Successful businesses understand the importance of channel partners and treat them like an extension of the sales team. Therefore, you need an excellent channel manager who can manage your partners and come up with channel marketing activities that drive sales.
A good channel manager is essential to any sales team. But, what if you are hiring a new channel manager after your old manager has left your company?
The ideal scenario would be to transition smoothly to a new manager, who can keep up with your partners. However, for a new channel manager to understand their job well (and quickly), they need to be acquainted with company policies, goals, targets, and partner practices.
This article will discuss how you can help your new channel manager settle into their job role in no time.
Why Do You Need A Channel Manager?
While some companies prefer to market their products to the customers directly, this approach can get too much to handle, too fast – and that is when you need to employ a channel manager.
More than three-quarters of world trade is attributed to partner sales, which makes managing them essential to sales growth.
A channel manager deals with channel partners, aka consumer-facing partners. Such managers are crucial to any company’s ROI and sales growth as they are usually involved in developing and implementing best sales practices for specific channel partner/s.
A channel manager is responsible for monitoring and facilitating channel partners, accommodating them with your company’s internal resources when needed.
Understanding why channel partners are so important is very simple. These professionals act as the face of your brand for many channel partners, who eventually market and sell your product/ services to customers. Thus, hiring the right person for the job, and equipping them with the right information (quickly) is of utmost importance.
5 Ways You Can Get A Channel Manager Up To Speed in No Time
Now that we have discussed how essential a channel manager is to any business, let us discuss ways of how you can equip a new channel manager with the knowledge and tools to excel at their job.
1. Define Clear Goals for Them
First and foremost, you need to define clear goals for the new channel manager. After hiring a new manager for channel partners, you need to ensure that they are well-versed with the company objectives and the sales target set for them.
Talk to them about channel strategy and how to align cumulative business goals with sales goals. While any good channel manager comes in with the expertise to set achievable sales targets for channel partners, you need to inform them of your expectations from the sales unit.
Keep in mind that defining goals for the channel manager does include not only revenue sales targets but also metrics like ROI targets for channel strategy and cost of sales.
This information will help your new channel manager create a unified and robust partner plan which will help identify your ideal partner profile and how you can serve customers better.
2. Familiarize Them With The Partner
Your channel manager deals with your channel partners directly, whether it is monitoring their performance or lending them the needed support for better sales opportunities. Therefore, your new channel manager must know your channel partners well.
Good communication is the key to efficient channel management. A good channel manager represents both the company and the partners fairly, resolving channel conflicts effectively.
One of the most prominent qualities of a good channel manager is their ability to assist channel partners as a sales coach and provide them with the right resources to make the sales processes as smooth as possible. This frictionless relationship is only possible when the partners trust the channel manager.
If the channel partners do not trust the new channel manager, there will be a communication breakdown which will eventually hurt overall sales. Therefore, for elevated sales, it is essential that the new channel manager is familiar with the partners, understands their issues, and quickly resolves them
Familiarization also allows the new channel manager to direct incentives to top-performing partners to build stronger partnerships.
3. Set Channel Partner Expectations
While we are on the topic of the importance of a new channel manager understanding the partner ecosystem to adjust it for better sales, we should also discuss channel partner expectations.
Depending on your company size, your channel manager collaborates with all or some of your channel partners. With multiple partners to supervise, you must inform the manager of your expectations from each partner.
Having predefined expectations for channel partners will help the new manager add more value when partners sell products and solutions from your company. Why is this important? The answer is simple – channel partners work with vendors who have quality products, a good market reputation, and good monetary return while maintaining long-term collaborative partnerships.
When your new channel manager is informed of what you expect from each channel partner, it can help them create a channel sales strategy that can meet your sales expectations while satisfying the partners. Moreover, defining partner expectations will allow the new channel manager to engage closely with your top-performing partners and evaluate partnerships that have lost significance.
4. Allow Easy Extension of Tools and Support
A good channel manager lends technical support and tools to partners to improve sales. The practice of sharing company resources to assist partners enables mutual benefits to meet sales targets much more efficiently.
For your new channel manager to get the most out of your partners, you should allow information usage, resources, and tools from your platform. We are not suggesting that you keep no thresholds to protect your company’s information and data, but keep it low and simple.
Allowing your new channel manager to extend tools and support from your platform will help them establish long-running partnerships.
Giving your new channel manager freedom to allow easy access to company support sets you apart from the competition. It provides extra incentive to the partners to work hard to drive more sales for you.
In simple words, a happy partner = a well-settled channel manager who can create better sales strategies.
5. Set Up A Partner Portal
A channel portal can be an expressway option to get your new channel manager up to speed. If you do not have a partner portal, we suggest you invest in setting one up.
A well-built partner portal is a platform for partners to submit their requests and queries. It also contains well-organized updated information about your company and the products/ services you offer. Moreover, efficient models of partner portals also send out monthly newsletters with an overview of useful information planned to help partners accelerate sales.
Although the portal is to provide partners with valuable information and extend support, it can also act as a resource to bring a new channel manager up to speed. With the portal, the new channel manager will familiarize himself with your company and products (essential to evaluate partners better), allowing him insight into partners’ needs and issues.
Keep in mind that only a value-rich, timely-updated portal will be of any use to the manager. However, if properly maintained, it can help orient a new channel manager rather effectively.
Finding the Right Channel Manager
We have discussed why a channel manager is important and how to get a new one to perform optimally in no time. However, that is only possible when you have chosen the right person for the job. Otherwise, no amount of training, support, or additional resources will help them manage your partners efficiently.
When hiring a channel manager, look for someone who understands both sales and marketing. A good channel manager candidate will have experience working with sophisticated channel programs. Look for someone who can assist and engage partners.
Moreover, the perfect candidate will come with awareness regarding vendor support needed by partners for improved sales.
However, keep in mind that a company’s size and how they operate determine what entails this job. Thus, the responsibilities of a channel manager in mega organizations will not be the same as start-ups with a limited number of partners.
Depending on the operational style of your business, a channel manager needs to take on various jobs. For example, if a company is still in the process of establishing its sales and marketing teams, a channel manager will have to take on responsibilities that are otherwise handled by corporate marketing in bigger brands.
The bottom line is that a channel manager has evolving job requirements. However, you need to hire someone who has the experience to deal with the demand of your sales channel, whether it is developing a partner program, tracking sales growth, training partners, or all of the above.
Conclusion
Channel managers are pivotal to the growth of any business. They act side-by-side with channel partners and could be the deciding factor why a top-performing partner will choose you over your competitors.
Therefore, it is essential to get your new channel manager acquainted with their job quickly.
With our tips, you can not only get your new channel manager up-to-speed about your sales channel, but you can also assist them in establishing even stronger relationships with existing and new channel partners.