Anyone involved in the business of B2B technology marketing knows that the rules of the game have changed. Buyers have easy access to more information than ever before, and as a result the reasons they engage with potential suppliers, and what they ho...

Anyone involved in the business of B2B technology marketing knows that the rules of the game have changed. Buyers have easy access to more information than ever before, and as a result the reasons they engage with potential suppliers, and what they hope to get out of those engagements, is changing. This has significant implications for the way that technology companies build and execute their go-to-market programmes. Read our blog on our sister company's site The Channel Partnership, about the importance of forming an opinion. 

For some of you the new year return to work will have created a feeling of dread. Times are tough right? Buyer confidence is low, the order book is suffering from a surfeit of white space and your pipeline seems to have more leaks than a BP drilling p...

For some of you the new year return to work will have created a feeling of dread. Times are tough right? Buyer confidence is low, the order book is suffering from a surfeit of white space and your pipeline seems to have more leaks than a BP drilling platform. The CEO’s on your back and you can see the doubts in the eyes of your teams. “Do you REALLY know what you’re doing?” they seem to be asking.

It’s a stressful time to be a senior sales or marketing exec in the technology industry. And is it your fault? Like hell it is. In these market conditions what chance have you got?

Surely there’s got to be more to life than this. Maybe now’s the time to pursue a different course – you could give it all up and write that book you’ve always felt was inside you, or become a zumba teacher, or head off to India to get in touch with your spiritual side. Or if none of those work out, you could become an ‘independent consultant’ and focus on improving your golf.

One small problem – you couldn’t bring yourself to just quit. How would you explain it to your spouse, your friends or the 467 LinkedIn contacts you met somewhere once? So you’ll probably carry on, just about keeping afloat but getting progressively more miserable.

But there could be a way out. After extensive research we have identified twelve top Go-to-Market techniques, guaranteed to send your business the way of the dodo, video stores, and press integrity. Follow these techniques and we can pretty much guarantee that you’ll get to live the life you really deserve. And the great thing, the really cunning bit, is that there are loads of organisations out there already doing this stuff, so no-one is even going to realise that you’re implementing a brilliantly conceived exit strategy. It’s foolproof!

So click here to read our sister company, The Channel Partnership's guide to foolproof exit strategies:

  "I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." ~ Michael Jordan   We all hate to fail right? Failure is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. Sometimes it’s better to pretend to be succeeding rather than...

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." ~ Michael Jordan

We all hate to fail right? Failure is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. Sometimes it’s better to pretend to be succeeding rather than admit to having failed.

This is particularly true when it comes to communication with the channel. Admitting to our partners that our products aren’t the greatest, or that our marketing campaigns might not be the most compelling ever conceived, is a sign of weakness. They might lose faith in our omnipotence, their unquestioning loyalty to us might be shaken. As if!!

This tendency to always be in positive-spinning, tub-thumping, evangelising, sales mode when we’re communicating to partners can be hugely counter-productive, and not only because it eventually leads to a complete loss of credibility. Failures can be good and highly valuable in certain contexts. And unless we’re ready to accept and acknowledge them we only store up bigger failures for the future.

OK if you’re running a manufacturing plant producing medical equipment you want to drive out any possibility of error, but if you’re in the business of taking an innovative, new product to market (and most technology firms fall into that category, if not what are they doing here?) then failure needs to be recognised as an inevitable part of the process.

The important thing is not whether you fail, but how early you do it, how big you do it, and how quickly you absorb the lessons and make adjustments as a result.  Successful product design firm IDEO have a great slogan, ‘fail often in order to succeed sooner’. Successful companies have lots of small failures, recognise them early and make quick modifications to their approach. Unsuccessful companies don’t admit to failures until it’s too late, and the failure becomes big enough to take the company down.

So how does this relate to the channel? Well if our main interaction with customers happens via third parties, then those partners have a critical role to play in our failure detection system. They’re probably better placed to spot the early signs of failure than we are. But for those signs to be acted upon we have to be encouraging their feedback and we need to be listening (not just via a once-a-year partner sat survey). To achieve this requires the right tools (online forums, regular surveys, partner councils etc all have a role to play), but it also requires the right culture and mind-set.

The important thing isn’t so much whether you ask the right question, it’s whether you genuinely listen to the answer and take on board the feedback, rather than sitting there working out how you’re going to ‘overcome the objection’ and persuade the partner that they’ve actually got it wrong.

 If we are too busy trying to convince them how great we are all the time it’s unlikely we’re going to hear them when they tell us that actually our wonderful, shiny new product isn’t going down too great out there and maybe needs a bit of tweaking. The end result is that the partners will soon vote with their feet and we’ll be left with a big, expensive failure rather than a small, valuable one.

If we are brave enough to have a genuinely open, honest, two-way dialogue with our partners, which acknowledges the likelihood of failure, then not only will we build a more successful business, we’re also, perversely, likely to end up with greater respect and commitment from those partners as a result.  

Research recently published in the Harvard Business Review highlighted the importance of speedy follow-up in lead generation programmes.  According to Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington’s research, the time taken to respond to an online sales lead ha...

Research recently published in the Harvard Business Review highlighted the importance of speedy follow-up in lead generation programmes. 

According to Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington’s research, the time taken to respond to an online sales lead has a massive impact on the probability of converting the lead. The research, which analysed 1.25 million sales leads received by a mix of B2B and B2C companies in the U.S, found that ‘firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer’.

The authors also highlighted a separate study, which found that the average response time to online sales leads from over 2,000 companies they surveyed was 42 hours. Put those two pieces of information together and it’s clear that businesses are wasting an awful lot of money on generating online leads that they then fail to follow up effectively. Corporate spending on online lead generation was estimated at $22.7 billion in 2009, and it’s still growing strongly. 

This has obvious implications for any vendor or distributor that’s investing in lead generation campaigns for the channel, whether that’s centrally managed or partner managed and MDF-funded. Given the way that many channel lead generation campaigns are set up and administered, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that the average response time in the channel is even longer that the average 42 hours quoted by the HBR article, which means a lot of wasted marketing budget.

It’s clear that with speed of response being so vital in determining the effectiveness of lead generation activity, it should be a key metric that anyone designing or managing such a campaign is focused on. 

Vendors and distributors need to ensure that distribution of leads is automated as far as possible so that any delay is measured in milliseconds rather than hours or days. When an hour’s delay can reduce the likelihood of conversion by a factor of seven, having a hot lead sitting unattended to for a few hours while someone’s at a meeting or out at lunch just won’t do.  

I’d also suggest that a key criteria for determining who leads are distributed to, should be the partner’s ability to respond quickly, rather than their location, who’s turn it is, or who’s currently flavour of the month. Asking partners commit to certain ‘service levels guarantees’ relating to lead follow up doesn’t seem an unreasonable requirement in return for participation in a lead gen programme, or access to MDF. Of course that may requires some investment in systems to enable leads to be properly tracked, but given the figures quoted in the research, that’s an investment that should pay for itself pretty quickly. 

The good news if you’re a vendor or distributor sitting there wondering how you can drive more sales, and you’re pretty sure that a lot of the leads you generate aren’t being followed up quickly, there’s an opportunity to significantly improve ROI by working smarter, rather than throwing loads more marketing budget at the problem. 

Much has been written about the impact of the cloud on existing IT channels and many vendors are struggling with the thorny questions of how to transition, or in some cases jettison, their existing channel partners that have got them to where they are...

Much has been written about the impact of the cloud on existing IT channels and many vendors are struggling with the thorny questions of how to transition, or in some cases jettison, their existing channel partners that have got them to where they are today.

However the focus on what to do with the existing channel has perhaps led some to neglect the new channel opportunities that exist in a cloud-based world. As a result newer start-ups, unencumbered by the legacy channel, have the potential to steal a march on existing vendors, not just through technology innovation, but also by channel innovation. As traditional channel roles such as inventory management, financing and on-site implementation become less important, new skills and assets come to the fore. This opens up opportunities for vendors to work with new types of partners that bring different value to the table.

Here are just a couple of the changes that I see in play at the moment.... 

Trusted brands become important routes to market
While it would have been very difficult to imagine a brand owner like Virgin or Easy or Lloyds TSB becoming a VAR in the old on-premise world, it takes far less of a leap to imagine those organisations reselling SaaS products under their own brand. 

I believe selling SaaS on an own-label basis through established, trusted brands will be an increasingly important route to market for a number of reasons:

1) The technical barriers to being a reseller of technology-based services are diminishing rapidly, so it’s far easier for large companies to leverage their brand equity in these areas,

2) As brand owners are increasingly transact with their customers online it is an easier progression to extend into other online services,

3) The low price-points of many cloud-based services means vendors are forced to find low costs routes to market, something companies with large customer bases and established marketing channels can offer,

4) Perceptions of risk are still a barrier to the adoption of cloud-based services, particularly in the SMB market, and trusted brands can help to overcome this barrier.

Some SaaS businesses are already successfully exploiting this model. One example is US firm, PayCycle, providers of SaaS payroll solutions for small businesses, who were acquired by Intuit last year for $170m. They developed successful private-label partnerships with the likes of Capital One and PNC Bank, enabling them to grow far more quickly than they could have done solely under their own brand.

Sector and functional expertise to the fore
Compared with traditional on-premise products, the technical barriers to adoption of cloud-based applications are generally lower. As a result, SaaS providers can focus more of their energies on understanding and addressing the ultimate business need, rather than worrying about how to get the technology installed and working. The sale is less likely to be made to the IT function and more likely to be made direct to business owners. 

In addition the economics of the SaaS model make it feasible to develop products addressing the requirements of far narrower market niches, whether defined by industry sector or functional application. 

Therefore I believe that the value of partners that have deep industry or functional knowledge will increase relative to partners that sell primarily on the basis of strong technical skills.  Partners that have in-depth understanding of the business drivers and operational processes within a particular market sector, and can help customers understand how to utilise technology to fix problems, will be highly prized by vendors. We can already see most of the larger application vendors, including the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP, encouraging their existing partners to develop industry specialisations, because they recognise that the sale needs to be based more around end-customer need and less on technology.

If the partners with domain expertise also have trusted advisor status and access to the relevant business decision-makers then their value is increased even further. It was interesting to see the recent announcement that Baker Tilly, one of the largest accounting and consulting firms in the US, are to join NetSuite’s Solution Provider program. Baker Tilly will be utilising their deep functional expertise to deliver customized accounting and regulatory compliance solutions based on NetSuite’s cloud-based ERP platform.

Next time we will look into ISVs and marketplaces as opportunity outlets for effective channel partnering.

The Channel Partnership will be attending CeBIT this year. CeBIT, the world’s largest technology industry event, takes place in Hanover from 1st to 5th March. Despite the sometimes daunting scale of the whole thing, it’s always a good opportunity to g...

The Channel Partnership will be attending CeBIT this year. CeBIT, the world’s largest technology industry event, takes place in Hanover from 1st to 5th March. Despite the sometimes daunting scale of the whole thing, it’s always a good opportunity to get a sense of what’s hot in the industry, as well as an opportunity to meet up with old friends. Phil and Tim will be there meeting some existing clients and partners, so if you’re going to be there yourself let us know.

There's a lot of debate about the value of social media within channels. One of the difficulties that channel marketers face when deciding how much effort to put into social media is in measuring any sort of ROI from the activity. Tracking relationshi...

There's a lot of debate about the value of social media within channels. One of the difficulties that channel marketers face when deciding how much effort to put into social media is in measuring any sort of ROI from the activity. Tracking relationships between social media activity and sales revenues is usually difficult to do, and perhaps as a result, the utilisation of these tools by channel marketers has been patchy to say the least. However there are an increasing number of examples to support the argument that social media can deliver tangible cost benefits if used effectively.

Last year Cisco, who have a track record of leading the way in this area, chose to launch its new ASR router 100% online using social media activities. The Cisco channel was a key audience for this campaign. The result according to Cisco was “one of the top five launches in company history” and a six figure saving on its launch expenses. The virtual launch event was attended by 90x the number of people that have traditionally attended Cisco product launches and the launch generated 3x the number of press articles. Added to those impressive statistics are the environmental benefits from cutting out all the flights and car journeys.

There are numerous other examples. PC manufacturer, Lenovo, have quoted a 20% reduction in calls to their contact centres as a result of building a peer-to-peer customer community, while recently we had Ford’s CMO, Jim Farley, talking about the way that Ford have used social media to ‘pre-launch’ their new vehicles, which has resulted in “massive cost savings” on traditional advertising while producing higher name recognition.

The accumulating evidence suggests that social media has the potential to deliver real, tangible benefits within the channel marketing mix, if used wisely. Obvious applications include supporting product launches, underpinning incentive programmes, enabling peer-to-peer technical support or strengthening partner engagement programmes. The interactive, many-to-many nature of social media means that it has potential far beyond being just another channel to pump content out through. Partner eco-systems are an increasingly important competitive battleground in many sectors, and social media tools should be a key part of any strategy to create a thriving eco-system.

Having said all that, social media certainly isn’t a silver bullet to cure all ills. It’s also not some weird, slightly mystical black art that should be managed outside of the mainstream marketing plan.  It has some unique and valuable attributes but at the end of the day it’s another communications medium and it’s benefits will only be fully realised if it’s treated as an integrated part of the overall channel marketing and communications mix.

Traditional media such as product roadshows and Partner Advisory Councils still have a role to play (we shouldn’t under-estimate the benefits that come from good old ‘face time’), but their effectiveness can be significantly increased if they’re complemented by effective use of social media tools. If you only engage in a two-way dialogue with the partners once a year and spend the other 364 days pushing content at them (or worse, ignoring them) then it’s unlikely your partners are going to 1) really understand what you do, or 2) be really engaged in the relationship .

So I do think it’s time for social media to be treated as a core part of the channel marketing mix. As the examples above illustrate, intelligent use of these tools offers opportunities to both reduce costs and improve results. In 2011 I think the question has changed from ‘should I be utilising social media at all in the channel?’ to ‘how do I use social media to work smarter?’.

A little while ago Twitter announced “Hack Week”, an initiative to allow Twitter employees to spend time trying to see what cool new ideas they can come up instead of doing their day jobs. This is similar to Facebook’s ‘Hackathon’ and Google’s 20% pol...

A little while ago Twitter announced “Hack Week”, an initiative to allow Twitter employees to spend time trying to see what cool new ideas they can come up instead of doing their day jobs. This is similar to Facebook’s ‘Hackathon’ and Google’s 20% policy, whereby Google employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on side projects not directly related to their ‘job’.

Such initiatives stem from the understanding that a firm's employees are a source of creativity and innovation which if tapped effectively can create great value for the employer.

It got me thinking though about how effectively vendors tap into the creativity spring that is their channel, which, in many ways, is an extension of the vendor's own workforce. The channel partners will often have more direct contact with customers and users than the vendor's own employees, so there's huge potential value in their ideas and insights.

Yet how many vendors have programmes or processes which really seek out the innovative, out-of-the-box, groundbreaking ideas that the channel could potentially deliver? Aren't many existing feedback mechanisms simply a 'tick in the box' so that the vendor can say they've fulfilled that particular obligation? In reality how many vendors still focused on pushing information at the channel, rather than genuinely soliciting their ideas, suggestions and yes, even their criticisms.

The successful vendors of the future will be the ones with the best eco-systems, and a successful eco-system relies on interactivity and genuine exchange of ideas and opinions. The tools exist now to make this sort of communication far easier than it was just a few years ago. So what are you doing to tap into the creative potential of your channel?

The impact of cloud-computing and its effect on the channel has been a much debated topic over the last 2 years. Although some of the hype may have preceded the reality (no change there then) there can be little doubt now that: - cloud-based solut...

The impact of cloud-computing and its effect on the channel has been a much debated topic over the last 2 years. Although some of the hype may have preceded the reality (no change there then) there can be little doubt now that:

- cloud-based solutions (whether its SaaS, PaaS, IaaS or any other ‘aaS’ you can think of) are becoming the mainstream and having a transformative affect on the technology industry, and

- as a consequence the traditional IT channel is itself having to undergo radical transformation as a response to the new paradigm.

Although the cloud is firmly at the centre of most vendors’ development strategies, it’s probably fair to say that their channel strategies have been slower to adapt. There are some good reasons for this, after all the majority of revenues still come from traditional on-premise sales. However with the increasing pace of adoption of cloud-based solutions, vendors need to start taking action now if they’re not to be left behind. While no-one has a crystal ball to predict exactly what the channel will look like in 3 years time, one thing we can be sure of is that it will look different from the way it does today.

Click here to read our full article that explains the steps that should vendors be taking to ensure that they emerge from this current disruptive period as winners rather than losers.

Having successfully delivered channel-based marketing for clients such as Admiralty, Mabox joins forces with strategic consultancy Primesense to form a new company specifically aimed at helping businesses create and execute more effective channel prog...

Having successfully delivered channel-based marketing for clients such as Admiralty, Mabox joins forces with strategic consultancy Primesense to form a new company specifically aimed at helping businesses create and execute more effective channel programmes.

Combining top-notch go-to-market consulting skills with premier marketing talent and leading-edge technology platforms, The Channel Partnership is ready to tackle the challenges of the ever-changing channel landscape.