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The 3 Biggest Lies Channel Executives Tell Themselves Every Year

According to this year’s YouGov(https://www.mensfitness.com/weight-loss/burn-fat-fast/25-surprising-benefits-weight-loss)  survey on New Year’s resolutions, the number one response was to lose weight and the second was to exercise more. We all know why we make these annual commitments. We want to look better, live longer and be healthier.

Chennel Executives

Losing weight and exercising are on most people’s minds throughout the year but changing personal behavior and taking action is elusive. The same is true for channel executives as they assess where they are at the end of the year and prioritize what is needed to a meet their sales goals for the next year. Channel executives know that they need to build commitments with their partners to invest and grow sales for your brand and measure partner achievement of these goals. But saying it versus doing it is a lot like the challenge of losing weight and exercising.   It is an excellent idea until it is time to walk away from that delicious bowl of potato chips or take that first step onto the treadmill.  Taking the time and making the effort to profile and scorecard your partners, build joint sales targets and action plans and preparing quarterly business reviews (QBRs) across your partner network is infrequently done and typically only with a small percentage of partners.  Why?  Because it is hard work, inefficient, and hard to measure. The questions that channel executives ask themselves are:

  • Is it worth doing?
  • What is the value for the partner and/or channel managers?
  • Do I have time to create plans and measure performance-to-plan?
  • Can I get access to the data I need to complete this task?
  • Can I get the rollup reporting to measure channel performance at all levels?

Channel executives, just like most people making New Year’s resolutions, need to be convinced by the “business case” for making the investment and effort in the new behavior.

The “Business Case” for Top New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Lose Weight: (Men’s Fitness) The Top 10 Benefits of Losing Weight
    1. Better sleep
    2. Better hormonal balance
    3. Improved sex drive
    4. Better mood
    5. Less joint pain
    6. Clearer / brighter skin
    7. Stress relief
    8. More money
    9. More friends
    10. Fewer colds
  • Exercise More: (Healthline) Top 10 Benefits of More Exercise
    1. Feel happier
    2. Help lose weigh
    3. Stronger muscles and bones
    4. Increase energy levels
    5. Reduce risk of chronic disease
    6. Improve skin health
    7. Improve brain health and memory
    8. Improve sleep
    9. Reduce pain
    10. Better sex

Most people conclude that these benefits are very attractive and motivating and are worth striving for.   Similarly, partner business planning and performance management have an equally attractive set of “business case” benefits for channel executives.

The Business Case for Partner Business Planning: (Successful Channels) Successful Channels is a provider of channel / partner business planning and performance management tools and the results below are based on the outcomes from a range of their clients implementing these planning tools.

  • Partner Scorecards: (15-30%+ Capabilities Improvement) Channel teams that define best practice scorecards, assess partner’s performance, and create improvement action plans increase partner capabilities between 15-30%+ on key metrics within the first 12 months of deployment.
  • Partner Business Plans & QBRs: (10-25%+ Growth Vs PY) Channel teams that complete 12 to 36-month business plans, profit forecasts, and conduct QBRs (Including perf-to-plan, pipeline-to-target) every quarter achieve these growth levels.
  • Partner Account Planning: (10-25% increase in deal registrations) A process of meeting with partner sales executives to identify customers and prospects that represent good cross-sell opportunities for your brand. Channel Managers that regularly conduct “Account Planning” work-sessions with each key partner sales executive achieve this outcome.

If the business case is this strong for doing partner business planning and performance management activities, then why don’t more channel teams do them?   Much like losing weight and doing more exercise, you must do the hard work to realize the benefits.

Doing Partner Scorecards, Business Plans and QBRs just got easier!

Historically, partner business planning, scorecarding (profiling), and performance measurement is completed with the help of Excel spreadsheets in a disconnected, non-scalable format with no unified rollup reporting.   It is very labor intensive, difficult to manage and not very effective for either channel managers or partners.   New cloud-based tools developed by Successful Channels dramatically simplify and streamline these CAM / Partner business processes that can now be completed in minutes vs. hours.   Because of deep CRM integration, these tools are automatically fed by actual sales, pipeline and certification data to create up-to-date performance-to-plan reporting instantly for CAMs and partners.

5-10 Minute Partner Scorecarding

The “progress bar” navigation above will guide a CAM and partner through how to create a scorecard, business plan, action plan and QBR in minutes.   Each step is designed to take a CAM or partner by the hand and walk them step-by-step through the process of creating their scorecards and plans. This guided process makes it easy to create a joint plan for achieving partner / vendor goals in minutes.  Within each step sample values are provided to the user, much like a multiple-choice question instead of an open-ended question, where it is easier to pick from options for every planning decision that is needed to be made.   These tools will turn an average CAM into a high-performance expert channel manager that can spend most of their time providing expert consultative advice to their partners versus the old way where most of their time is allocated to data research and admin tasks to prepare for these partner meetings.

Here are few examples of screenshots from these guided partner business planning and QBR processes below.

Partner Performance Scorecard:  This is a section of an instant / real-time partner performance summary for partner performance-to-plan and pipeline-to-target along with other metrics for quick business review.

Partner Performance Scorecard

Partner Capabilities Scorecard:  This is a screenshot from a comprehensive partner assessment, scorecard, goal and action planning setting workflow tool to build partner capabilities.

Partner Capability Scorecard

Five Minute Quarterly Business Review PowerPoint Builder:   A series of screenshots for how a CAM can build a customized and comprehensive QBR and annotate with their comments in minutes

5 Minute PPT Builder

All the historical reasons for not doing partner scorecards, business plans and QBRs are no longer valid.  They are no longer too much work, too hard to gather the data, and based only in disconnected Excel workbooks.  With the assistance of cloud apps, partner planning and performance management can be completed in a fraction of the time, as virtually all partners and deliver meaningful value to both partners and CAMs. And all partners are able to deliver 10-25%+ growth vs. prior year and improve their capabilities and pipeline at the same time. There still may be some valid reasons not to lose weight or go to the gym, but there is no longer any valid excuse for not doing scorecards, business plans and QBRs for all your partners.

Channel Account Manager Reseller CXO Successful Channels Reseller Marketer Reseller Salesperson Channel Chief Image Map
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Architect Blog

How Super CAMs Can Create the Perfect Sales / Enablement Balance in 2018

The tension between short-term channel sales target achievement and medium-term partner enablement has never been greater. At the end of 2017, I overheard a VP of channel sales saying to his CAM team “you can invest in enabling your partners as long as you are achieving your sales targets.”Super CAM

Any long service CAM knows how funny that quote is.  It is simply not possible to achieve your partner sales targets if you are not equally investing in enabling your partners for success.  Every work day a professional “Super CAM” is managing this balance between developing the next few sales opportunities with their partners while at the same time helping to build a self-sufficient, scalable, and effective partner.

Partner Enablement is Investing Well Ahead of Expected Return

It is getting harder and harder to find channel organizations that are steadfastly committed to partner enablement.   This is a classic example of investing well ahead of the anticipated return with uncertainty in ROI.   This is a struggle that every VP of channel sales deals with when making budget and resource allocation decisions. Providing partner training and certifications, learning management systems, partner sales incentives, and partner marketing dollars is expensive and hard work.  And the justification for these expenses is not easy to put together because the return is usually not immediate or is only indirectly related to this investment.   Unfortunately, when times get tough and sales targets are getting tight, one of the first things cut by VPs of channel sales are partner enablement budgets.    Pulling CAMs off important partner enablement activities happens too often in the channel to achieve short-term sales targets and sacrificing longer-term growth prospects from partners.

CAMs are Repairing the Engine While the Plane is Flying

Despite declining funds and focus on enablement, CAMs are still expected to achieve their numbers while at the same time building partners that will generate increasing rates of “partner-led” deals for their brand. The top performing CAMs, or “Super CAMs,” are experts at the balancing act of investing just the right amount of time in partner sales development efforts, while at the same time finding a way to help their partners get better.   This blog attempts to detail the practices of these “Super CAMs” that can keep the plane in the air and help get more lift and speed out of their channel engine as they build partner capabilities and relationships.

Two Levels of Super Partner Enablement & Activation

Level 1:  Partner Program Achievement Enablement

Most channel programs today define a set of expectations that they have for their partners to be successful. But these program definitions by themselves do not create motivated and activated partners.   CAMs need to help partners understand these program requirements, how they can achieve them, and create action plans and performance metrics for helping them monitor their progress along the way.   Super CAMs take all their partners through a level 1 Partner Program Achievement enablement exercise to ensure that they can succeed.

The program elements below are a set of expectations that your company has created to guide a joint business planning process between CAMs and partners.  Each metric area is an expression of a partner’s commitment to the vendor’s brand while at the same time is a blueprint for a partner’s success.  But these program elements don’t automatically lead to partner success.   Super CAMs take the initiative to build a partner scorecard, business plan and QBR process around these program metrics to engage, motivate and measure partner’s success.   There is a specific “how-to” to put these program metrics into action for an individual partner.   Each step below is the how-to process that Super CAMs use to help their partners internalize these program goals and take actions to achieve greater program performance.

Level 1

Super CAMs take these program requirements and turn them into a commitment and motivation building process with the help of a 5-minute scorecard, business plan and QBR tools.   They demonstrate how partners will be more successful, make more money, and be more satisfied with your brand.

There is also a second level of partner enablement and activation.   The second level of enablement is partner life-stage activation.   This is a process where Super CAMs meet partners where they are in their life-stage journey with your brand.  Each life stage requires a unique set of assessments and actions to advance your partner’s success.   This partner life-stage management process is made much simpler with the use of a scorecard system to assess, profile, measure and track partners and create customized action plans in minutes.

Level 2

For each of these metrics, in just 15 minutes, a Super CAM can provide their partners with a score from 1-100 of exactly where they stand on their life-stage journey along with a quarterly custom action plan.

Scorecard Score

Are There Super CAMs within your Organization?

Are you asking yourself if you have any mythical “Super CAMs” within your organization?  The answer is yes.   But very few regular CAMs become “Super CAMs” on their own.  They use tools to help them become highly efficient and effective in managing and motivating their partners.  These tools include a 5-minute partner scorecard, a 5-minute partner account planning tool, a 5-minute partner business plan, and a 5-minute partner QBR tool.   These tools integrate with your CRM / PRM to automatically bring in the required sales, pipeline, and other certification data and make it very easy to create custom improvement action plans for your partners.   Armed with these tools, CAMs and VPs of sales will never have to choose between a focus on sales or enablement.   Both goals will be achieved efficiently and effectively including short term revenue targets and long-term goals of a more self-reliant and partner driven channel growth program.

 

Channel Account Manager Reseller CXO Successful Channels Reseller Marketer Reseller Salesperson Channel Chief Image Map