How to Deploy the Right Partner Relationship Management System.
As your company continues to develop, proper engagement with your channel partners through a comprehensive Partner Relationship Management platform or a PRM system becomes ever more .
Without clear and concise communication, your brand is at a much higher risk to experience:
- depleted sales
- misinterpretation of your company’s objectives
- missed investment opportunities
- and overall, lowers the potential of being a leading brand within your industry.
That’s because, under organized sale’s leadership, your channel partners can better establish themselves to maximize:
- business opportunities
- manage fruitful customer relationships
- build on an infrastructure that is both transparent and efficient.
Deploying “partner enablement” or a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) into your channel infrastructure provides your business with an invaluable opportunity. Automating your channel relationship through software like CMR’s, allows you to swiftly adapt to changing market conditions. These solutions help:
- streamline information to optimize business opportunities
- reduce channel management costs
- enable consistent two-way communication
- decrease channel conflict
- improve the management of incentive (rebate) programs
- provide channel partners with the tools to better service the end-customer.
Therefore, growing companies that fail to implement a PRM system into their channel risk more than just miscommunication. They also can cause a catalog of problems that could coerce your best channel partners to explore relationships with your biggest competitors. A reality no business would (or should) have to face.
However, simply having a PRM system for your channel partners is not enough. Each of your channel partners is unique. Therefore, each of your partners requires a specific platform that corresponds with yours and their exclusive (and strategic) business objectives.
Here are three ways to maximize success when designing your PRM System:
1. User-friendly Navigation Features
What good is a PRM platform if it fails to make things easier for your channel partners?
Automating channel information is supposed to speed up opportunities, not delay them. Remember, your channel partners are busy, and busy people like simple solutions to make their job easier and more efficient. Therefore, you need to implement intuitive features that are engaging, easy to comprehend, aesthetically pleasing and have a clear direction of what to do/where to go. Treat your navigational design as an extension to your own preferences, and if you’re like most, the simpler the features are, the easier your job becomes.
2.) Implement more than one Incentive Program
Trade promotions are essential marketing tactics deployed by manufacturers to their channel distributors and resellers. The ultra-competitive, complex environment of today’s marketplace requires incentives to be deployed in order to retain an edge over competitors while maintaining the interest of channel partners. But, who’s to say your incentive programs should be singular or offer one-dimensional perks? Therefore, you should diversify your PRM system by offering exclusive and unique bonus opportunities for your channel partners. So, the more offerings you implement, the better likelihood your channel partners will interpret your relationship as a valuable component to their success. And as your incentive programs begin to diversify, the more you will need .
3.) Salesforce Integration
Salesforce offers a very methodical approach to sales management, but there is a lot to it, and if you don’t have a competent Salesforce administrator/ consultant—channel management becomes even more complex.
Integrating Salesforce software into your B2B channel partnership is . Today’s generation of “data driven” businesses mandates sales information to be seamlessly accessible.
Fortunately, external ‘automation’ providers, such as CMR, simplify this process by integrating your Salesforce program in conjunction with other channel management programs (ex. Ship and Debit, Co-op/MDF, deal registration, gamification, Spiffs, etc.).
The Power of ‘Automation’ via Channel Sales Management
Computer Market Research (CMR) brings over 30 years of experience to the indirect channel sales industry.
Through our state-of-the-art software, businesses can amplify their B2B marketing efforts via clear and concise content that assists organizations to manage channel data, optimize trade promotions, and build effective distribution channels.
Through their PRM System, CMR can help businesses maximize their relationship with distributing partners and establish transparent, two-way communication that is built around a common goal of success. Our cost-effective, is the perfect tool for any business looking to strengthen their bond with channel partners via innovative solutions that convert data into intelligence.