Channel Not Ready to Sell? 2 Simple Steps to Enable Channel Revenue (Part 2 of Series)

In last weeks’ post I talked about the “5 Natural Laws of Channel Enablement”, and how following these approaches can help technology vendors “Climb out of the Box™” and drive more revenue through their channels. We also talked in detail about Natural Law #1 – the importance of enabling your partners to do something specific – not just know more about your product.

The 5 Natural Laws of Channel Enablement

1. Enable Your Channel to Do something (not Know something)
2. Enablement ≠ Training – Training and Tools must go “hand-in-hand”
3. Channel Sales Training ≠ Vendor Rep Sales Training – Enable Channel partners based on how they sell
4. Enablement must be “Packaged” within a Channel Program, to drive adoption and channel revenue…
5. Sales Engagement: How channel enablement becomes revenue $

This week I will talk about talk about Natural Law #2 and difference between enabling your channel and training your channel…

I worked at VMware for nearly six years in the mid/late 2000s as the first global director of channel marketing and programs. Although we had a broad charter, a big focus of our team was to enable our channel to sell and deliver VMware. These experiences were foundational for me, and over time, I have seen similar dynamics play out with many other technology vendors. These recurring patterns for enablement drive the need for updated, “Out of the Box” practices in channel enablement.

So how do you build partner enablement, and what is the role of training? When most of us engage with a new company, they already have an approach and we pick up the next focus project, sometimes without stepping back to see what the overall goals are and where the focus should be… In my enablement experience at VMware, the first priority was a baseline web-based sales accreditation program that allowed us to scale basic knowledge of our product. The next priority was a technical sales accreditation program to scale channel SE’s ability to support the sales process. In both of these projects, the sales training team developed the curriculum and materials, and the enablement team built the program, worked with the learning management system (LMS) and built the requirements into the core partner program. Everyone was happy – for a very brief time J

After the baseline was done, the requests started rolling in for….

• More localization
• More advanced sales training
• More technical SE training
• More/Any professional services training and tools
• And materials that were more directly applicable to “selling”

The task we prioritized was “Solution Whiteboarding”, because the feedback we were getting from the field and from the channel was that the biggest gap in our “enablement” was the lack of understanding of how products were used by customers to solve their problems. We found that some of the leading field Reps and channel partners were whiteboarding how VMware addressed Disaster Recovery, and were dramatically increasing the sale of products.

Once we knew what we wanted partners to be able to do, the challenge became how to help others in the channel to do the same thing. Product training was not the answer, so we documented best practices, created a DR whiteboard kit with a script and example video. We thought about delivery via the web, but since doing is an experience, we set off around the world doing hands on workshops with rooms full of 50-100 partners (all standing up at flip charts doing their own DR whiteboards). We got great comments like, “the best enablement I have ever gotten from any vendor…”

Why, was this enablement so well received?

• Because it helped a partner do something – whiteboard a solution (Law #1)
• Because it was not simply “training” – it was experiential and helped a Channel Rep or SE actually have a whiteboard discussion with a potential client – and that leads to revenue (Law #2)

Let’s generalize this process.

1. Identify What task you want partners to be able to do
2. Ask yourself, How can we help partners learn to do this?

Training is part of the answer – but you also need “tools”. As depicted in Figure 1 below, think of Enablement formula for success as a simple equation – Training + Tools = Channel Enablement

Figure 1: The Channel Enablement Formula for Success

 

The marriage between “Training” and “Tools” is a critical point.

• Neither training or tools stand alone to “enable” your channel
  • When you develop training, you will need a tool to help them put the training into practice
  • When you develop a tool, you will need training on how to use that tool within a sales process
• The tools needed are things we are all familiar with, but they are used in a coordinated way that maps directly to your sales training
  • Tools like “whiteboards with scripts”, sales battlecards, qualification tools, role playing, sample videos, etc…

In my experience, tools and training need to be done in 100% lock step and without both you don’t get “enablement”. But what I’ve seen in the industry is often just the opposite. Training and tools are done in very different ways by different teams within the organization, often with little connection. Training often ends up somewhere in sales or marketing, or perhaps a “Technical Services” executive who owns consultants, SEs and training.

Where do “tools” reside in a typical tech organization? Nowhere and Everywhere… Marketing creates some tools for “campaigns” and sales battlecards – but generally from a high-level marketing perspective. Product Marketing creates tons of training (that they consider sales training) for their product and sometimes some “tools”. Sometimes a “tool” is even a “product” (like an assessment tool that gathers data on an environment and recommends changes), and is owned by Product Management. But that is death to the “tool”. Since it does not have direct revenue it is always prioritized below actual “products”, even in some cases I have seen where you can attribute 20% of company revenue to the channel and field reps using the tool…. I have rarely seen a dedicated focus on creating sales tools within a company – even some very large ones.

We’ve defined what is needed for a channel to be “enabled”, but remember that enablement without action does not create revenue. To create revenue, channel partners have to gain experience doing the things that lead to sales of your product. How do you do that? That is a topic for a later post in this series…

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