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Reps and Channel Not Selling Your Product? Perhaps They Think Selling it Might Be Embarrassing”…

July 12, 2015 2:00 am / Leave a comment

I’ve had this conversation so many times with clients, potential clients and friends – the question is:

Why are the Vendor Reps and Channel Not Selling a Particular Product?

Channel Partners

For channel partners, the answers usually track back to not connecting to how the partners are thinking about selling – and where the product fits This topic was covered in detail in my Channel Not Selling Your Product series of posts, and in particular

  1. What is the Value Proposition for partners to invest their time in selling your product?
  2. Is your product and go-to-market program “Channel-Ready”
  3. What is the Sales Process for selling your product and how does it fit into how your channel partners sell?

 

Vendor Reps

For Vendor Reps, the challenges have the same root causes, with some different nuances. The bottom line is that they have to sell their companies’ products. But they do have some choices on which products they sell.

Of course they will sell the products where they think they can be successful, but this decision is more nuanced than we might think. Some of the variables that drive this decision include:

  • What products are customers asking about (so they can be reactive…)
  • Where is competitive positioning the strongest (so they have a high win rate)
  • What has the highest deal size (so they can win a few large deals and make money)
  • What has the shortest sales cycle (so they can close business this quarter)
  • What gets them into the key decision makers in the company (if their job is to sell deep at one or a few accounts)
  • The Missing X Factor???

But one key factor is missing from this list. Can you identify it? HINT: Think about human nature and what you personally would do when you are faced with a decision on where to spend your time…

The additional factor I am talking about is:

Where are the Sales Reps (Vendor or Channel) Comfortable Selling?

What drove this home for me was a recent client conversation selling a new technology. I was talking with their Product Marketing folks and we were discussing, “What information does sales needed to be successful selling our product?”

1. The first question to ask is, “What is it they need to do to be successful?”

We quickly agreed that we wanted sales to at least be able to create new opportunities (and that later stages of validation and closing would need specialists anyway). As a context for what we want sales and channel to be able to do, let’s use a basic sales process as shown in Figure 1 below. I talked about this dynamic in detail in my post on the First Natural Law of Enablement –

  • Enable Them to Do Something (not to know something)

 

Figure 1: The Basic Sales Process

Basic Sales Process (generalist and Why)

 

2. The second question to ask is, “What information does sales need?” to be successful with Step #1?

I’ve found that that there is clearly a need to focus on the “Why” the product matters to Customers at the front end of the sales cycle, but (somewhat surprisingly) you also need to provide information on “How” a solution works, to serve as “proof” that the solution is real and proven.

But the client’s PMM made an additional point that made me stop and think, as he suggested another key “enablement” need…

embarassed person image

 

3. The third question to ask, and the one this was the “aha moment” for me…

“What information do they need so that they will feel confident enough in their knowledge of the selling context to RISK BEING EMBARRASSED selling your product…”

That is an incredibly important point. How many times have we all seen salespeople steer conversations back to their area of expertise and that they know how to sell. It’s not just a proven track record of success and closed deals. The missing piece is human nature…

Vendor Reps and channel partners will not spend time selling your product if they are not comfortable enough about the customer context, the solution, the products and the overall market that they feel there is a low risk of being embarrassed (which is yet another reason why “Sales Engagement” is the last mile of channel enablement)

I welcome any comments below — And make sure you “Follow” our blog (look for the “Follow” link on the upper left) and have your say. I’m also available as a public speaker, to support local and global events in Silicon Valley, or the rest of the flattening world…

For more details, and to stay in touch with this community, contact me or Subscribe to our “Climbing Out of the Box” Newsletter via the form below.

Channel Not Ready to Sell: Do You Make “Enablement” Real with “On-the Job” Training? (Part 5 of the Series)

July 7, 2015 9:00 am / 1 Comment on Channel Not Ready to Sell: Do You Make “Enablement” Real with “On-the Job” Training? (Part 5 of the Series)

A number of my recent posts have focused on challenges and best practices to “enable” your channel and drive revenue. Below is the list of the posts so far:

Channel Not Ready to Sell?

 

In the final post of the series, we will be talking about Natural Law #5

  • Sales Engagement: How Channel Enablement Becomes Revenue $

 onthejobtraining image

 

Let’s start with a baseline question – How much training does it take for someone to be able to do something effectively? That seems like a reasonable question, but it actually misses a critical point of enablement.

  • In order to be “enabled” to do something, people need to learn how to do it, and then they need to practice the skills they’ve learned

But think about the “enablement” programs that you’ve seen in your career. How many of them provided opportunities to practice what was learned? I’ve seen it happen it happen occasionally, but not often. Sometimes the vendor coordinates “Role Plays” in a workshop setting, and I’ve done whiteboard training where the participants broke into small groups and practiced whiteboarding to each other. But for many vendors Training = Enablement, because creating “practice” can be complex, hard to measure, expensive and difficult to scale.

That statement defines the dilemma that tech vendors face:

  • Partners need practice to be effective selling
  • But providing a programmatic way to get practice can be complex and difficult to scale

What can vendors do the provide opportunities to practice and get partners “enabled to sell”. The answer is something that the sales reps do every day – talk to customers (and to do it with partners, as the final step in “enablement”). What I am suggesting is connecting your “Enablement” plan to your Sales Engagement approach.

Those of you working in large vendors may be reading that suggestion with skepticism – how can a field Rep at a complex vendor and a lot of partners (like Cisco or HP) participate in “channel enablement”. After all, that is the Enablement Team’s job and is done by “corporate” folks, leaving the field to do their job, to engage with customers….I see your point, but hold that thought for a second.

 

When have you seen “enablement” work well, so that the teams in the field are confident that they can rely on the local channel partners to initiate and close sales opportunities?

 

In my experience, “enablement” works when there is a strong connection between the local sales team and the partners. That connection often occurs in smaller companies where the local sales team has responsibility to recruit and enable partners in their region, to help them in selling deals in their territory (but no so often in larger companies with fragmented responsibilities). Part of the value in this model is that the local sales team feels that they are accountable for helping to “enable” the partners in their region, to help them in selling. But a large part of the value is the local sales team, not only trains the partners, they go with them on sales calls and provide feedback on their progress. In other words, “THEY PROVIDE ON THE JOB TRAINING”.

That sounds wonderful, but it does not scale well to a larger company. You can’t expect the local sales team to own recruitment, on-boarding and the enablement process for all their partners. But the local sales team could be accountable for the “last mile” of enablement, which helping partners practice what they have learned by going after real sales opportunities together.

How would this work? The critical element is creating a channel program requirement that the “last mile” of enablement occur in the field with the local team. In this model, it would be part of their role to work with the partner to jointly engage with customers (and get on-the-job-trainijng). In effect, the process would work the same way it works for the channel-savvy and channel-friendly reps that you already have:

  • New partner or newly certified partner calls the local team looking to work together on some opportunities
  • Often the onus is on the partner to provide the first couple of contacts for targeting – after all, they have many local customers, just not with the vendor’s product (and what vendor does not want that???)
  • As the vendor sales team and partner get used to working together and have some success, the vendor reps bring the partner into opportunities
  • As the relationship matures, the vendor sales rep and the partner start to do joint account targeting and selling, with defined roles like “Partner SE runs the POC” follow up from the intial meeting…”

That process is really just basic sales engagement. But for many vendors, this process only occurs where you have sales reps that understand how to work with partners and drive revenue. With channel program design, there are always important details to define and operationalize, but this approach is a winning solution for vendors and for partners.

The opportunity is to build this approach into your channel enablement plan and “Package” the Enablement (see my recent post on this) this into your channel program to scale. This approach has the following benefits:

  1. Create a set of “enabled” partners who have both the training and experience necessary to help vendors drive revenue
  2. Help the vendor field standardize on a best-practices sales engagement approach that creates new sales opportunities and a community of enabled partners in their territory

I welcome any comments below — And make sure you “Follow” our blog (look for the “Follow” link on the upper left) and have your say. I’m also available as a public speaker, to support local and global events in Silicon Valley, or the rest of the flattening world…

For more details, and to stay in touch with this community, contact me or Subscribe to our “Climbing Out of the Box” Newsletter via the form below.

Channel Not Ready to Sell? Perhaps You are Not “Packaging” Your Enablement Within Your Channel Program (Part 4 of a Series)

July 4, 2015 3:00 pm / Leave a comment

In the last couple of months, I’ve done a series of posts about challenges technology vendors face in “enabling” their partners to sell their products.  Below are the posts so far.

Channel Not Ready to Sell?

This week we will focus on Natural Law #4

  • Enablement must be “Packaged” within a Channel Program, To Drive Adoption and Channel revenue…

The first question you may be asking yourself regarding this Law is, “What on earth is “Packaging” (and why is it a Law?)

Package and Question Mark

That is exactly the question one veteran Sales Training/Sales Readiness executive that I worked with asked when he added Channel Enablement to his group’s charter. The first meeting he attended included someone from partner programs, the channel sales executive for the region and a person whose team managed the marketing relationships with key partners.

The new Channel Enablement leader launched into an outline of his vision for a training curriculum – and the rest of the team sat silently. Finally one of the attendees spoke up – “Why would the partners want to take this training and how does it help them get started selling today?”  The new channel enablement guy answered with some platitudes on how it would help the partners sell “better”, but it was clear that he did not really get the #1 different between enablement for channels and the sales training program vendors provide for their Reps:

 

  • Vendor Reps MUST sell your products (or they are not around very long) and your sales executives can tell them they MUST do certain things (like take a particular training) 
  • Channel Partners have other options – and are governed by “Why should I care” If a channel partner, and in particular an individual Rep, SE or Consultant does not see value to them TODAY for your training, you can be assured that they will spend their time somewhere else…

This principle was discussed in detail in my post, “Channel Not Selling Your Products? 3 Questions You Can Ask to Diagnose the Problem.

  • Question #1 is “What is the Value Proposition for Partners to Sell your Product?
    • And how can they get started making money today…

They key is to get partners to participate in enablement is to think of the situation from their perspective, and use the 2 motivational tools that we humans respond to, “the Carrot and the Stick”. In the language of technology vendor channel programs, the Carrot and Stick translate to

  • “What are the Benefits associated with participating in the channel enablement activity/taking provided by the vendor that incent partners to the training?”
  • What are the Requirements from the vendor that provide a compelling “stick” to participate in partner enablement?

Let’s illustrate “Packaging” with a specific example

In the period 2008-2012 NetApp created the FlexPod architecture to sell their products with Cisco and VMware – but channel enablement was difficult. The challenge was that the products cut across compute, storage, network and virtualization and was therefore difficult for partners to market, sell and deliver. One partner I talked to during that period said that selling FlexPod was a “6-legged sales call”, because the partner’s staff were siloed with different individuals focused on VMware, Cisco and NetApp technologies, and only a few Reps, SEs and Consultants with sufficient skills to sell and deliver, cross-silo.

Clearly the partners would need to be “enabled”, But creating great training would not be enough – How could Cisco, NetApp and VMware “Package” the enablement, so that partners would participate, and eventually sell more of their solution/products?

Building Block graphic

A good way to get started on “Packaging” your enablement is to conduct an exercise where your team brainstorms potential “Packaging” options. I’ve found that this exercise gets the item on the agenda and sometimes creates some surprising and successful “Packaging”

  • Have a baseline discussion on the partner business model (multiple products, relatively low product margins, need to control costs and maximize selling time)
  • Brainstorm potential “Carrots” and the “Sticks” that could have be used to drive participation in enablement (and more sales of your product…)

Then you and your team are in a good position to evaluate the feasibility of these options, and to create the appropriate “Packaging” for channel enablement.

  • The Carrot – Potential Incremental Benefits could include things like:
    • Exclusivity / Fewer Authorized partners – could limit sale of a product to only the partners that have met enablement requirement.
      • Vendors are often hesitant to take this step, but it is a powerful incentive to partners to participate in a program (and often has limited downside because untrained partners will often sell very little of complex solutions anyway and may cause customer sat issues, when they do…
    • An incremental margin to partners that complete enablement requirements
      • Provide additional discount at Distribution on every sale for partners who meet the requirement
      • Provide rebates on qualifying sales, for partners who meet the requirement
    • Access to vendor staff that can help the partner sell, such as SEs, Specialists and other staff, for on-site training and sales engagement
      • Access to staff can often be the most valuable benefit of all, particularly when it leads to account planning and joint customer engagement.
      • However, this benefit can be hard to quantify because vendors often provide vague benefits like named account manager – and partners later find that they are one of 30 partners on their contacts partner list…
    • Other benefits – get creative!
      • By looking at what it takes to sell your product, you can often find hidden gems that are very important to partners and are relatively easy and beneficial to you as well – but you have to look
  • The Stick – Potential Requirements to Drive Participation in the Enablement could include things like:
    • Require partners to complete the enablement to get access to product/solution-specific benefits.
      • In the FlexPod example that could mean some number of trained or accredited staff Reps, SEs and Consultants) – to be eligible for the incremental benefits above (discount, access to sell product, etc…)
    • Require partners to complete enablement to gain additional program benefits from earning a higher tier in the partner program
      • Many vendors have a tiered program, where partners earn “Gold” status based on meeting requirements – and one of the most common requirements is to have a certain number of technical certifications or sales accredited staff
    • Require partners to complete enablement to gain the benefits of a specialization or badge in the partner program
    • Other Requirements – what do partners really need to do to be successful?
      • I often find tech vendors end up listing a series of generic benefits and requirements that are not enforceable, and would have little impact if they were met.
      • Ask your team, “what is really needed to be successful” and build this into the Requirements. Maybe it’s a demo center, customer references, certifications in related technologies or even marketing skills – but make the requirements meaningful!

I’m amazed by how often I see major product launches and detailed enablement plans created by vendors – without really grappling with these questions (and the WIFM for partners). Not surprisingly, vendors don’t get the participation or the revenue impact they expected (and they leave partners muttering to themselves once again that “vendors just don’t understand my business…”)

I welcome any comments below — And make sure you “Follow” our blog (look for the “Follow” link on the upper left) and have your say. I’m also available as a public speaker, to support local and global events in Silicon Valley, or the rest of the flattening world…

For more details, and to stay in touch with this community, contact me or Subscribe to our “Climbing Out of the Box” Newsletter via the form below.

Channel Not Ready to Sell? Maybe You Are Training Them Too Much Like Your Own Sales Reps… (Part 3 of Series)

April 12, 2015 4:00 pm / Leave a comment

The last 2 weeks, we’ve been talking about channel partner enablement and the gaps in industry practices that limit technology vendors’ success in creating revenue through their channels.

Channel Not Ready to Sell?

This week we will focus on Natural Law #3 – Channel Sales Training ≠ Vendor Rep Sales Training

Stop and think about that statement for a minute. Do you think it is true? I’d wager if you asked 10 colleagues in the tech industry this question over lunch, you would get nearly universal disagreement.  However, what I’ve seen working with tech vendors and their channels over the past 20 years is that,

                          while the sales training needs for your channel partners and vendor reps sales are similar, they are different in some important ways that require tech vendors to train their channels’ sales team differently than how they train their own sales reps…

(more…)

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

April 6, 2015 1:00 am / Leave a comment

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…

(more…)

Channel Not Ready to Sell? Perhaps You are Violating One of the “5 Natural Laws of Channel Enablement”? (Part 1 of a Series)

April 1, 2015 2:30 pm / Leave a comment

Channel Not Ready to Sell?  First of a 5-Part Series

One of the critical success factors in GTM Program is how well a technology vendor engages with the channel to jointly sell.  The channel enablement team must face a broad set of challenges, ranging from how to onboard new partners, assure that partner sales teams, their SEs, and often their consultants have the information they need to be successful.  And these tasks need to be supported in introductory and advanced versions, for multiple products and solutions.  As if this wide-ranging charter is not enough of a challenge, “enablement” teams must deal with the inevitable tension between Sales Organizations and Field Readiness teams that train sales reps and SEs and feel that Channel is never “enabled enough” and don’t factor in that partners are not required to take vendor training (or to sell their products…).

In my experience, many of the common approaches to channel “enablement” are ineffective, and part of the many outdated, “Boxed” set of practices in the tech industry that have evolved over the years,  based on the old world of hardware-centric selling. These practices limit vendor success and revenue.  Providing proven alternatives to these types of practices is a big part of the Andrews Consulting Group focus, to help technology vendors “Climb Out of the Box”, and accelerate revenue for their products and partnerships.  Check out my post, “Are You Executing Outside of the Box? – The Checklist”,  to see see how your organization compares to these practices.

So how can technology vendors address these challenges, and drive more revenue through their channel? 

A good way to think of best practices for channel enablement is in terms of the 5 Natural Laws of Channel Enablement below. In today’s post I will talk about overall needs for channel enablement, and Natural Law #1 in more detail. (more…)