Working in tandem with your company’s channel partners to achieve your separate and corresponding goals is an underrated but useful approach to a smooth and mutually beneficial relationship.

It’s important to remember your channel partners are their own entities that have individual goals, challenges, and expectations. They also have many other variables vying for their attention and business. As such, you may think that it could be difficult – or even impossible – to align them with your goals. So, naturally, your goals and the goals of your channel partners will always be misaligned – or will they?

Start with a Strong Foundation

No matter how disparate your contractors’, distributors’, or other channel partners’ motivations may seem, it’s imperative that you form strong and trusting relationships right off the bat. Based on feedback we have gathered from channel partners, we’ve learned that they’re incentivized to be loyal when you make more personal contact and develop meaningful connections. You can establish these connections by avoiding mass messaging and creating planned interactions. Another method is to always include personalized calls to action in your campaigns. Each interaction should be positive and tailored to be part of a larger campaign addressing your partners’ needs and open the door to work in tandem toward a common goal.

Partners also desire better systems in place to complete sales and function day-to-day. If you establish a system for their workflow that requires fewer steps and a better digital interface than your competitors as well as offer enticing incentives, you can strike the perfect balance of tools that create a strong and lasting relationship. Offering training for your company’s tools can also serve as an ideal method for relationship building and an effective way to introduce yourself to new partners in a way that feels helpful and emotionally resonant.

A solid foundation is a great first step to sharing information, especially statistics and data that can help both your company and channel partners to guide business practices that improve performance and results.

Why Analytics Are Important for You and Your Channel Partners

Analytics and data tell you what you need to know about your end-users, customers, and channel partners as well as their customer journeys and experience with your brand, website, and products. This information can also offer insight into crucial market changes and trends that affect your industry.

Regardless of whether you’re in the goods, services, or manufacturing sector, point of sale customers are the single most significant asset of any outfit. Valued customers keep the organization running by providing a necessary revenue stream and feedback. Their consumer needs lead your company in a particular direction. Don’t forget that consumers drive the marketplace, and the market drives your operation.

Right now, especially given our digitally driven world, the ways profits are earned and how products and companies are marketed are ever-changing. It’s important for you and your channel partners to drill down and base marketing decisions on concrete figures. Find out who is making the most money for your company and study the way they make purchases. Identifying top performers and following the data of the purchasing journey can help drive how you tailor your marketing and sales activities to nurture high-performing behavior and give you and your partners a significant competitive edge.

Offer Rewards for Exchanging Market Insights

It’s crucial to offer your channel partners some incentive to release consumer data to you. The most successful incentive programs give your channel partners the chance to earn rewards for sharing their data and analytics with you. Although sales representatives and contractors have more direct contact with consumers, everyone in the sales channel relies on one another to connect consumers to the products and services they need. Consumer data access results in increased sales and brand awareness, which is a reward for all parties involved.

Incentive programs can be a priceless tool to help facilitate the exchange of information between you, distributors, sales representatives, contractors, and consumers. The exchange of data and analytics is an immensely helpful but often untapped resource your contractors can utilize to provide you with data that you can both use for more effective marketing.

Incentive and reward programs that utilize streamlined technology can make it simple for contractors and other channel partners to exchange information. Their motivation for entering information, such as sales claims, warranty and registration details, and key consumer information, comes from the incentive rewards they earn.

Rewards can range from event tickets to merchandise items, like electronics, home furnishings, travel experiences, movies, and music concerts. If you’re looking for the most effective ways and best tools for implementing incentives, consider working with a professional company that specializes in these fields. The right specialist can work with you to execute a plan to create bonds and generate future sales in tandem with your partners.

Go Beyond the Traditional Business Value

No matter how you choose to work with your channel partners, developing a cooperative and meaningful relationship that encourages them to share important data with you can be the key to boosting profits. Do your part to make that collaborative effort simple and worthwhile for everyone involved.

Both you and your partners have the shared goal of increasing sales and utilizing stronger business practices. When you rely on numbers to support new or improved initiatives, all parties can feel confident that changes are beneficial to them. This shared mindset is the first step to creating a lasting relationship and more success that equates to larger profits in the future.

Publication date: 12/14/18