Investing in the Right Channel Partners is an “EPIC” Way To Stimulate Growth

Recall the old adage “you only get out what you put in.” When it comes to channel management programs, these timeless expressions couldn’t ring truer. In a B2E (Business to Everyone) world, organizations can reap significant benefits and achieve key growth and ROI objectives if they’re willing to invest in their channel partners in a deeper more personalized way like tailored and easy to use MDF, Incentive and Through Partner Marketing programs.

But, for many, especially large organizations with complex channel and dealer ecosystems, there are so many questions to be answered:

• Who are my top channel performers and how can I amplify their success?
• What channel models and programs work best and for which partners?
• How do I implement an effective program that can scale?
• How can I get any of this accomplished in today’s “new normal?”

Now is the time to “Be Epic” with your channel partners: take risks, be creative and use this moment of rapid digital transformation to identify top channel and dealer partners, connect with them on a more personal level and then enable them with the right tools.,

BEPIC

Being “epic” isn’t just a call-to-action. Specifically, the acronym “BEPIC” determines the group of channel partners to focus upon and how to go about categorizing partners as a sales and revenue booster. Use this acronym to guide and focus your team:

Belief – The foundation is to get both sides to believe strongly in a brand/product and the value it will provide customers. This happens over time starting with a structured sales deck that everyone is trained to present.

Executive Sponsorship – Finding and building a belief with the right executive sponsor is critical to success. An executive is identified and targeted during the Belief part of the process and their commitment to the program is secured as a second step.

Propensity to Buy – Work together with the channel partner to identify the twenty accounts with the highest likelihood to buy. They then narrow the list to the top 5 and work together to secure the business.

Interlock – Use a value pyramid to present the offering to customers.

Cadence – is all about holding each other accountable to how often they get together and work on these accounts and track their progress.

Use a three-step process to identify the top 50 channel performers to focus on investing in and then amplifying their outputs. 

Identify and Motivate

It all comes down to defining your top partners, segmenting those partners in a certain way, aligning business objectives and then investing in them using the right tools and resources. This three-step process identifies and motivates those top performers:

1. Deep focus approach – Leverage data insights and customer journey mapping to identify the top 50 channel performers and focus amplification efforts on that group.
2. Maturity Assessment – Determine what phase of maturity (or knowledge stage) is each channel partner currently in with regards to your business, products and ecosystems. Are they product and business experts or are they still novices with a hunger to learn more? Knowing this will help determine how to focus and personalize enablement efforts
3. ROI – Work with partners to identify success metrics and create clear paths to achieve ROI success.

The BEPIC approach is obviously a market best-practice that many other organizations (whether they’re B2B, B2C or B2E) can learn from as they take a second and third look at their channel strategy this year and well into the future.

Learn more about 360insights, channel incentives, SPIFFs, rebates, Co-Op/MDF, volume incentives, and sell-through allowances.