Be Quick, but Don’t Hurry
Sometimes a Rushed Response Can Waste Time and Money

By Andy Brownell

Why use Channel Partners?

Channel partners are a great way to build business relationships for many different reasons. For the manufacturer, a channel partner can help bring a new product to market and increase visibility of a brand to boost sales. For the channel partner, it helps open the doors to new business with a lower cost of entry and a smaller risk factor than creating their own technology or merging/acquiring to obtain the technology for that service offering.

Challenges of doing business with Channel Partners

For those of us who do business through channel partners, finding out exactly what happened to sales leads that were sent to the channel can be a challenge.

1. How many hot, warm & cool leads went to each partner?
2. How many leads did the partners follow up?
3. How many leads didn't the partners follow up?
4. When did the partners follow up?
5. How long before they followed up?
6. What was the final disposition of each lead?
7. How many leads turned into sales and what was sold?
8. For the leads that turned into sales, where did those leads come from and what's the ROI for each program that generated those leads?

If you have a channel sales rep helping your partners follow up and close the leads that you send to the channel, you're probably doing a better job of lead management than most companies. Nevertheless, having a channel rep is expensive and many leads still fall through the cracks.  Why?  Because sales is a numbers game and the prospects/leads that aren't ready to buy now are on the losing team.  Each channel sales rep may work with dozens of channel partners so there are plenty of opportunities for your channel rep to focus on and when a rep has a hot lead and is working to close a deal, he's usually not focused on the longer-term leads.

Ok, that explains why leads fall through the cracks with channel reps, but what about partner reps?  Again the answer is it's a numbers game.  Each partner rep may work with a dozen manufacturers/suppliers.  The vendor that provides the best leads (highest commission closing in the shortest time with the least work) gets the most attention.  As far as most partner reps are concerned, if a lead isn't hot it's dead.

Solving the Challenges

Many companies invested heavily in CRM systems only to find out that the sales team viewed them more like ‘big brother' than tools to help close sales.  Reps frequently write things like 'called 3 times and couldn't reach them' or 'no opportunity' prematurely marking them dead. 

Management might not understand why reps do this, but from the reps' perspective, it makes sense: they only have so much time, and working on proposals, configurations, presentations and briefings takes time.  They'd much rather be working on an immediate deal than on a lead that might close in 6 months.

If you're using one of the big name CRM systems take a good hard look and ask yourself if you're really getting what you want out of the system.  According to a recent survey 73% of CRM users use less than 50% of the features.  This means most people aren't getting what they are paying for.

So what's the answer?  From my experience, combining what I call a 'lead driver' a with lead management system can increase the number of A-level leads passed to sales reps, thus increasing the number of deals closed.

First, let's focus on the lead driver role. The lead driver is responsible for managing the leads.  That includes everything from collecting the leads and getting them into the lead management system to scoring the leads and assigning them to partner reps. After the leads are assigned the lead driver continues to monitor the leads as they flow through the channel.  
In most cases the Lead Driver position should be a full time position.  Please don't think you'll ask your admin to take on this responsibility and that will get the job done.  When done properly, the lead driver job is time consuming.

Here's an example of how the Lead Driver works with partners.  Suppose you've just completed a webinar and you've got a bunch of leads.  Along with the leads are comments from the webinar attendees / prospects – based upon the comments you can see that some are hot, some warm and some cool.  The lead driver will sort through the leads, reading the comments to separate those that need immediate attention from those who are only seeking information – scoring the leads.  For those seeking information the lead driver can manage a lead nurturing campaign - interacting with the long-term leads and moving those prospects to partners when they are closer to a purchasing decision.  For the leads that require immediate follow up, the lead driver forwards those lead to partners.  Naturally some partners are better at follow up than others.  Because it's important to get back to a prospect as quickly as possible, if a partner hasn't followed up on a lead within a specified period of time, the lead driver reassigns the lead to another partner.  The lead driver continues to follow the leads by interacting with the partners, and the prospects if necessary, until the leads are either closed, lost to the competition or have been determined to never truly have been a lead.  

Now let's examine the second part of the equation - the lead driver process.  For the lead driver process to go smoothly, all sales leads must be passed through a lead management system.  This provides management with the real-time status of any and all leads; it helps marketing know the effectiveness and the ROI of their lead generation programs; it minimizes outdated information in your database; and the channel manager can finally track which partners are following up on leads and which aren't. Examining the leads that weren't really leads can help improve the lead scoring methodology. Moreover, as sales reps focus only on leads that are truly sales ready while the rest are sent to lead nurturing or inside sales, the lead driver helps drive not only leads but also revenue and sales efficiency.

The problems of tracking ROI and channel efficiency are solved with a dedicated lead driver and a lead management system that you and your whole channel share. But these are not the only benefits of maintaining a lead management system throughout the channel. This approach can also benefit your partner sales reps. Here's an example. 

Suppose a partner rep leaves the company and a new rep is hired.  In the past the new rep was lucky if there was any information about the current pipeline of business.  But with a lead driver all of the account information is ready and waiting for the new sales rep.  The lead driver knows which leads are hot and can tell them about the leads they'll be working while walking them through the lead management system.  By having up-to-date information about their leads in a system that is easy-to-use and a lead driver to help them prioritize their opportunities, the new rep can come up to speed quickly and immediately begin producing revenue. 

A lead driver is a cost effective way to bridge the gap between headquarters and partners.  Leads won't get lost, customers will get what they're asking for and management will know what's going on in real-time.