Success Through Channels Series

Three Simple Little Rules
 
Searching for improvement in the performance of your channel?  Don’t start with trying to perfect your channel program!!!!
 
Most companies make a significant mistake when looking at this most common activity, saying,  “We need to get a fifteen percent increase in the effectiveness of our resellers/VARs/integrators this year for sure.  Let’s take a look at fine-tuning our channel program, again.”

If your company is among those that apply this tired logic year after year, you’re overlooking the fundamentals that make all existing channels more effective—their ability to listen to and serve your end users.  Herewith three simple little rules to help you make best use of your channel.

Rule #1…Tune in to your users.  A single, perfect channel program doesn’t exist.  Don’t waste resources and precious cycles trying to get there.  The best programs look past your channel partners and spend more time understanding the needs and desires of your end users.  The lines of communication and understanding should not be defaulted to others.  At the end of the day they, the end-users, are YOUR customers!

Since users are not created equal, any attempt to devise the perfect channel program almost always ends in that saddest of all realizations that not only does one size not fit all…….one size fits nobody!  I have witnessed over and over the harmful constraints that a unilateral channel program imposes on the powerful natural workings of the marketplace relative to the delivery of true value to targeted end users.  From selling via the internet to turnkey on- site installations, plenty of variants in channel deliverables are needed to turn new end users into satisfied, repeat customers.  It is these loyal customers, who are willing to buy more, as well as endorse and recommend your products to others that must drive your channel thinking.  Importantly, this group of repeat customers also needs to be free to move from one template of your delivery options to another as their needs and internal requirements change. 

Whether your products and/or services are commodities or require complex technical installation and acceptance, your customers’ needs are different and they change over time.  While this little fact may hamper your ability to have a single approach to channel programs, the sooner you deal with this complexity the sooner you will see an improvement in the effectiveness of your channel.  Be guided by one of my favorite Albert Einstein quotations-- “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”  This means we must accept many variations in our thinking about channel programs.  It is this necessary complexity that will be needed to keep the maximum number of customers happy and buying.
 
Rule #2…Don’t always ask your channel partners to meet your expectations.  Instead, plan to help your end users take advantage of your channel partners’ differences.  Varying degrees of value-added services (and the related charges) allow your end users to custom fit the solutions they need at a specific point in time.  If you require your channel partners to be carbon copies of one another, they’ll often wind up with the urge to differentiate themselves on price--something that may drive them out of your channel family over time.  Think about this for a moment.  The more you require your channel to deliver uniform services, the more your channel will be reduced to price competition to win business.  The better view is to have your channel be prepared to address the many end users according to their differentiated business needs, and to differentiate themselves at the market’s discretion--not yours.

The toughest aspect of this idea is that it will insure that the scary specter of channel conflict is always at work among your resellers.  Try to draw the parallels between channel conflict and competition.  Like it or not, competition is likely to be a very good aspect of delivering value to your target market.  It means that if your channel partners effectively understand and then meet the requirements of a identifiable portion of the market you are trying to serve, they have a better chance of creating a winning business formula.  It is this winning formula that will help them earn and sustain business and profits that meet their individual requirements.

Rule #3…Help your channel meet the different customers’ needs, not yours.  At the end of the day, meeting a specific need in the market is better than having the channel try to meet your program requirements.  Once the varied user needs are understood, it will become incumbent upon your channel programs to help your partners become good at what the users need to have them do.  Remember again that this means more variation and less uniformity.  It means more flexibility on your part and surely more complexity. 

All this is painful news for the many who want to make their channel programs uniform and tidy.  Programs that can be measured by compliance between you and your resellers are unfortunately deceptive and inappropriate.  Go to the extra effort to look further down the food chain to the varied needs of your users and then back through the channel to determine what you need to do to make your channel partners more effective.  Don’t try to have all your channel partners do all things; let them develop their own special value add.  It gives them a chance to win business and make money.

Follow these three simple rules to a more effective channel.  Yeah, it will complicate channel life and invite channel conflict, but along the way it gives you the best possible chance to make happy users and repeat customers.  Nobody said success was easy, it is almost always messy and hard.  But go ahead, lighten up, listen to the needs of your end users and then help your channel be successful.