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5 Expert Tips to Increase Channel Sales Performance

Jun 02nd, 2014

The goal of channel sales enablement is pretty simple – it’s all about putting partner reps in the best possible position to sell for you. Which means… what, exactly?

Tips for Sales Performance

Training, for sure, but the road to better channel sales performance goes well beyond a simple one-and-done learning session. After all, your partners are selling for you, but not only you.

So how can you make things better? Here are five simple tips to consider from sales and marketing experts around the web.

#1. Provide resources that communicate your message.

“Create a common sales toolkit for partners so you’re doing everything possible to enable them to communicate your value proposition and accelerate sales growth. This should include sales collateral, messaging platforms, samples of emails and other ad copy, access to your webinars and white papers, case studies, etc.”

— Matt Heinz, 5 Tips for Effective Channel Sales Development

#2. Modularize your content for each stage of the buying process.

Breaking information into micro content not only makes it more manageable on mobile devices, but also makes it easier to integrate into long-term memory… Smaller, more manageable ‘chunks’ or ‘bits’ of information make learning more practical. Sales reps don’t have time to read a 10-page paper on a topic, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t remember most of it anyway. Instead, they want to be able to have that same information in digestible chunks or bits as it is relevant, and at the time and place they choose.”

— Chanin Balance, 3 Tips for Effectively Using Mobile Technology for Sales and Channel Enablement

#3. Keep the lines of communication frequent and open.

“Call each of your channel partner sales reps on a regular basis to help him or her make a sale. If you’ve got a handful, there’s no reason you can’t call them all once a week. Maybe a call to one of his or her prospects from the manufacturer will make a sale, so why not ask if you can call that prospect and help out… Convince them you won’t take away their business, and build trust. I guarantee that you’ll be brought into more of their deals, and each of you will have better sales numbers as a result.”

— Geoff Alexander, 3 Tips to Increase Channel Sales… Try Thinking Out of the Box

#4. Get on board with social.

“Network with channel partners – make sure to connect with your partners on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.  You’ll have more authentic, personal and regular interactions.  And as you know, positive partner interactions lead to more partner sales.”

— Brian Offenberger, 4 Tips to Increase Channel Partner Sales

#5. Measure the relationship early and often.

“There are two reasons to measure. First, the key to the channel relationship is trust, which means that you need [to be] flexible in making adjustments that improve performance. That’s only possible if you know what’s happening. Second, when a channel partner isn’t performing (i.e. consuming more resources than the revenue they create), you need to know quickly so that you can either fix the problem or cut the partner from your programs.”

— Geoffrey James, How Can I Motivate My Channel Sales Partners?

For more tips and ideas for improving channel sales performance, check out the resources below: