It’s an age-old sales challenge. You identify a largely untapped market for your product or service but your knowledge of that region or sector is limited. You want to test the waters but without further investigation investing in new staff or infrastructure isn’t yet justified.
Which is when you discover an organisation that already has the distribution resources in place.
What if they could test the market for you? After several conversations, the deal’s done and you now have a presence in a market that could transform your business.
You sit back and wait for the sales to roll in. With limited success. So why isn’t your channel partner producing the goods?
In this blog, we discuss why channel selling often fails and the four factors that can make or break a successful channel partnership.
Identify what your ideal channel partner looks like
Ask a sales director what his ideal customer looks like and they’ll probably be able to explain them in detail – right up to their favourite show on Netflix. However, the same doesn’t always apply when it comes to partnerships. This is why you need to create a profile of precisely what your ideal partner looks like. To narrow this down you need to define:
- Whether you are looking for exclusive relationships or organisations that have a wider reach but are also offering competitors’ services or products.
- Whether they align with your long-term business objectives and values
- If they have the capacity and expertise to help you achieve your goals.
Once you have defined this then you know precisely the type of organisations you should be targeting. However, it also means that you can audit your existing partnerships.
Your business objectives may have changed since you entered these partnerships – do they still fit into your business and sales strategy?
And most importantly are they producing the desired results?
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