An easy way to measure partner satisfaction and strategize for better product sales is to conduct channel partner surveys. While technology has made it rather simple to monitor KPIs, an old-fashioned survey not only assists you to build an ideal partner profile but also helps identify your best partners.
5 Reasons Why You Should Survey Your Channel Partners
Feedback is not only important when it comes from the customer – hearing back from your channel partners is just as essential.
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Channel partner surveys help you develop insight into whether or not they are happy with your products/services, and if you make them feel like a valued member of the team.
Moreover, surveying your channel partners can help identify the ones that are more engaged and if you should be changing anything to improve partner experience.
Here, we will discuss five reasons why surveying your channel partners is vital for increased sales.
1. Know If Channel Partners are Satisfied WIth Your Partner Program
The key to driving more sales is providing more value to the customer with your products/ services.
A good channel partner program is strategized in a way that automatically motivates partners to perform to their fullest potential. This is only possible when there are clear guidelines, support tools, and organizational framework that informs all involved parties of their particular role to play in improving sales.
By surveying your channel partners, you get a direct look into your company’s practices when it comes to providing necessary support. While channel partner programs can differ due to the customer base, a good partner program has excellent sales tools, thorough training, and certifications.
Moreover, such programs also ensure your partners have access to support staff should they run into any technical problems and exciting leads to improve engagement.
If your partner program lacks the needed support, your sales graph will ultimately go down. To keep your partner program working and ensure you have given your partners all the tools to succeed, asking for feedback is very important.
Should you find out your partners lack the desired support from your program, you can make the required changes to help engage your channel partners to perform better.
According to research, companies with an average of 9.3 engaged employees per disengaged employee had 147% more earnings for every share compared to the standard in the next year. In the same way, engaged channel partners can help ramp up sales, and a good partner program can help achieve that.
2. Learn What Partners Think of Your Product/ Service
Your channel partners are the link to your customer base. A channel partner survey can also help you learn what your partners think about your product or service.
Why is this important?
Well, your product’s feedback from your partner gives you a direct outlook into what kind of problems customers are facing using your products or services. This helps you make valuable decisions when it comes to product upgrades to increase sales.
Moreover, popular products result in elevated partner profitability. Naturally, the more profitable your product is to your channel partner, the more effort and time they will invest in your training and sales.
3. Understand How Your Channel Partners Work
When surveying your channel partners, you can (and should) include questions about their marketing and sales strategy. In this way, you can use the survey results to understand how your product or service is being marketed to the customer base.
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A channel partner survey can help you determine which channel partners have integrated selling your product/services in their business plan. This will give an insight into whether your channel partners are using any assets to support your product sales.
Thus, surveying your channel partners will help you filter more engaged partners from those who are disinterested.
You can also determine how invested your partners are in your brand by their responses – the ones with detailed answers usually put more effort than the ones who give star ratings. Both are better than ones who do not bother answering surveys at all. (Varying responses also have to do with how you curate your survey – but more on that later in the article.)
4. Identify Partners With More Potential to Drive Sales
We have already discussed how surveys can help you identify your top-performing partners, who actively make selling your product a part of their business plan. However, what about the channel partners that have the potential to drive much more sales but have not had the required support from you?
Vendors usually have a huge partner base, and it is unrealistic to expect them to work closely with all the partners. Ultimately, most vendors only work in direct relation with partners with the most transitions. However, when you run a survey to measure partner satisfaction, you also have the chance to extend the number of crucial partners.
Insights from satisfaction surveys help businesses determine which partner, with training, can work as a managed partner. Overall, the survey results allow you to procure increased channel partner loyalty. It also allows you to come up with successful growth plans, as you would for priority clients.
5. Opportunity to Develop Better Strategic Partnerships
When it comes to developing channel partnerships that last, communication is vital. Inform your partners of any problems that might affect the supply and demand of your product.
When you conduct a channel partner survey, you provide them with an opportunity to convey any problems they might be facing – whether they are about supply chain, inadequate technical support, or customer satisfaction. By providing your partners with a platform to give feedback, you will know more about them and facilitate them better.
Your partners will appreciate that you have taken out time to understand their problems. Vendors asking for and acting upon partner feedback makes them feel like part of the team rather than being part of a purely transactional relationship.
Things You Should Ask in A Channel Partner Survey
Now that we have discussed how important it is to conduct channel partner surveys, let us discuss what questions to include for effective results.
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First and foremost, make sure that the survey questions are easy to comprehend. The length of the surveys also depends on how frequently you send them.
For quarterly surveys, go for a short version. You can send longer surveys annually. Remember that your partners are busy and cannot fill very long surveys too often.
By including the following topics in your survey questions, you will be able to assess your top-performing partners, figure out what your strengths are, and rectify your weaknesses. You will also be able to retain better relationships with your partners should you choose the information in the answers wisely.
- Location Details: Ask questions about location details, like how many employees they have, what kind of offices they operate from, and their company size. This helps you confirm details about your partners.
- Sales and Marketing Resources: Profile your partners based on the kind of sales and marketing resources they have. You can ask questions about their target market, the numbers of sales reps they have, whether they have a marketing staff, the size of their customer base, and the lead pool.
- Where Your Product Stands in Sales Strategy: Ask about their sales strategy and how they have incorporated your product/ service as an integral part. You can ask for their sales or marketing strategy and ask them how your products fit in with their current plans.
Answers to these questions should give you a good idea of whether your partners have a strategic plan to market your product with testable outcomes.
- Their Best Qualities: Most of your partners are competing for customers in the same market space. Thus, it is important to assess why they think customers would choose them over other prospects.
You can ask questions about their ideal customers and what they do to attract them. Ask why they took on selling your product – this gives you insight into your product performance and customer feedback.
- Feedback About Your Business: Lastly, add questions about your business and how well you can assist them with your partner program.
Once your partners share their frustrations, make sure you take it on the chin. Follow up with questions asking them advice on how to improve on your support.
Always thank your partners for their time and use the results to improve channel partner facilitation. It is always a great idea to offer some tangible reward in return for your partners’ time.
How Often Should You Conduct A Channel Partner Survey?
To continually support your channel partners to the best of your ability, it is important to conduct surveys consistently.
However, make sure you do not send them too often. Make the surveys easy to answer, providing options to select or rate on a scale of 1 – 5. You can also ask them to agree or disagree with a statement.
If you want, you can make the surveys anonymous, resulting in more honest answers, especially when conveying negative feedback.
Conclusion
Channel partner surveys provide valuable insight when it comes to achieving partner satisfaction, procuring stronger partner relations, and facilitating parents for increased sales and ROI.