webinar: how to take the pain away from partner marketing, with mike cotton, vp sales and marketing,...

Commercial in Confidence – (c) purechannelapps Ltd. 2014 1

Channel Marketers: How to take the pain away from partner marketing

With Mike Cotton VP Sales purechannelapps, and Robert Cohen CEO and Business Editor ChannelLine

Commercial in Confidence – (c) purechannelapps Ltd. 2014

The Last Mile: Enabling Channel Partners to Easily Sell To End Users

Robert Cohen is a passionate and enthusiastic channel advocate and the CEO and business editor of ChannelLine, an industry analyst, publisher (Channel Advisor, eChannelLine, Channel Partner and ConnectIT) and channel marketer. Since 1980 he has worked with 500 IT Vendors, 30 Distributors and thousands of Resellers, in developing and implementing strategic go-to-market programs. Robert’s vision is to make the business part of delivering technology easier for everyone actively involved in the channel. To achieve this goal, Robert founded the 1,000 member ChannelLine Advisory Council who collectively helped him develop the Trusted Business Advisor XSellerator program.Robert can be reached at 416-568-2059 or online at [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


• purechannelapps™, UK-based, incorporated in 2011

• socialondemand®: social media amplification software

• newsondemand: dynamic and targeted e-communications

Background purechannelapps


The current U.S.A. population is about 320 million people which is about 4.5% of the world's population.

The U.S.A. sells about 50% of the worlds IT&T products, services and support. The current Canadian population is about 34 million which is about 0.5% of the

world’s population. Canada sells about 3% of the worlds IT&T products, services and support. In Canada and the US approximately 65% of all SMB customers purchase their

IT needs hardware, software, Managed Services, other services and support are done through the IT Channel (resellers, VARs, integrators, service providers, Channel Partners …).

While the dream is winning over companies with more than 500,000 employees (enterprise sales) more than 99% of the companies in USA/Canada have less than 500,000 employees (SMBs). There are only about 85,000 US companies and another 5,500 Canadian companies that have 500,000+ employees.

The enterprise sales frequently buy direct and demand very low prices. They often expect you to lose money for the rights to say that they are your customer.

Quick Stats


For IT OEMs, Hardware Vendors, Telephony Specialists, Software Developers, SaaS Solutions, Managed Service enablement programs or other companies providing IT products, solutions, services and/or support, entering the Canada/US marketplace is like being a kid in the world’s largest candy store.

However: The lines our huge. The wait is very long. Everyone in line tells you where you can get better candy at a lower cost. By the time you get in, most of the good candy is gone.

Selling into the USA/Canada marketplace is a lot more difficult then you think.

My job is to make it easier for you to sell into this massive marketplace!!!

Welcome to the World’s largest Candy Store


Vendors’ primary concern in regards to Channel Partners is that they do not do enough marketing and sales activities to educate their staff and their customers/prospects about the Software Vendor’s products.

Channel Partners’ primary concerns are that Vendors view them as an extension of their marketing and sales team instead of seeing them as the Trusted Business Advisor to the end users.

*ChannelLine Advisory Council: A high-level IT Channel thought leadership group.

ChannelLine Advisory Council* Research


About 65% of all sales sold to SMBs go through IT Channel Partners and/or Managed Service Providers. If you are not selling through the Channel, you are missing about 2/3rds of your potential audience.

Emerging companies and established leaders need to understand that Channel Partners and MSPs can shift perceptions of your brand and help grow your organization with sales conversions.

Often, Vendors miss the bulk of their opportunities simply by failing to align themselves with the right Channel Partners.

Marketing and Channel departments are always asking the same question: "How do you find, recruit, educate and enable the right channel partners for your business?”

ChannelLine Advisory Council Research


The average Channel Partner communicates with about 10% of their customers and prospects in any given 12 month period.

Less than 2% of Channel Partners will consistently send Vendor’s marketing materials to their customers & prospects.

Channel Partners follow-up on about 20% of all leads that Software Vendors supply them with.

ChannelLine Advisory Council Research … The Bad!


Vendors do a fabulous job at developing tremendous collateral material. They create portals that make it easier for Channel Partners to disseminate this material to their customers and prospects.

Unfortunately, most Channel Partners do not have the resources, time or desire to send out marketing messages.

Channel Partners tend to communicate with about 10% of their contacts in any given year, leaving the other 90% in the dark.



Vendors, frequently with help from distributors, push down messages to the Channel Partners.

For a variety of reasons Channel Partners do not send out the messages.

Thus, end user businesses do not ask for the products, solutions or services.

All push with no pull in a marketing program is a recipe for dismal results.

Pull is the all important “Last Mile” that is almost always ignored

in the IT Channel.



So …

If Channel Partners generally are not helping Vendors to reach end users,

why do 65% of all IT products and solutions being sold to SMBs,

go through the Channel Partners?

Why Use Channel Partners


Because …

They own the end user relationship.

End users trust them and depend on them.

Once an end user engages a Channel Partner, 90% of the time, if they make the purchase, they will purchase exactly what the Channel Partner recommends.

The service and support that Channel Partners provide is the absolute best in the world in any industry.

Vendors who send their end user messages out from Channel Partners experience at least 4 times the open rate as compared to emails going out directly from the Vendor.

Why Use Channel Partners … The Good


Channel Partners

For the most part of the Channel Partners they are fabulous at getting hardware working, break/fix, service, support …

However, for the most part they are terrible business people especially when it comes to marketing and finding new customers.

For over 30 years I tried to educate Channel Partners about how & why they need to run their business like a business.

Three years ago I stopped teaching them and instead created an automated back engine that make it simple for a Channel Partner to have a consistent marketing program.

For Vendors and Software companies this program will take them from reaching through the Channel Partners 1/5 of 1% of the Partners SMB customers to being able to reach about 80% of them.


The XSellerator Platform

XSellerator works because the platform provides a low cost, easy to use, fully automated, private labeled marketing and sales solution that guarantees to increase Hardware and Software Vendors’ and Channel Partners’ sales.

The messages are delivered when the Hardware or Software Vendor wants it to be sent out, saying what the Software Vendor wants it to say.

Hardware and Software Vendors get a monthly macro level metrics report and Channel Partners get a monthly micro level metrics report.

For a small fee hardware and Software Vendors get to have their messages going out when they want them going out, saying exactly what they want it to say, in the format they want it to go out in.

All the responses come directly back to the Channel Partner who already has a relationship with the end user.


Empowered tech buyers are two-thirds into the buying cycle before engaging sales

Forrester Research

73% of IT executives are influenced by social networks in decision making

Socialcast

60% of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better product decisions

Socialcast

Why drive demand? Why influence?


What are the pain points for partner social media marketing?

B2B organisations are struggling to involve their brand advocates in this ‘influence’ cycle.

Employees, partners and other brand advocates have no time, resources and, in some cases, limited marketing expertise.

Intermediaries are unable to produce professional collateral.

Too many brands are vying for their intermediaries’ attention.

Need simple, easy-to-use tools and programmes that get results.

Brands need to develop and manage ‘influence’ programmes on a global level.


socialondemand


Brand messages can reach much wider audiences, as you can leverage your

sales

teams, sales/channel partners (all types), alliance partners and other brand

advocates.

Content reaches those that count – the ‘consumers’ - through those who can actually sell the ‘sales staff/ sales partners’.

Easy for partners to become ‘socially active’ (3 clicks: email to post)

It empowers the ‘through’ intermediaries with compliant content (closer engagement with the brand and more socially active)

Enterprise-class platform (27 languages) enabling you to distribute social mediacontent globally

Cost-effective solution, with a SEM-smashing cost per click of just $0.09/ $0.35

The results and benefits


A very staged approach:• Initial 30-day trial• Rolled out to 300 partners (out of 30K) in the UK and few content categories• Moving to more partners, more BUs, more countries

Great results: (as of 25/03/14)

• 260 reseller users have added 918 social media accounts (3.5 acct per user)• Reaching out to 146,000 followers/ friends/ contacts (560 per user)• 395 posts (so far) generated 170K clicks (short urls) and 5.5K likes/ retweets• Click rates of up to 19% experienced! (average 2.9%)

Great feedback from partners:• “I repost the content to our LinkedIn accounts, and the groups we follow. We

get really good feedback, and I personally love being able to share good quality, relevant content consistently” - Trinity Expert Systems

“For us, the SocialOnDemand platform is a positive sign from Microsoft that they care about the partners and are making a positive contribution to build a sustainable and valuable business for them.” - Cloudamour Ltd (a Microsoft Partner)

Case study – Microsoft


Amplify your messages through your advocates’ social networks

You may not do social media…

But your customers/ prospects, employees, sales partners and brand advocates do!

Social media amplification will enable your extended sales teams (internal and external) to be more engaged (with you) and more ‘socially active’.

You will be able to reach new audiences and drive sales via social media.

socialondemand is a new and cost-effective way to influence potential/ existing buyers.


• Response rates to ‘push’ email communications are declining

• Partners receive news they do NOT want

• Partners receive too many emails/ newsletters

• Newsletters are expensive, especially if in multiple languages

• Newsletters are never on time (articles are always old)

• Difficult to restrict access to some news

• Difficult to synchronise newsletters and news on the portal

• Difficult to deliver relevant, timely and targeted content

• Difficult to main a (targeted) database of contacts

• This applies to employee AND customer newsletters

The challenges with traditional e-communications/ newsletters


newsondemand


Thank you.Olivier ChoronCEO and Founder, [email protected]+44 (0)7876 472 461 / @purechannelapps

Robert CohenCEO and Business Editor, [email protected]+1 416-568-2059 / @robertmcohen



webinar: how to take the pain away from partner marketing, with mike cotton, vp sales and marketing,...

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