even more. At the end of the day, without partners, the channel doesn’t exist. It makes absolute sense that we begin to wake up to the needs of the partners; vendors need to respond to that.

Gwyn: Shouldn’t partner experience come as a standard feature?

Glenn: Yes [laughs]. I’ll expand a bit. The unfortunate reality is that, in the majority of cases, it’s not given the proper priority. Really, partner experience should be baked in from the ground up through every interaction and person in your company. Whether you’re a support technician or sales engineer, every person has a responsibility to their partners. 

Gwyn: Where do platforms sit in the partner experience process? As you mentioned earlier… Partner experience is not one thing, so where do platforms fit?

Glenn: Platforms play an incredibly important role. Good answer, right, seeing as I’m talking to you? While platforms don’t necessarily define partner experience, they are crucial in achieving and optimizing it. 

We know that platforms work. We know that they’re customized, implemented, deployed, and launched. But what we need to do is work with platforms – and the people who own them – to ensure that they’re working first and foremost for the partners. So what is it that partners need to get from a platform? They need ease of use, ease of access, and user-friendly tech. There’s no way that you can communicate and interact with every single partner every day. Therefore, the PRM plays such an important role in enabling that partner experience.

We’re seeing tech stacks expand across marketplaces, ecosystems, and partner-to-partner activities. You just can’t do all of this in person. Again, this not only shows us that PRMs are crucial but reminds us that we must optimize their implementation, customization, everything with the partners top of mind. This is only going to become more critical as we move forward.

Gwyn: What does the future of partner experience look like?

Glenn: I think I alluded to it previously, but I think it’s two things: 1) People and 2) platforms. With those people and platforms working in harmony for a shared, desired outcome, then you can achieve that desired partner experience.

From the platform side, there needs to be change. We need to dedicate more and more people and roles to partner experience. We need more partner experience managers and directors, potentially even including partner experience in the board or c-suite. What makes the real difference with partners is the people who engage them. These are simply too big of roles for CAMs or channel marketing managers. I really hope that this is the way we go. If not, we may see vendors suffer. The vendors who don’t take partner experience seriously are the ones who are going to see attrition rates go through the roof. 

The future of partner experience – I believe – is harmony between people and platforms. It’s a recognition at the top level within vendors of the needs of partners and the need to bring in dedicated people for fulfilling PX roles within their functions.

The post Partner Experience with Glenn Robertson, Purechannels appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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Sales calls, events, lunch and learns, and other related outings were a requirement for channel partners building business for both themselves and their suppliers. 

With the current shift from physical to digital, suppliers and partners alike are having to find new strategies that meet the same needs.

Virtual Events: The New Relationship Avenue

A digital transformation has been unfolding for quite some time. This isn’t new to anyone in the channel. What is new is the development of tools to support channel programs at this time. Vendors are listening to the needs of partners and coming up with solutions for digital marketers.

One such solution? Zift’s Virtual Event Campaigns capability. ZiftONE users now have the ability to fully integrate the webinar experience and drive the top of the funnel in a more data-backed approach than ever before. 

We’ve previously equated the current digital transformation with the re-skilling of channel marketers to become digital warriors. Virtual Events takes the channel back to the proverbial boot camp and creates a platform for leveling up your marketing approach.

With Virtual Event Campaigns, channel marketers can now:

• Get back to square one on your approach to webinars. Instead of a complicated and tedious event promotion process, Virtual Events enables you to promote your very own thought-leadership webinars (and roadshow series) all in one platform.
• Put power into your partners’ hands. Suppliers can let their partners host lunch-and-learns and other events through ZiftONE.
• Track which partners are actively promoting events and who is driving registrations.
• Empower partners to connect webinar registration with other lead tracking to get a holistic view of which customers and prospects are engaged.

The days of being a one-trick marketer are over. Following the digital transformation, everyone in the channel must now locate and use tools that help us embrace all things “virtual.” The new Virtual Event Campaigns capability is just one new tool to add to the marketing toolbelt. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how Virtual Event Campaigns can serve your channel program’s needs, be sure to contact us at this link.

The post Create a New Relationship Avenue with Virtual Events appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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The post Speaking of Value-Add: What Differentiates Your Product appeared first on Zift Solutions.

You’ll have your channel managers out in full force visiting with their assigned partners. Ask them to sit down, review the year ending, and talk about the new year that’s about to begin.

The question is, how can you help them make the most of those conversations?

When planning for channel partner success, face the brutal truth

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, encourages us to face the brutal truth. Leave the sugar coating behind. Everyone gains the most (and channel partner success happens) when we honestly assess what went right and what went wrong.

Some questions you may want to review with your partners include:

“Which targets did we hit, and which did we miss?”

An important part of the planning process is to set goals and then come back to assess how well you fulfilled them. Remember that you have a tremendous amount of data available to you. Look at last year’s goals and compare them to the actuals with the following questions:

• How many new clients did you create?
• How successful were you at selling more to existing customers?
• Did we hit our top-line revenue targets together?
• Did you generate the gross profit margin you intended to hit?
• What was the mix of product sales to services sales?
• How profitable were each? Which contributed more gross profit?
• Have we consistently kept our pipeline full or do we need to be doing more canvassing and prospecting?
• What was our average closing ratio for the past year?
• Were we pursuing the right market segments? Should we have targeted larger customers? Smaller?

“Which marketing initiatives landed well, and which landed with a thud?”

It’s really not enough just to ask what worked and what didn’t. Go deeper.

• Why did some things not work well?
• Was it the messaging?
• Was it the mailing list?
• An unattractive offering?
• Problems with the call-to-action (CTA)?
• Should you have chosen another medium?
• Why didn’t they work?

Now, strap in for this one…

“How well is our partnership working?”

• Are we both getting what we expected out of working together?
• Were our expectations too low? Too high?
• Is this an equitable partnership? That is, are we each bringing enough to the table?
• Does the partner still feel there’s a meaningful value proposition for their customers?
• Can the partner generate enough services revenue around your products to make them worth their while? Competition makes margins slim. Can they compensate with related services?

Okay, enough looking backward. Let’s turn our focus onto the future. After agreeing that you should continue partnering in 2022, it’s a good time to make changes, adjustments, or just fine-tune the partnership.

Discussions should include:

Re-establishing and resetting your goals

• What are our joint revenue and profit targets for the coming year?
• How much of that revenue should come from sales of your product and how much from your partner’s services?
• What overall gross margin do we expect to generate for the partner from sales of your product?
• What overall gross margin do we expect to help your partners generate for themselves?
• If you provide products in multiple categories, perhaps break down the revenue and profit numbers by category.

Deciding what target performance ratios are

• What percent of our sales do we expect to come from existing customers? New?
• How many new clients do we plan to create in the coming year to fulfill our goal for sales from new customers?
• What are our plans to recruit those new clients? (This will take longer to answer…)
• What are our plans to sell more to existing customers?
• Will we be adding new products?
• Will the partner be adding new services?
• Have we analyzed our customers to see what else they need from us?
• What do we expect our average closing ratio to be?

Determine what should continue as it’s been done before

• Hey, no reason to mess with success.
• What else should we be doing that we haven’t been doing.
• Are there specific events coming that we should be marketing to?
• Do we have an established marketing/communications calendar?
• How do we want to take advantage of the co-selling motion?
• What changes do we want to make to our sales process?

Did you see what we did there?

Obviously, a comprehensive list of strategic and tactical planning directions would be book-length. Perhaps multiple books. Our goal here was to get you thinking in more detail about the planning process, and how it lends itself to channel partner success. The more structured your process is, the more participation you will enjoy and the better a plan you will produce.

As we left 2020 we felt sure that 2021 would be a better year. We join all of you in our commitment to make 2022 a better year, a great year, a truly happy new year.

The post The Questions to Ask for Channel Partner Success in 2022 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

In an earlier article, we focused on what happens when you focus on the last word in “Channel Account Manager” (CAM): manager. The best CAMs (or PAMs if you prefer) adopt this attitude, helping their partners manage their businesses. Other CAMs are driven to become nothing more than the “pipeline police.” This provides little value to the partners and can be a sure path to channel failure.

Success Planning

In the channel, success is shared. That’s the whole point. You want to see each and every partner succeed. Your CAM succeeds when the aggregate of their partners succeed. Your regional directors aggregate the success of their CAMs, and your channel chief shares in your success which is the aggregate of everyone’s success.

The success planning process, then, begins with establishing your company goals for revenue and profit. As with all big goals, you then break yours down into smaller pieces and assign each piece to your sales regions. The regional directors, in turn, break theirs down into an assigned quota for each CAM. The CAM must then find enough partners with enough opportunity to exceed their quota. This requires exploring opportunities with each partner but offers a far more meaningful and proactive exploration.

Here’s where your CAM filling the role of consulting or advisory manager comes in.

Each channel partner is going to continue your process of breaking down their goals into smaller pieces. In their case, each piece will be assigned to a salesperson. The salesperson then has three strategies available to them:

1. Find sales opportunities among their existing customer base.
2. Create new customers with identified opportunities.
3. Drive new opportunities with new and existing customers by proactively marketing new solutions to targeted subgroups of them.

Smart CAMs pursue all three, acknowledging that the toughest is number two. Creating new customers can be a long-term pursuit. Number 3 – driving solution initiatives – is speculative and may be hard to predict. Partners will expect you to help fund those to share the risk.

CAMs should begin the planning process with each partner where you began yours, by setting reasonable, understandable, meaningful, believable, and achievable goals. For those of you who are also acronym lovers, the mnemonic for that is RUMBA goals.

Armed with these goals, it’s best to make sure each partner’s salespeople start their planning process by reaching out to customers and planning the coming year with them. Ask what initiatives they see themselves undertaking in the near future. This will provide the foundation for their plan. It will need to be developed by describing the strategy they will execute to pursue each opportunity.

The gap between the value of the opportunities they find among existing customers and their goal must be filled with new customers and other new initiatives. See our recent article on pipeline math for more insight into how to use the pipeline to manage sales activities for success.

Sounds Like a Lot of Work?

You always have the option of recruiting partners and just setting them loose, and you may be fortunate to select really aggressive, ambitious partners. Even the most ambitious partners have a finite amount of bandwidth, and you are competing with every other vendor they partner with. Your stakeholders may have a real issue with not knowing where your business is coming from.

That said, here are five driving reasons you should adopt and utilize a formalized success planning program:

1) Keep Your Program and Your Partners on the Same Page

Another famous business axiom reminds us we must inspect what we expect.

Part of the magic here comes from “Heidelberg’s Uncertainty Principle” which says that the act of observing something affects that thing being observed. In other words, if partners know you’re watching what they’re doing, and they value their relationship with you, they will likely step up their efforts!

This is where CAMs must be careful not to simply become the pipeline police.

Instead of coming in and just asking for “the numbers,” do a full review of all existing opportunities. This includes a review of what was done most recently, what that resulted in, and what steps are next. This gives the CAM an opportunity to add value through suggestions and guidance as to how to achieve better results on the next steps.

Conclude the review by translating it into a ratio of goals vs. deals that have closed vs. deals still open vs. deals lost. Putting that performance ratio into the context of the other members of the sales team sponsors more competition. While you’re reviewing tactics it’s a good time to go back to your partner program with them to see if there are any other program resources they could take advantage of to accelerate their sales motion.

2) Gain a Holistic Approach to Partner Management

Bring some ritual and ceremony to the planning process by formally scheduling and inviting team members to each review session. When you casually drop in, you may catch everyone unprepared to have a meaningful dialog with you.

Remember that you can’t lead a team unless you’re part of that team. Familiarize yourself with what’s been going on recently before you sit down to meet with the partner. What larger deals have been won recently. Any new awards? Media appearances? The more you celebrate them, the more enthusiasm and camaraderie you build.

Draw attention to issues like the completion of required training to sell and support the product, entry into your company’s various contests, new civic alignments. Help your channel partners celebrate themselves as you review and recognize their performance with them.

3) Develop a Deeper Understanding of Your Data

You set out on your planning journey by first establishing admirable goals. How far have you progressed toward those goals? Express that as a percentage, then examine how far you are into the period. If you’re measuring quarterly and you’re at the halfway mark of the quarter your sales should already be past 50% of goal. This is just one of the ratios that can really help you.

If you began your plan by committing to a specific number of cold-calls, or a specific number of appointments, compare the number actually completed to those projected and compare that to where you are in the period. 1,000 calls? If you’re at the midpoint of the period you’d better be able to show at least 500 calls completed so far.

Don’t characterize this as cold hard facts. Instead, position it all as the empirical, quantifiable reality as compared to the original intention. Having the data is great. Putting it to work in useful ratios is far better.

Other ratios help you plan: Which of your partners is selling the most is useful so you know who to congratulate. Which one has the fastest growing sales tells you which one to help most. Which one is closing more of the deals they pursue tells you who to help find more deals. Who opens the most opportunities but doesn’t close enough of them needs more training and coaching on closing strategies.

Your marketing automation, CRM, and order processing systems collect a wealth of valuable data. Put it all to use by figuring out what to compare with what.

4) Accelerate Revenue

Why do vendors create partner councils?

If you ask, many will tell you they want to know what partners need from them and to include partners in their planning processes. They also want to show them roadmaps of upcoming products and give them a jump on preparing to sell them. That’s all good.

Insightful vendors have realized that the partners to make the largest investment in are those who are willing to participate. They’re the ones interested in contributing their time and knowledge to help their colleagues enjoy greater advantage coming from the vendors.

What Do They Fight For?

Perhaps it’s better to ask what partners campaign for. When they corner your channel chief at an industry show, what do they ask for? What do they talk about?

If they’re lobbying for higher margins, their thinking doesn’t go further than an individual sale. They’re totally transactional and will likely offer little or no strategic input. In short, they’re in it for the money. And that’s fine! If they make the money you’ll make money too, so more power to them. Smart partners know there’s little or no margin in most products due to discounting from their competitors. They’re better off focusing on how to wrap more services around your products and drive more demand.

But if you’re looking to build a resilient, long-lasting, highly productive channel, you need to take note of those who challenge your channel chief for better ideas. Perhaps they’re advising on how the products, the programs, or some other facet of your offerings could be made better. They’re advocating for their customers, but they’re also working to help you grow and improve.

5) Achieve Channel Transparency

Let’s focus on that overused but important word: partner.

If someone’s your partner, you’re interested in what’s going on in their business and their lives. The relationship has a very personal component. You want to hear from them as to how you can help them, because you know that help will inevitably come full circle to help you.

Channel partners are not numbers. Not account numbers. Not pipeline numbers. Not sales volume numbers. They are companies composed of people who are interested in helping you achieve your goals if you’ll only help them achieve theirs.

Yes, successful vendor executives have digital dashboards showing them the current condition of their channel pipeline. All their field people constantly input into that system so they can know, at a moment’s notice, what the condition of their channel is. But the best of them don’t rest on those dashboards. They pick up the phone. They regularly talk to highly active partners, and those showing real promise. They greet them at channel conferences by first name and ask about their families by name.

When something isn’t working the way it should, smart vendors know which partners to speak to. They know who’s paying attention, and who’s enthusiastic about helping.

Yes, it is important to be a data-driven channel chief, but it’s just as important to remember that you’re doing business with, and partnering with people. People with goals and stakeholders, just like you. Make sure that, as much as your program is about keeping track of the numbers, it’s also about keeping touch with people. If you’re going to call them partners, give that word real meaning. Plan together. Go to market together. Succeed together. Celebrate together.

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• They wanted to show their customer the great, close relationship they had with you, the manufacturer of the products they were selling.
• They wanted to have your expertise on hand in case the customer asked questions that were too high-level for them.
• They wanted to watch you sell your own products and learn how to pitch them from you.

There may have been other reasons, but these were the big ones, and they all made sense!

Partners like Microsoft deployed field sellers to evangelize their products. Smart channel partners would ask these field sellers to go on such buddy calls with them to open them to new opportunities. The hope would then be that, in turn, those field sellers would turn around and introduce them to new opportunities. The currency of that relationship was “quid pro quo” and many partners grew their revenue substantially by leveraging this powerful strategy.

Going with this momentum, Microsoft deployed channel account managers (CAM). Part of their job was to get to know each of their assigned channel partners so they could help coordinate introductions for field sellers with channel partners, who could help them with specific accounts and technologies. They even segregated highly qualified partners from the ranks of their Gold and Silver partners, anointing them “field-managed partners” so field sellers immediately knew who they could go to for customer introductions and relationship-building assistance. 

This has been in place and active for decades. In 2017, Microsoft formalized this strategy, renaming it “co-selling.”

Upside Downside

Beyond the obvious upside of joining forces to achieve success, channel partners who engaged closely with field sellers benefitted from watching them pitch. Especially during channel partner onboarding, this accelerated the achievement of expertise among many channel salespeople. 

Those who didn’t achieve “managed” status found themselves at a severe disadvantage since they didn’t enjoy the momentum created and the credibility conveyed by showing up with Microsoft at your side. 

Unquestionably, suppliers who go co-selling get way more of their channel partners’ mindshare than those who don’t. In preparation for co-selling calls, a great deal of valuable strategizing is accomplished that continues to pay dividends beyond the sales opportunity at hand. 

Find Your Wingman with this Co-Selling Example

Pax8 began building its unique partnering program not long after the arrival of cloud computing. Most resellers at that time shared their customers’ concern about weak security, questionable performance, and other perceived shortcomings of the cloud. Most of this was the product of misinformation and lack of familiarity.

Pax8 was working to create an environment in which they could help these resellers sell and provide cloud-based solutions. They knew it would have to be a combination of training, orientation, and automation of fundamental processes.

Soon, they realized that some cloud opportunities would be too complex to teach their partners to pursue. The sequenced combination of training, technical support, and availability of co-selling activity evolved into their now-well-known Wingman program, in which Pax8 experts actually become “wingmen” for channel sales people “piloting” cloud sales to customers.

This is perhaps the most well-defined example of the power of co-selling.

Tips for Effective Co-Selling in your Partner Strategy

It is all too easy to foul an otherwise excellent partner relationship by mishandling a co-selling opportunity. Many manufacturers have lost momentum and valuable sales due to the shortsighted lack of appreciation among their field sellers for the co-selling strategy.

Here are five best practices to help you make the most of co-selling with your partners.

1. Never undercut your partner or violate the tacit rules of channel engagement. In the early days of buddy calls, some manufacturer sales representatives contacted the customer on their own and offered superior pricing or other accommodations “direct from the manufacturer,” which negated any value gained from the co-selling activity. It should be obvious that this puts an end to co-selling activities with that channel partner, and should spell the end of that manufacturer’s use of the channel if it repeats more than a few times.
2. Understand your ideal partner to co-sell with. The right partner forms that final link between you and the customer. In many cases they perform deployment of your products. Most field sellers will tell you they look for partners who “give them no headaches.” That is, who take good care of each customer and consistently make them glad for their partner engagement.
3. Maintain open, honest communication. While this is true of any good relationship, it’s especially important during a sales process in which responsiveness is critical to impressing the customer and winning the deal. Untruths reveal themselves unbelievably quickly in co-selling relationships, so consistent honesty is truly the best policy.
4. Clearly define the mutual goals for co-selling. Quid pro quo being the currency of the relationship has never changed. The mutual goals are usually obvious: achieve a targeted margin for the sale. Both you and your partner also have other goals you want to achieve. Making these clear to each other from the outset makes it easier for both to do their utmost to help the other succeed. This is co-selling at its finest.
5. Utilize technology and/or tools at your disposal to make this process more efficient. If possible, integrate your PRM platform with the partner’s CRM system so automation can help you both keep updated on progress, and both can easily share resources that contribute to the closing of the opportunity.

The strategy involved may resemble that which often takes place between quality CAMs and their quality partners. The difference in co-selling is that both take full advantage for the full end-to-end execution of those strategies. Combine forces. Combine talents. Combine success.

The post Perfecting Your Partner Strategy through Effective Co-Selling appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Plan. As in Ben Franklin’s classic, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

In this case, the focus is on planning your channel partner marketing. Some channel partners see marketing as something they probably should do once in a while, so they send out an email here and there. All one-shots.

But marketing is not a one-shot event. Very few one-shots get traction. This is just one of the reasons some manufacturers and software providers have low opinions of channel partners’ marketing ability.

Well-planned, thought-out campaigns properly executed will bring new business and new revenue! When you help your partners plan such a campaign, first get them to think through the following:

• Who are you targeting? New customers or existing?
• If they’re targeting existing customers, what are you offering them that you haven’t already sold to them?
• If they’re targeting new customers, what’s the value proposition you’re offering them?
• How do you plan to reach them? Which media? Email? Direct mail? Social networks? Calling? Webinars? Seminars? (Hint: it’s better when it’s a combination of several or all of these…)
• How long would you plan your campaign to run?
• How aggressive do you want to be? Soft and nurturing? Hard-hitting? Somewhere in-between?
• How do you plan to work in the products and services of the vendor who is funding this campaign in whole or in part?

This is just the beginning. Once these decisions have been made, you get to start crafting your messaging. Here’s where most channel partners who try to do it on their own trip over themselves, so this is what you need to explain to them:

Write Everything in the Context of the Customer

You can actually check to see if your partner already knows this before you begin! Go to their website and count all the paragraphs on every page. This usually won’t take as long as it sounds. As you go, also count how many of those paragraphs begin with the words “I”, “My”, “Me”, “Our”, the name of the partner’s company, or some other reference to themselves.

Don’t be surprised if almost all of them do. That’s just not uncommon. Most people write in the context of themselves, what they think, and what they want the reader to know. How many times have you gone to a webpage and read something like:

“We’re the Acme Tech Company. We’ve been solving customer’s problems around here for 20 years and they all love us for the way in which we do it.”

 It may not be quite that overt, but you get the idea.

 Help them flip these paragraphs upside down. Perhaps more like: 

“You may be challenged by the demands placed on you to provide better tech services to support your team’s effort to serve customers better. We can help with that!”

There’s a lot more to effective messaging than just that, but for now help your partners understand that the first thing their messaging needs to do is to convince the reader that you know their pain and can help them resolve it.

The moment your partner gets their first positive response to the messaging you help them craft, you instantly become their hero, and your own Channel Marketing Manager will join them in their enthusiasm!

The Formula for Great Channel Marketing

Extending that messaging advice, help your channel partners realize that marketing is not the process of bragging about yourself. It’s the process of convincing the customer or potential customer that you understand their business, their challenges, and you can provide solid evidence that you have a successful track record of solving similar problems for other customers just like them.

Many people still think that to be successful, marketing must “rise above the noise.” Well that’s just plain impossible with all the noise that’s out there now. Nothing rises above it. So what is a marketer to do?

Go back to Sales 101. Sales professionals know that the very best marketing comes from the power of referrals. Nothing beats it. Nobody beats it. In fact, they know that the referrals they get from a sale are more valuable to them than the commissions they earn for that particular sale. Those referrals build their future successes.

The Power of Requesting Referrals

Marketers borrow a page from that book and are sure to include encouragement in every message in an effort to encourage their reader to share it with their associates, friends, customers, even their competition if it’s friendly! “If you liked what I have to say, please share it with others.”

By leveraging those who are already reading your messages and getting them to share them with others, you’re cutting right through the noise to get to a broader audience. This is something you just never stop doing. The more you do it, the larger your audience becomes, the more new candidates you reach.

Where YOU, the Supplier, Fit In

Focusing on that last bullet in the previous section about how channel partners should incorporate YOU into their messaging is actually pretty simple.

Your channel partners want to promote themselves and the services they can provide to customers. Anything you do to help them achieve that is channel magic. All they need to add is messaging about what they do using YOUR products and services and they’ve delivered the most powerful message you could ever ask for. Not just how great your product is, but rather how great what your product does for the customer is. Any product is just a brick until it starts delivering value to a customer.

How to Support Your Partners in their Channel Marketing Strategy

Many manufacturers and software providers make sure they focus not only on to-channel marketing for recruiting and encouragement purposes, but also on through-channel marketing which helps their partners market to customers. Here are some suggestions to improve that through-partner content.

Equip your portal with customizable content

Many channel partners balk at using the collateral manufacturers provide because “it’s all about them!” Also, they know their competitors are sending out the very same stuff.

The more partners can customize your materials the better. And customization doesn’t just mean crash-imprinting their logo and address on it. It means incorporating their value propositions prominently in the copy. You want them to make their content sing about the wonderful things they can do for customers using your products and services.

Bake marketing services into your programs

Several larger manufacturers recruit external resources to provide packaged marketing programs channel partners can have customized and use. These can be very extensive, including a true multi-media approach to capturing customer attention. When making them available to partners they may allow them to apply their accrued MDF to pay for them, or they may offer a shared-funding program.

When selecting these resources, take care to select those that are appropriate for your level of partner. Many marketing agencies serving the channel still focus on the reseller making their programs more retail in nature. Seek those who clearly market professional services if your partners are MSPs, CSPs, or similar.

Use a marketing-friendly PRM

Here’s where we address “the tricky part” of marketing; measuring results.

Knowing what works and what doesn’t work is perhaps the most important information a marketer can have. A solid PRM solution helps with these metrics in many ways. It also keeps your channel management staff as fully in touch with the partners’ marketing efforts and their results as possible.

When selecting your PRM, ask about how extensive the support is for channel marketing!

Highlight the benefits of strong channel marketing from day one

When is the best time to solve a problem? Before it becomes one.

Many channel partner companies came into being when the technical team of an existing partner decided to leave their company and stab out on their own. Awkward, but they took many customers with them. That’s where their early revenue comes from. But then, there’s the problem… Those customers get saturated. They’re not going to be buying more for at least another cycle.

That’s why you need to get in there early with them and encourage them to start marketing for new customers immediately. Starting when they run out of revenue sources can be a disaster. By starting immediately they’ll be ready when that time comes.

Provide hands-on support to set partners up for success

The best channel managers love to roll up their sleeves and dig right into the work of effectively marketing their customers. Show and tell beats just tell any day. Show your partners how to be most effective in their marketing, helping them drive plenty of new revenue, and you will find they completely redefine the word “partner’ when it comes to you and your products.

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We’d like to take a moment to reintroduce ourselves.

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Properly managed, however, the pipeline is a guide driven by simple mathematics, and enables a salesperson to start each day, week & month knowing exactly what they need to do to beat their quota.

The Butterfly Effect

Every opportunity begins life as a “lead.” It then goes through a continuing series of metamorphoses until it becomes the butterfly that is a closed sale.

Leads can come from many sources. The phone book is a great list of poorly qualified leads. Many data vendors sell lead lists that have substantive demographic & firmographic information, but are still poorly qualified. Unless a lead takes a “hand-raising” action such as requesting a demo or downloading an asset, most come into life cold. Your first contact may be chilly, since they don’t know you. Everyone tasked with outbound prospecting acknowledges that.

The first call to a given lead should be performed by a talented prospector, someone with developed skills to uncover needs. Their job is to determine whether or not this lead has a pain point or challenge that is hindering their ability to do their job effectively. If they do, the caller proceeds to collect as much qualifying information as possible. If the interest and the qualification answers warrant it, it becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). This is the top of the sales funnel the lead will travel down on its way to becoming a sale.

MQLs are now given to a salesperson with superior knowledge of the products and services, and solution selling skills. They will go beyond qualifying the contact and work to qualify the sales opportunity as well. When they are satisfied that the potential customer and potential sale are well qualified, it then becomes a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

SQLs are then added to the pipeline and moved down the funnel. Many sales organizations carefully track the time it takes to move a lead to MQL and then SQL to gauge how efficiently their sales engine is running, or what the conversion rate is from one to the next. The overall movement of the lead is its funnel velocity. The other key metric that will be extracted from the funnel is the “closing ratio” between how many opportunities are worked on and how many actually become closed sales.

Don’t Become the “Pipeline Police”

The pipeline is a guide to progressing through the sales process. What’s important is not so much the guide as it is the process, and this is where many channel account managers can potentially damage partner relationships.

Most CAMs are accustomed to pressure from above to produce more sales revenue. That’s not unusual. Some respond to that pressure by passing it along to their partners. They visit and their first and only question is “what’s in your pipeline?” These CAMs can be referred to as “Pipeline Police” and nobody, absolutely nobody, likes them.

What channel sales professionals seek is true partnership, collaboration, working together to move each opportunity further down the funnel.

Proactive CAMs sit down with partner salespeople to discuss each opportunity in detail. Not so much to quantify the opportunity as to guide the sales process further along. They discuss strategy, and how to overcome objections. They provide valuable help in completing sales. Yes, at the same time they are learning what the opportunities are, how far along the process each one is, and what still remains to be done to close them. But they’re doing it in a way that increases the trust-relationship between them and the CAM rather than damaging it.

Smart CAMs already have all the details they need to perform the pipeline math that tells each salesperson whether or not they’re going to meet and beat quota or not.

The Math Behind Your Channel Partner Pipeline

Those smart CAMs know pipeline math because they’re calculating it for themselves at all times.

Pipeline Math

The sales pipeline becomes a planning tool and action guide when it is built and used to track the path to fulfillment of goals. Teaching it to partner salespeople is one of the best ways for your CAMs to increase channel partner enablement. Here’s how:

You start with the variables you already know, like quota, average margin, and the closing ratio we spoke of earlier. Say your partner has assigned a salesperson to achieve $100,000 in gross profit to fulfill their quota. We already know their average margin is 10%, so they need $1,000,000 in sales to achieve that quota.

The next question becomes how many sales to close that $1,000,000 successfully.

To answer this accurately you need to know their closing ratio. That is, what percentage of the sales they pursue do they actually close? This can be calculated by comparing what is in their pipeline against their sales report. Over time, the accuracy of the calculation will become more and more accurate.

To get started, let’s assume that a salesperson closes 20% of the deals they pursue. A little quick math shows us that the salesperson will need $5,000,000 in opportunities on their pipeline to produce $1,000,000 in actual closed sales – given that 20% closing ratio.

The very next thing that must happen is for that salesperson to make sure they have that $5,000,000 in their pipeline. It’s a bad idea to stuff the pipeline with junk that won’t close. The sales manager will know it was junk because they know the math when things are done right.

To keep the pipeline math accurate so it drives success, each salesperson must understand that any opportunity that comes out of the pipeline, no matter whether it’s won or lost, must be replaced. If it takes $5,000,000 to beat quota consistently, it should always contain that $5,000,000. The best way to reduce that target is to increase your closing ratio by closing more sales.

CAM Pipeline Math

Any good CAM can show you their pipeline of channel partner opportunities. This is what they update based on their pipeline discussions with channel partner salespeople. If they know their quota, their average margin, and their partner’s average closing ratios they will be performing their own pipeline math.

Success. It’s all in the pipeline.

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When a channel partner joins your partner program, they’re giving you access to their salespeople, their technical people, their administrative people, their leadership team and more. You’re not paying directly for those assets, and how much attention you get absolutely depends on how you manage them.

Beyond their personnel, you also gain access to an even more valuable resource: partners’ customers. These are all well-qualified customers, each of whom has a purchasing history. You not only gain access to them, but you gain access to the already-well-developed relationships those channel partners enjoy with them. When you compare this with what it would cost you to find, approach, penetrate, develop a relationship with, and sell to that many customers, the potential return becomes extremely clear.

What will you invest? You will invest in training. You will invest in supporting your partners. You will also invest in building a team to manage your partners. You may also choose to go with their momentum and invest in co-operative marketing with effective partners. Your own innovative approach will determine further investments.

How quickly will you start seeing a return? Your return can be far more immediate with a channel partner than it would be with a direct salesperson simply because partners start out selling to existing customers, not creating new ones (which is much more time-consuming and costly.) These are customers who already know the partners. Customers who trust them. Your investment in helping them identify which of their existing customers to approach first with your products and services is your best way of achieving as immediate a return as possible.

While that’s going on, it’s time to get proactive about helping them create new customers!

Applying the Sales Funnel to Channel ROI

Co-selling can be one of your most valuable partner engagement best practices. Investments in co-selling with your partners pay off in two important ways: Beyond the profit you drive from an early sale, you’re also providing in-vitro sales training as your channel partner’s salesperson learns from your own people. Whatever your sales process is, co-selling to existing customers of your new partner will shortcut a major portion of it.

Remember, existing customers are just a small portion of the universe. With co-selling, another portion opens up: the people that partners haven’t sold to. Here’s where your investments in helping them move through their sales process can pay off for both of you handsomely.

No matter what steps are in your sales process, they all sort out into four basic stages:

• Awareness – Anyone you’ve never sold to needs to be aware of you and your channel partner. Everyone needs to be made aware of every new offering you and your partners bring to market.
• Interest – Some customers may take the initiative to alert you to their interest in your products and/or services. Your channel partners need to be ready and able to respond to these inquiries. They also need to gauge interest that may exist with other potential customers.
• Decision – You and your channel partners develop the prospect’s interest, identifying needs and clearly demonstrating how your products and services fulfill them, all leading to encourage them to make a buying decision.
• Action – Time to ask for the sale. Upon approval the order is processed, and the transition to the delivery process begins.

Before you can begin this process, you and your partner must identify companies that may demonstrate interest if you make them aware. When you find them or are made aware of them, you have new leads. Your job is to transform those leads into opportunities that ultimately deliver pipeline value. Let’s explore each of these!

Leading Indicator #1: New leads

Simply put, you can’t create new customers and new sales without finding new customers. That begins with leads.

Smart partners are constantly finding and innovating new ways to identify new leads. There are more and more demand generation activities you can try to increase your volume of incoming leads, which you can then share with channel partners. Some of your partners may expect all leads to come from you. That’s a problem. You want partners who also do some demand generation of their own. Here are a few ways you can recommend for them to try:

• Referrals – Referrals continue to be the most effective form of marketing. Of course every salesperson should always be asking happy customers for referrals, but there are also some systematic ways to generate them. In your marketing materials, make it desirable to your readers to refer you to their associates. This may take the form of simple encouragement, or you may offer free services and other rewards in return for effective referrals. Turn your customers into your best representatives!
• Social Media – Many channel partners turn to social media for “inbound” marketing. Not only is this one means of communicating about your product, but social media can build up an engaged community of followers – who can then turn into loyal customers or serve as future referrals.
• Content Marketing – Customers no longer buy your products as much as they buy what they can do with your products. You can show what your products are capable of through intentional content marketing. Think of thought leadership blog posts; by taking a stand on topics within your industry, you can back up ## and frame it around your product. Smart partners show off the smarts of their consultants and engineers in the content they produce and circulate.

There are many other strategies available to help drive new companies to become leads for you. When you only have one partner in a given geography it’s easy to share those leads with them. But even with just one partner, you must track each lead to determine what was done with it. Think of yourself as handing your partner money. What did they do with it? You need to know.

Leading Indicator #2: Qualified opportunities

Effective partners treat your leads, or their own, like gold. They follow-up on them constantly, consistently, and with value, until they make contact with someone. When you hear “Oh, I left a voicemail,” and that’s all you hear, you may need to take your leads elsewhere. The right partners attack with multiple weapons from your armory. They send your collateral, they make calls, they send your case studies, they continue to work to connect via email, phone, whatever medium works.

Once your partner’s salesperson has reached someone, the real work begins. Fully qualifying a customer is necessary if you’re going to close a fully satisfying sale with them. Here’s where your training really begins to pay off. The salesperson needs to learn about the lead, their business, how they operate, whether or not they have a need for your product or service. Once they’ve identified the need, they should assure the lead has the budget, the time frame, and the desire to buy your products from your partner. The more they know about your products and services, the more effective they can be in matching them up with the needs they uncover.

Leading Indicator #3: Pipeline value

At this stage of the selling process, you need to define and quantify new opportunities.

Ultimately, to close a sale you must propose a sale. The proposal must match the need your partner has uncovered. It must be detailed, including every product, every service, and every other resource to address the needs of the prospect. It must be well differentiated from anything a competitor may propose. It must be priced competitively and tie the price and ongoing cost of operation to the value that will be generated.

As you and your partner plan to develop and present your proposal, it must also be added into the pipeline. Your pipeline tracking system will include customer name and contact information, the price for your proposal, and your estimation of the timing and the likelihood that you’ll close this business.

The next steps in your sales process will involve overcoming objections, answering questions, continuing to encourage the customer, inform the customer, and more. After every contact the pipeline must be updated to record any potential changes in the timeframe, next steps or likelihood of closing.

You’ll know you’ve built the relationship and earned the trust you want with this partner when they enthusiastically share and review their pipeline with you.

You then need to evaluate your estimations of their accuracy and update your own overall pipeline accordingly.

Leading Indicator #4: MDF usage

Welcome to Honesty Hour, or perhaps the Brutal Truth Moment.

Many channel reps complain about the inability of their partners to market effectively. In many cases they have nobody on staff with marketing skills, experience, or interest. Others simply don’t believe in marketing. That’s somewhat like a baker not believing in flour.

You want to invest your marketing development funds (MDF) wisely. Simply tying them to previous sales is backwards, putting sales before marketing. It may also put your funds into incompetent hands where they will simply be wasted or creatively routed to their bottom line.

Each channel partner must be individually evaluated. If they don’t have marketing acumen or resources, your best strategy is to connect them with a professional marketing services provider and fund that for them. You may offer them prepackaged marketing programs they can use your MDF to pay for.

When you find you have a partner with great marketing capabilities, go with their momentum. Invite them to propose marketing activities they feel will be most effective. Decide to what extent you’re willing to fund them. Perhaps you’ll match the partner’s own investment. Perhaps you’ll pay for the entire thing. Perhaps you’ll syndicate them with adjacent manufacturers.

MDF should not be simply a de facto requirement of a partner program. It should instead be among your primary channel strategies, much like prioritizing the development of engaged partners. When you show partners value, they respond with value. The value you show them is your investment. The value they show you is your return.

The post The Leading Indicators of Channel ROI from Engaged Partners appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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!

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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.

1. Review Channel Partner Engagement KPIs

Recently, we talked about five partner engagement metrics, or the key performance indicators (KPIs), that show you how well your partner enablement plan is performing.

If you’re really hungry for cake, stop thinking about the cake and start thinking about the recipe so you can gather the necessary ingredients. It’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing solely on pipeline and sales. However, that’s a bit too late in the process.

Instead, focus with your partners on the steps they’re taking to reach more qualified prospects and get them into a sales motion. Then, review how quickly they’re moving along that motion so you can coach them on ways to accelerate the process.

Keep stepping back and look carefully at partners’ marketing efforts. Are they showing results? Are they tracking them? One of your quick KPIs here is how much of your market development fund partners are spending; ensure the proper care and time is being taken to track the effectiveness of marketing activities.

Remain focused on both halves of the customer universe; those they’ve already sold to and those they haven’t sold to yet. Creating new customers is a long road, but it becomes more and more necessary as they near saturation with their existing account base. You must guide them to remain aware of the customer experience their company is delivering. This will be impactful on partners’ success in winning future business.

Don’t forget to keep your finger on the pulse of their experience working with you. If channel partners are not having a pleasant working experience, it’s crucial to know and immediately do course corrections.

2. Improve Channel Partner Engagement through Optimization

If you’ve ever heard yourself say something like, “Let’s see where we’re underperforming,” consider reframing this mentality. Areas where you may be underperforming are more productively characterized as “opportunities for improvement.”

If a partner salesperson reports that they’re constantly encountering voicemails when cold calling, they may have a bad case of call reluctance. Help them shore up their confidence in their ability to the point where they can’t wait to make their next call. It can be done.

Carrots and Sticks

Incentives can play a powerful role in improving all kinds of performance from sales to service delivery, customer experience management, and more. The trick is to find the right carrot and the right stick. 

People primarily do things for one of two reasons:

• Getting to what is pleasant
• Getting away from pain

You can help partners manage their people by identifying what team members would consider to be pleasant. Partners can then demonstrate to their team that doing their jobs well can result in more of what feels good to them: improved company morale, sales, and so forth.

You may also need to help partners identify what each team member finds most painful. Then partners should supply clear examples of how performing well can get away from the pain of stressful meetings or tense interactions.

The Value of Coaching

Many people go to sports events and yell “Yahoo, Coach!” when their team wins the game. These people appreciate the extreme value of coaching, and they’re not alone. The greatest athletes in the world, top musicians, and other performers all continue to work with coaches. They need the constant interaction, the feedback, the external stimuli. Never undervalue coaching, and help to provide it wherever and whenever you can.

3. Focus on Channel Partner Communication

Any time is a good time to review your partner engagement plan, and no time is better than when you feel things are not exactly going as planned.

If you feel you’ve built strong relationships without getting the desired results, you may be missing clear, consistent communication. Don’t dance around the issues. When they turn around and close deals they couldn’t before, your partner team will come to appreciate the courage it took for you to tell them the brutal truth. Don’t be harsh, but be firm.

Never think everyone will simply do what you tell them to do just because you tell them. Great leaders and partner managers recognize that they must always be selling great ideas, plans, and processes to all their team members. This gets their enthusiasm, not just their cooperation.

One of the most important things we discussed in our post on channel conflict is the key importance of trust. Trust is core to the definition of “partner.” Without trust, there can be no partnership. To achieve and maintain trust, it’s critical to always manage each other’s expectations clearly and honestly with open feedback.

4. Rinse and Repeat Your Channel Partner Engagement Strategy

Here’s some good news: Your partner engagement strategy isn’t over if you don’t get it right the first time.

Channel partner engagement is something you will always be managing. Markets, products, and customer needs will change. You and your partners will change. Every change requires adjustment to re-align you and your partner with the new realities.

Since partnering is a living thing, it will always be receptive at some level to your and your partner’s input. Keep working at it.

The only time to rethink your strategy may be when you feel stagnant. Remember, it’s ever-changing!

The post How to Improve Your Channel Partner Engagement Strategy appeared first on Zift Solutions.

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1. Why Sales and Marketing Should be Combined
2. How to Bring Sales and Marketing Together
3. Tools to Help Sales and Marketing Alignment
4. How to Teach the Fundamentals of Sales and Marketing
5. How to Build Relationships in Your Teams

1. Why Sales and Marketing Should be Combined

If salespeople are viewed as actors on a stage, marketers are the people who bring the audience into the theater. For marketing to attract an interested audience, it’s important to ask two questions:

1. What are the value propositions for the products and services to be sold?
2. Where can qualified prospective customers be found?

While sales has the knowledge to find customers, it’s reliant on marketing to translate that knowledge into enablement material. Ensuring a partnership between sales and marketing ensures that all customer-facing language and material accurately reflects the value they will find in products. After all, value is what customers buy.

2. How to Bring Sales and Marketing Together

Sometimes, the relationship between sales and marketing needs more clear definition. In order to achieve the mutual goal of creating more profit, it’s important that everyone recognize and appreciate the precise role they play in the company.

Marketing is most effective when it sees sales as its customer. Marketing produces messaging that compels prospective customers to express interest. In turn, salespeople can follow up on that interest.

Great marketers recognize that top sales professionals know what their customers find value in. Marketers use this information to shape their messaging to reach the best qualified candidates and focus on the messages that will attract them most effectively. It all begins with intelligence from sales.

3. Tools to Help Sales and Marketing Alignment

The currency of sales and marketing alignment is feedback. Marketing aims to create highly effective marketing collateral, messaging, and other materials to bring more qualified customers to their sales teams. They depend upon those sales teams to furnish useful feedback to help them improve their production.

Many collaboration platforms now allow users to evaluate materials provided by others. Marketing is best served when they use these capabilities to gather feedback as rapidly as possible from salespeople using their materials in the field. 

In a very real sense, this is “smarketing;” the value-creation version of DevOps. DevOps brings together the software developers and the operators of the computers that run the software to accelerate user feedback. From there, developers can more quickly upgrade the software which operators deploy, then begin the entire cycle again. The goal is continuous improvement through continuous deployment (CI/CD).

In the smarketing version of DevOps, the faster that sales can provide more feedback to marketing, the faster that marketing can improve the messaging to reach even more qualified prospects. This starts the next iteration of the cycle. Again, CI/CD.

4. How to Teach the Fundamentals of Sales and Marketing

While you may understand the fundamentals of sales and marketing, don’t assume that everyone does. If you don’t know where to start with training, we recommend beginning with the following information:

The fundamentals of selling are best defined by following the course of a typical sales process: Leads move from the broad, unqualified top of the sales funnel to the narrow, well-qualified bottom where sales occur.

Marketing’s work begins above the top of the funnel. They start by offering compelling evidence that a product or service is desirable to members of a target audience. Then, they track those who express an interest in learning more. Since their interactions with the contact are limited, they can’t find out much more beyond that expression of interest.

Marketers set thresholds for their leads; one of which is a marketing-qualified lead (MQL), at which point they will refer that lead to sales for follow-up.

The next step in most sales processes is to greet the MQL and communicate with them to achieve further qualification. Salespeople start by finding out what the customer’s needs are and then seeing if they align with the value the product or service provides. If they don’t, the salesperson may recommend other products and services that are better suited.

Once a desirable product has been identified, the salesperson must then determine the answers to several important questions:

• Is the customer ready to buy?
• Is the customer ready to buy from this exact company?
• What is their timeframe for making the purchase?
• Have they allocated sufficient budget to make this purchase?
• Is the contact you’re communicating with the sole decision-maker? Or will you need to convince other people in their organization?

Once positive answers have been obtained for all these questions, the MQL becomes a sales-qualified lead (SQL). At this point, work may begin to produce a recommended solution, a proposal for that solution, and the materials necessary to convince the SQL to buy.

Once the SQL has become a customer, the feedback loop to marketing should bring valuable information back to them to better inform targeting and messaging.

Over the long run, marketing wants to know which materials, which events, and which activities were most effective at attracting leads that ultimately convert to customers.

5. How to Build Relationships in Your Teams

The progress between marketing and sales teams can often be seen as an assembly line of sorts.

Marketing takes untested leads and messages them to identify MQLs. These are then passed along to sales. MQLs can be moved forward to being an SQL, or they might be removed from the process. Sales then converts those SQLs into customers. Alignment between sales and marketing ensures that this process can constantly be improved and propelled to its next iteration.

To most effectively build relationships between sales and marketing, it’s crucial to establish trust above all else.

• Sales must trust marketing to create and present effective and persuasive materials, events, and activities to attract contacts. They must then trust marketing to accurately identify MQLs. This can help sales feels comfortable investing time and effort into them.
• Marketing must trust that the feedback they receive from sales is well-considered, positively-intended, and valuable.
• During regular meetings, marketing benefits from reviews of current pursuits. Reviews can help them learn more about what prospects respond well to and what falls flat. This fine tunes marketing’s messaging. Sales has the opportunity to report on new learnings about customer interests that will inform future messaging from marketing.
• What may be most valuable to marketing is the opportunity to see which of their promotional efforts has translated into SQLs and closed sales.

Marketing and Sales Alignment: Takeaways

Ultimately, sales and marketing have two different functions that contribute mightily to the customer journey. When both teams can speak the same language, align goals, and understand their role in driving revenue, the joint effort can result in superior business outcomes.

These two groups are inextricably interdependent. One cannot function without the other. Shared goals cannot be achieved until sales and marketing alignment has taken place by being on the same page.

The post Mergers, Not Acquisitions: 5 Marketing and Sales Alignment Strategies appeared first on Zift Solutions.

“Do the people who are responsible for marketing in your organization know who their customer is?”

Their salespeople do. Anyone in sales knows who buys from them. They know what those customers buy. If they’re really good at it, they even know why their customers buy. But no matter what, salespeople understand who customers are.

If marketing believes customers are solely theirs, they’re only half right. They’re also sharing with sales.

Why Sales & Channel Marketing Go Hand in Hand

While you’re talking to your partners, another question to ask is: 

“What do your customers buy?”

No, this isn’t a trick. While every customer is different, there is one thing they all buy. Your partners’ sales teams are selling it, but it’s pivotal that marketing promotes it in tandem: Their value to those customers.

Partners may have thought their customers buy products and services, and they’d be correct. But an important question this raises is, why do they buy those products and services from them? Why not their competitors?

More often than not it’s because your partner has built a stronger perception of value for their customers. The core of messaging, sales, and marketing must all point customers in the direction of value awareness. This requires that everyone in the company be aligned in their ability to highlight for customers exactly what that value is. They also need to be able to leverage that value to differentiate themselves from their competition.

Channel Marketing Takes the Lead

Marketing must lead this effort by distilling the company’s value propositions into a set of messages to be conveyed to prospective customers. If those messages are compelling enough, and the value is clear to them, they’re more likely to convert to active customers. If they don’t, it’s likely there are one of three root issues at hand:

• Sales did not qualify and target the customer properly
• The message didn’t adequately amplify the distinguishing value
• The value proposition lacked clarity, resulting in misinterpretation

Partner account managers can get ahead of these issues by taking the following steps:

• Evaluate value propositions
• Provide an objective outsider opinion on how attractive the value props sound
• Track the progress of each message in your partner relationship management (PRM) system

Your partner will appreciate any help you provide in measuring the effectiveness of each message and fine-tuning them.

When marketing messages clearly convey specific value that is desirable to target prospects, they can help convert themselves into leads through calls-to-action. At the end of every great marketing message is an easy-to-understand, easy-to-execute call to the prospect to take specific action to continue the sales motion.

Why Sales and Marketing Alignment Matters

The reason why alignment between marketing and sales is so important is simple: consistency. Once a prospective customer has expressed interest in the value proposition marketing has conveyed to them, salespeople must be speaking the exact same language when they follow up. 

The implications of the effectiveness of value messaging go well beyond any specific lead, prospect, or customer. When those values are defined, promoted, and effectively sold, with delivery made on your value proposition, you’re likely to turn customers into marketers.

How Sales and Channel Marketing Work Together Effectively

The last question to ask your partners is: 

“Who defines your distinguishing value proposition?”

Marketing may write the content, but the actual value itself comes from the entire company:

• Professional and managed service professionals produce tremendous value for customers
• The logistics department processes orders and procures needed equipment and software
• The policies and procedures developed by the partner’s leadership team help to define and focus the value
• Marketing packages it all into compelling content to attract new customers
• Salespeople drive the message home by convincing and closing on sales of that value

Everyone in your company has a role to play in creating, defining, promoting, and selling the company’s value to well-qualified targeted prospects. What’s important is to develop these roles clearly so that team members are empowered to understand and successfully fulfill their role. When everyone commits to their part in producing the value proposition, it resonates with customers!

Sales & Marketing Alignment Tools: Equipping Your Partners

It’s not uncommon for partners to believe that the only thing you want to see promoted is your product or service. Those with less marketing acumen may simply turn around your collateral and only message the features and benefits.

By following channel enablement best practices, you can help partners translate what they do with your products and services into real value for their customers. Remember that the bulk of their profitability comes from their own services, so when you help promote them you become a friend and valued partner.

Example in action? Consider companies like Star2Star Communications. Teams like Star2Star have dedicated staff working on partner success in marketing. With co-branded videos, email marketing campaigns, and more services, partners are given access to marketing material at no cost to them.

You can also work with your own in-house marketing team to produce channel marketing collateral that promotes your own products and services in the context of what a partner can do with them. The more customized this can be to a specific partner, the more value they will perceive and the more enthusiasm they’ll generate for working more closely with you.

Lastly, by leveraging reports from your own PRM system you’ll be able to provide insight to partners regarding the effectiveness and impact of marketing activities. The more insight you provide, the more you will help them fine tune their entire approach to marketing. This alignment will serve sales well, producing greater results for the entire company.

Have personal experience with sales and marketing alignment? Clue us in to your best practices, tips, and suggestions in the comments below.

The post Lead by Example: How to Help Your Partners Achieve Sales and Marketing Alignment appeared first on Zift Solutions.