Channel Not Selling Your Products? Help them “Productize” Your Offering within Their Business (Part 5 of Series)
In the “Channel Not Selling (enough of) Your Product Series, we’ve been exploring the root causes of low channel revenue and what you can do about it. Below you can see an overview of the topics discussed so far, links to these posts and a summary of how these posts fit together to help readers take action.
In Part 1, we discussed,3 Questions You Can Ask to Diagnose the Problem
- What is the Value Proposition for partners to invest their time in selling your product?
- Is your product and go-to-market program “Channel-Ready”
- What is the Sales Process for your product and how does it fit into how your channel partners sell?
- In Part 2, we discussed Question #3 as 2 layers to understand, “How Do You Fit Into the Way They Sell?”
– Layer 1: What 3 Questions Indicate Whether You Need to Sell “Solutions”?
– Layer 2: Getting built into a Partners’ Business “Practice”
- In Part 3 we discussed how to address Question #3 in “2 Steps to Connect Your Products to How Your Channel Sells “
– Steps to overcome the “Solution Branding Box”
– Steps to make your GTM programs connect with how partners do business – by helping partners “Productize” selling your product within their business
- In Part 4 we talked about the balance between recruiting and enablement – Should You Recruit, Enable Or Both? How Do You Decide?
- In part 5 today, we will drill down on what it means to “productize” offerings
In today’s post we are going back to the recommendation to help your partners sell your products within their “Productized” solutions. What does that really mean and what are some concrete steps you can take to help partners “Productize selling your product within their business?
What’s Next on the “Cloudy” VAR Landscape: What’s a VAR To Do …?
If you’ve read previous posts for my “Climbing Out of the Box” Blog, you may have noticed that the point of view is from the vendor perspective – e.g. “How do I sell more of my product to customers?” You also may have noticed that the #1 piece of advice has been to “put yourself in the shoes of the customer” to understand their challenges and how your company could help, so that you can market and sell your products as part of solutions that connect to the customer perspective.
The same dynamic holds true for your sales channels and your channel partners. As the customer requirements for buying IT products move toward solutions, outcomes, software and SaaS/cloud services (rather than hardware and point products,) your channel has had to evolve from the traditional hardware-centric model. For your company to be successful, you need to be talking to your partners to understand the channel perspective, and you need to be taking steps to create new sales opportunities for you and your channel partners that reflect the changing sales and channel model…
Guest Blog Post from Thom McAleer (more…)
Leadership? Management? Neither? “What’s in your Company’s Wallet?”
One of the most interesting elements of being a consultant is observing the differences (and similarities) between how different companies handle a particular challenge. To get this visibility, you don’t always have to work directly with a company – often this visibility comes from networking and business development discussions about “what is working”, and “what is not” with colleagues, or more formal forums like a “Partner Advisory Council (PAC).
One area that I find is challenging for many companies in the tech industry is the dynamic of “Leadership vs. Management”. For both small and large tech companies, leadership and management are required, but the needs vary quite dramatically and I’ve often seen companies that are short one or both of these types of DNA. Table 1 below shows accepted definitions of these terms. (more…)
Channel Not Selling Your Products? Should You Recruit? Enable? Or Both? How Do You Decide? (Part 4 of Series)
Part 4 of a Series: Channel Not Selling Your Products?
- Part 1: 3 Questions You Can Ask to Diagnose the Problem
- Part 2: How Do You Fit Into the Way They Sell?
- Part 3: 2 Steps to Connect Your Products to How Your Channel Sells
- Part 4: Should You Recruit, Enable Or Both? How Do You Decide?
- Part 5: Help Your Channel “Productize” Your Offering within Their Business
Over the past few weeks, I’ve written a series of posts about how to activate a channel to drive revenue. But activation/enablement is often not the default strategy to drive channel sales for tech vendors. I’ve found that the first instinct of many technology companies when they want additional revenue is “Let’s Recruit Some New Partners”. It can often make sense to add partners, but before you do that you should take a look at the productivity for your existing channel partners. What approach would make sense in the example below? (more…)
“Climbing Out of the Box”™ 