Managing
a partner portal is not only a matter of technology and investments. Designed
to create opportunities to streamline sales, empower partners, and achieve
competitive advantages, 80% of partner portals still end up unpopular with
channel partners.
This
brings about a number of rational concerns about portals’ capacity to engage
partners, as well as reveals the need for the right approach and the
appropriate partner portal software to develop a cost-effective
partner portal. Based on our 11 year-experience of web portal development, we put forward
our approach to enhancing the partners’ engagement in the partner portal.
THE MORE PORTAL USERS, THE STRONGER YOUR PARTNER
RELATIONS
It is common that partners are
frequently reluctant to generate more end customers for vendors above the
specified sales quota. It thus becomes a challenge for a vendor to increase its
sales through existing partners, which can result in the never-ending search
for new partners or dealers. The question is, can we encourage the existing
partners to sell more by means of a partner portal?
Yes, we can, providing your partner
portal not only shows up information but also engages. Such portal should
become a handy tool willingly used by your partners’ staff every day.
Definitely, for a vendor it is better if the engaged staff includes those who
can influence an end customer’s purchase decision. Then, the contact group at
the partner’s side should also include more than just a vendor manager.
Create
multi-personal links with the partner to strengthen your business relationship.
If your partners’ vendor managers are
your only points of contact, you lose control of the information scope that in
reality reaches their sales people or technical specialists. However competent
vendor managers are, they won’t create a positive bias towards your products.
Targeting partners’ salespeople directly, you can stimulate them to offer your
products more often in the moment of truth (as they will know them better than
others).
Small
tip: To ensure transparent participation of your partner’s every employee in
terms of the portal use, consider providing each of them with a personal login.
The positive attitude of your
partner’s employees (including their vendor managers, sales people, support
technicians, etc.) to the portal will result in their unwillingness to switch
from you to a competing vendor. And this inner unwillingness will work for you,
in case the partner’s CEO decides to expand business with your competitor.
So, now the issue of partner
engagement turns into the obvious question: how can you encourage more
employees of your partners to exploit your portal? Here’re 3 steps to achieve
it.
TURNING A PARTNER PORTAL INTO PARTNERS’ EVERYDAY TOOL
Focus
on features that are valuable across the work cycle. If a partner portal is your tool to
enhance partnership, then for your partners it should be a valuable tool as
well. Let’s imagine a real situation when your partner’s salesperson is about
to choose one of the two similar products of different vendors and offer it to
the customer. How can you influence their choice in your favor?
Sales people definitely opt for:
(a) the product they know better and
(b) the product that is easier and
faster to sell.
So,
a partner portal should provide:
(a)
informative resources and
(b)
technical tools that the salesperson can instantly use
to support sales (as configurators to generate a customized proposal,or
calculators to calculate ROI). Of course, there can be no one-for-all tool
kits, but let’s consider a few possible options.
Informative resources available to
your partners can include:
§ all types of
marketing and sales assets (e.g. sales guides, industry-specific kits,
catalogues, brochures, etc.)
§ trainings and
certification materials, etc.
Technical
tools and resources for your partners to:
§ customize marketing
assets with their own logos, prices, contacts. Customization tools bring value
as time-efficient during the pre-sales period.
§ support sales and
raise production efficiency. Configurators and calculators will help partners’
salespeople to quickly customize products and demonstrate their value in
detail. Enabling partners to do it within a partner portal, you raise its
usefulness and hence your partners’ engagement level.
§ track orders
§ deal with pricing and
special bids (with a distributor discount deducted)
§ report on sales
§ search among other
partners to In brief, a partner portal that can be
used by sales people as it is will naturally increase partners’ engagement and
reduce their need to implement extra tools. Moreover, this additional value
prevents the partner drain to competitors with no need to reduce your prices.
ENGAGING PARTNERS THROUGH COMMUNICATION AND HELP
Encourage
a dialog. Looking for some help, partners may
need not only technical support, but also your expertise and advice on
business-related issues. Make sure your partners can ask questions, and be
ready to come up with quick and comprehensive answers.
Create
a space for inter-partner communication to enable partners to learn from each
other and share their insights. For this, consider designing and managing a
partner blog or community.
Bring
in your experts to support partners. Even informative and logical partner
portals quite often lack a human touch. To personify your portal, introduce
experts and make them closer to your partners (e.g. enable Q&As with your
experts).
MAKING A PARTNER PORTAL CONVENIENT TO SPARE PARTNERS’
EFFORT
Make
sure to structure content logically into sections and categories so that
partners can easily navigate your portal and access the needed information, be
it tools, resources or news. Consider developing a home page that will provide
a quick access to the tools and sections your partners need most. It should be
their dashboard with relevant information at their fingertips.
Ensure
smooth performance without long page loadings or bugs.
For the sake of partners’ convenience, you can make the portal compatible with
different browsers and devices. It is no good limiting partners to some
particular browser or device to interact with your portal.
Keep
in touch with a live chat, e-mails and phone on
every page. If you come up with quite sophisticated tools, then a help section,
FAQ, tips and tutorials should assist your partners on the way. Whatever help
your partner may need, the portal should be there to give it.
Add
value to convenience through an attractive design. Once a partner portal is useful and
convenient,eye-catching
design will be an
icing on the cake to improve the partner portal experience.
Finally,
give a number-one priority to smart search. This will ensure partners can find
relevant content easily. Otherwise, even the most helpful resources will remain
undiscovered.
SUMMARY
Partner engagement can boost your
sales and facilitate partners’ activity with no extra incentives from your
side. Striving for partners’ engagement in the partner portal, you need to
consider two questions: what does it give to your partners? And how does the
portal do it? For vendors, a partner portal is a way to communicate with their
partners, while for partners it should also become their everydaytool that is
handy and useful. Thus, it should bring together both rational benefits and
subconscious ones by being convenient, user-friendly, functional and helpful.