The last few weeks I’ve been talking about how to build a GTM Program Wheel, shown in Figure 1 below, that aligns your company to drive revenue for your products and alliances.
- First we defined the layers of a GTM program in “Is Your Channel Program an “Onion”? Leveraging the GTM Wheel to Build a Program that Drives Revenue”
- Then we talked about 2 Common Mistakes in Defining the “Hub” of the “Channel GTM Wheel” that limit revenue for products and channels
- Last week we talked about the program elements, of the GTM Wheel, in “Are the Spokes of Your “GTM Wheel” Aligned to Drive Revenue?”
Figure 1: The “GTM Wheel”
This week we will be talking about the underlying foundation, or “The Tire” of the GTM wheel highlighted in Figure 2 below. The “Tire of the GTM Wheel is the Operations and Infrastructure that take your GTM program and make it a reality for your team and your partners.
Figure 2: Operations and Infrastructure: The “Tire” on the “GTM Wheel”
Think about the last time that you talked with one of your leading partners about their experience working with your company. What was their feedback? Was it about needs for product changes, was it about creating a new program element or incentive, or was it an urgent request to fix an existing program, to make it more effective or easier to use? The bottom line is that loose processes or bad system infrastructure = unsatisfied partners – and that results in missed revenue opportunities.
Let’s take the example of Deal Registration to illustrate the impact of Operations and Infrastructure on the perceived value of your program to your partners. Deal Registration is a foundational element of many channel programs. As I discussed in an earlier post on the value of Deal Registration, a well-executed program can reduce channel conflict, give you visibility to your pipeline and help you manage incentives – IF the program reality matches the promise of the program promotional flyer.
Some common Operations and/or Infrastructure issues that I’ve seen with Deal Registration Programs include:
- Long delays in approvals make the program frustrating to use and approvals a “black hole” There are a number of potential causes for this issue, including:
- Approval hierarchy and territories not cleanly defined, so approvals and deal registrations go to the wrong person for approval, get rerouted, or require escalation to senior executives – creating a bottleneck and leaving approval with the person who has the least information on the deal in question.
- Poor Deal Registration System or PRM System , the system has usability issues such as requiring manual log in to approve a registration. Best practice is to use integrations between email and PRMs such as salesforce.com to enable a vendor Rep to approve a registration via email, and to have the approval status updated in their PRM system
- Regardless of the cause, from a partner perspective, if you submit a registration for a deal with a vendor and approval seems to take forever or is fraught with mistakes, some partner sales reps will conclude “why bother” – and you will miss revenue opportunities
- Difficulty in getting paid the deal registration incentive
- Many deal registration incentives are paid as additional discount through distribution. Many programs provide different benefits to resellers based on meeting program tier requirements, and limit benefits to specific resellers. How does your Distributor know which partners are eligible for what program benefits?
- If you pay deal registration as a rebate, do you pay through the distribution or direct to the reseller? Using the Distributor increases complexity and how will they handle this operationally. Paying incentives directly means you need back account information for each partner – another set of processes and infrastructure you need to set up…
- Requirement to enter too much data or register the same deal with multiple channel partners may mean that partners may not register the opportunity with you at all
- Even if you have an attractive program, the reseller may get turned off by your 6 page registration process that requires them to name all customer contacts, their phone numbers and children’s names, along with every meeting in the last 10 years…. Yes you want to know they initiated a deal at the account, but you want to see hundreds or thousands of qualified deal registrations – so if each one is painful and unrealistic, expect utilization to be low…
- Resellers may have to register 3-5 vendors (and deal with each of their programs and systems) for the same project. They all want the same information, but each has its own portal and processes. Can’t the vendors work together to simplify this process…. If you put complexity in registration or getting paid, again the Rep may say “why bother” and you lose deal visibility. One option to deal with this issue is to look at multi-vendor solution registration, as discussed in my recent post.
Vendors typically have many program elements, such as MDF Programs, Program Rebates, NFR Licenses, Professional Services IP transfer, and pricing based on training completed, program level, certifications, incentives, etc….. Each of these program elements have their own set of challenges parallel to what I’ve outlined for Deal Registration. Clearly, how well you set up Operations and Infrastructure for your program has a major impact on how your channel adopts it and how effectively you drive revenue.
Share your experiences!
- What are some things you have seen for Deal Registration Operations and Infrastructure that you’d like to share with other readers?
- What are some of your experiences where Operations and Infrastructure were critical to other elements of your GTM Program?
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