From the PartnerOn Team

What role do sellers play in your marketing? Are they sharing content on social regularly? Are they trained on how to engage in Social? 

Jeff Mesnik:

People like Helane Cohen from Microsoft are actively building training programs around LinkedIn (FYI she is a Rock Star, along with Diana Ishak and Dave Fisk)

Kelly Nuckolls from IBM has built programming to support her sellers in the past.

Kellyn Smith Kenny how do you see the sellers at AT&T supporting your messaging? Or how about the Agents and Master Agents?

 Wendy Thacker how is ScanSource supporting the sellers in the channel? 

I would argue the sellers can be some of your best influencers, do you agree? But as a salesperson myself, I know few people allow me to write too much on my own. So there is that. If anyone is looking for support on how to build messaging for your sellers, Zach Messler is one of the best messages out there!!

Zach Messler, Product Marketing Advisor and Mentor

Sellers and marketers ideally should be working hand-in-hand.

I know I became a better marketer when I started going on live sales calls.

I know the salespeople I worked with became better sellers when they learned to hear and apply what I would hear as a marketer.

If your sellers are not playing a significant role in your marketing–and vice versa–you’re missing out on a big piece of your potential revenue.

Cheers, Jeff! Thanks for the mention!!

Kelly Nuckols, Ecosystem Marketing Manager, Distributors

Great points Jeff 👏

By working together with marketing, sellers can build stronger relationships with prospects without excessive pressure. Marketing helps sales teams find and qualify leads and maintains contact with prospects throughout the sales cycle.

Sellers should be proactive in providing feedback to marketing throughout the sales cycle (both positive and negative), so marketing is able to pivot and optimize the process and message to suit the needs of the target market.

The benefit of this conversation was it informed and engaged a good audience with comments, impressions and reactions. The ongoing challenge is generating these conversations. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and join my conversations- let’s keep these important conversations going!

With the increased availability of 5G networks and leveraging them to connect the edge computing, we are seeing the significant growth in the role telecom companies will play in the channel.  We wanted to hear more about this so, we decided to engage the audience on LinkedIn. And below is the conversation for all to see. 

Jeff:

Been thinking about the increasing role of telecom companies and the channel. We hear a lot of talk on working to supply the edge devices with connectivity, security, and management of big data. Will telecom companies work as the distributor for the edge? How are distributors at selling bandwidth consumption and the services that support it? Would love to hear thoughts. Jay McBain Brian Potts Rich Hume Jennifer Baier Anaya Michelle Chiantera

Jay McBain, Chief Analyst – Channels, Partnerships & Ecosystems – Canalys:

Check out the leading Tech Solutions Brokers (new name for Master Agents). ScanSource acquired Intelisys, Telarus just made another acquisition in June, and more activity is in the works with the large distributors. Interesting space as the edge increasingly involves distributing bits AND atoms.

Peter Chu- Digital Transformation Problem Solver

Brilliant response Jay McBain. TSBs are fulfilling the need

Jeff:

The Follow-up question is where will the marketplaces be? We know that Verizon, and T-Mobile have been building out their marketplaces for the edge support software. Will the TSB’s have their own, will they refer to others? Van Murray you and Jay McBain would have an interesting dialogue on this. Peter Chu do you see the TSB’s filling the marketplace needs?

Jay:

Jeff Mesnik about a half dozen types of marketplaces will serve end clients in this space – the question is what share will they each have in 5 years? I wouldn’t bet against the super marketplaces (hyperscalers) getting a big chunk of the pie.

Jeff:

Jay McBain Thank you Jay! For those following this conversations here is a link to Jay’s blog, which I would argue is required reading for people who work in the channel: https://canalys.com/insights/How-to-successfully-build-channel-ecosystems-to-drive-subscription-and-consumption-models

The benefit of this conversation was it informed and engaged a good audience with comments, impressions and reactions. The ongoing challenge is generating these conversations. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and join my conversations- let’s keep these important conversations going!

Every technology company we work with has always discussed the struggle of getting partners to engage regularly with their marketing portals. And there are so many different reasons why these companies are not leveraging what could be a valuable resource for the partners. One clear reason is they are built for companies, but the users are people.

At ContentMX we have spent a long time thinking about the needs of the people who work for the partners and how our applications or content marketplace(s) best serve them.

Our answer is to not force a behavior, but instead to build it organically.

What makes us think we have a solution? 40% at the low-end of the users engage our platform every month for content. Many of the content streams we offer have usage as high as 60% or 70%. We also have reported sales from partners ranging from $50,000 to $2.5 Million.

If you are interested in learning more about why this program works so well, and how it will support your current partner portals while increasing ROI, our team would love to share why over 10,000 partners use content from over 30 different content streams. Email me- at sales@ContentMX.com

When I have meetings with vendors about joining one of our marketplaces, I am often asked if our program is a TCMA (through channel marketing application). As I walk the vendor through the similarities and differences between our marketplace and a TCMA, I have also often heard: “This is a significant change in approach. While change can be hard, selling the upside of that change is where success lies.

For years partner portals have focused on services and systems designed to “support partners” but from a perspective of the vendor requirements and not necessarily from a partner perspective. Typically engagement with portals is based on an action in exchange for earning co-op or MDF. The number of partners or sellers that engage with portals to improve sales or marketing tends to be in the single percentages. Why? Because the upside they offer isn’t totally apparent, and therefore partners spend their time on other things, like selling.

A content marketplace should glean usage in the 40% or greater range because it is designed with partner usability first. Additionally, there is no requirement to receive co-op or MDF, so partners are using it to strictly improve their own sales.  

Take a look at what we’ve heard from some of our users…

“I love the auto-posting feature! We closed a deal worth $2.5 million thanks to the content from your site that I post every week. The customer found our content on one of my social media accounts. Thank you for making it easy to stay consistent and in front of my network.” -Kenneth Dawsoni, CEO & Founder 

“After posting through Curated Content, I received a reply from a customer. We were able to respond and assist with the project. Curated Content enabled us to connect with our audience and our customer said they will be a MapSy customer for many years to come!” -Jim Howell, National Sales Account Manager

“Using Curated Content helps our small company appear much larger. We can now compete with larger companies because Curated Content has enabled us to optimize our marketing strategy. This validates us as a company that can provide services to larger enterprise clients.” -Richard Minnigh, Vice President

“Our social media presence has more than doubled since we started using DemandSolv. Additionally, our LinkedIn followers have increased by 34%. We are reaching more potential customers and having more conversations with them on social media than ever before. Thank you for helping us increase our reach and grow our business!” -Mike Turicchi, Vice President, Strategic Relations and Marketing

Ours is a revolutionary approach to creating a partner program. In order to be successful, we have to match the goals and objectives of the partners and the vendors.   

Here are some of the goals we take into consideration:

Educate the partner:  A stream of content that triggers new content based on content consumption.

Marketing: Successful marketing is about being consistent and available when a need arrives. Content that tells a story every week of the year helps ensure that a consistent message is delivered to the consumer

Triggering Opportunities: Consistent content generates opportunities, but the challenge is to know when they are ripe for a sales engagement. Developing content in line with the weekly stream to trigger a reaction, such as a like, or request for a meeting strengthens the lead and indicates a readiness for the next step in the sales process. 

Reporting new opportunities or deals: With over 40% of the users engaged with the platform, the program offers opportunities to offer rewards for specific actions, such as deal sharing or registration.

The above are just examples of a few of channel marketers’ goals and examples of how a content marketplace achieves the desired outcomes while helping partners.  It may be time to rethink how to go to market with portals.  Perhaps the partner-first approach is just the revolution needed to engage a busy partner base with effective marketing and sales support. 

Consistent, and expected messaging through the channel drives the greatest return.

The question is: are we ready for a revolution?   

“…this idea that if we build it, they will come. And they don’t. We get to look back every year for decades now at what the adoption rates are of different technologies and stuff, and they just don’t. And by the way, when you take the adoption, you actually take the logins and take away the people that are forced to come to your portal to claim money to do a deal registration or to do actual things necessary to maintain their business, the amount of people that walk into your library and go to the Dewey Decimal System and just browse around your portal is zero, literally zero, nobody has the time. – Jay McBain from the podcast Partner Portals Live, Partner Hacker.

Partner Hacker is a relatively new podcast, and the quote was taken from a conversation between Jay McBain  Chief Analyst Canalys, Chip Rodgers Chief Marketing Officer Workspan, Rick Van Den Bosch Founder CEO Channext, and Jimmy Hatzell Director of Marketing Quickpass. The dialogue is among the most relevant I have heard. I highly recommend checking it out.

The question this group discussed is if there is a need for full partner marketing portals and if they should be owned, rented, leased, or maybe it’s a combination. Jay delivers an important point around the need for vendors to qualify to who information is delivered in order to keep it private if needed.  But, organizations need to improve how the partners are drawn into the destination that delivers the relevant content. Keeping the above comment in context, his point was that a field of dreams program doesn’t drive engagement. Vendors need to draw in the partner by offering gateways from destinations at which the partners are actually spending time.  

Chip Rogers introduces the following concept: 

“…how do we all work together, but still have security and still be able to lock down. Like when I’m working with you and I have trust in you, I want to make sure that that is a trusted relationship. But I also want to work with, you know, 10 other people, and they also want to work with other people and manage those trust relationships while you’re able to work with everybody. So I think that’s the architectural that needs to happen…”

To ensure we keep this in context, he is talking about how to create a more collaborative environment, and what that requires. He is not disputing Jay, he is discussing an architecture of a platform where the partner can receive secure information but also engage with others. 

What is most interesting to me, is that through this podcast they define the use case around the challenges of what a vendor needs for their partners. But, less time is focused on partner requirements. Partner useability seems to be the primary challenge all systems have. As Jay says, if you take away the musts-dos to get paid, the usage of these systems is very little to none. 

It is not that a partner or a seller doesn’t want or need the marketing support, it is that they don’t have the time to deploy the campaigns, and the usability of the application tends to not be focused on them. 

Here are examples of how we address needs:

Partner Need and Use Case:

Need: Easy to use solution that can work in line with their workflow.

Use case: Content is updated every Monday so that it works in line with their weekly planning.

Need: Content that is automatically customized and posted.

Use Case: One-time set-up that provides the needed customized fields. 

Need: Leads

Use case: Workflow new opportunities sent to the seller weekly. 

Need: Stay educated and informed.

Use case: Access to content weekly or on-demand that creates a learning track.

Vendor need and use case

Need: Provide messaging to partners regularly.

Use case: Weekly expected emails with targeted messaging to partners about content.

Need: Education

Use case: Educational materials delivered to partners and triggered based on completion of learning track.

Need: Content only for a select audience.

Use case: Partners need to provide qualifying information to receive a content stream.

The podcast really dove into the challenges of the vendor and partner worlds, and as it continues to evolve we will continue to learn more about these challenges.