Five steps and tools to building a strong channel

By Kirill Astrakhan, Head of Channel, Global Sales, Kaspersky

Strong partners and distributors are key business enablers for vendors focused on B2B sales. To help develop this much needed resource, vendors must equip partners with the right tools which allow them to sell more with less effort.

At Kaspersky, our approach to building a strong channel focuses on three key pillars: profitability of the channel, ease of doing business for our partners, and best-in-class business support. As a result, in 2020, our channel showed double-digit growth in revenue, and key partners grew two and a half times faster than the market average, showing our efforts are not in vain.

So, how can all businesses best help their partners to become more effective? Here are a few steps that we have tried and tested ourselves, with good success:

1.     Be flexible

Flexibility towards partners means meeting their requests, even if they are not part of the usual offering. This may include discounts, special conditions, or even special product bundles for a specific project. To make this possible, vendors need to be agile at HQ level and provide some extent of freedom of action to regional offices. Although it demands extra effort, these measures will result in mutual business benefits and faster growth for vendors and partners.

2. Communicate clearly and professionally

According to recent research, channel partners named business support from a vendor as the top benefit when choosing who to work with. This can be achieved by having a professional partner account manager on the vendor’s side, who quickly solves any problems or answers the partner’s questions. But most importantly, this person should also be able to help in business development: understand how the partner’s business works, how it earns and spends money and its P&L (profit and loss) statement principles. This leads to setting realistic goals and relevant business development plans, evaluating progress, and developing effective marketing campaigns which drive return on investment.

It’s very important for partners to know what to expect from the vendor. There should be an established way to communicate company strategy to the channel, so partners can better plan their actions in the market or sort out any challenges. Strategy updates, webinars and in-person meetings with key partners should be held every quarter or several times a year. Networking through informal chats during events is also a good way to help strengthen business ties. Senior management should not refuse to communicate with partners, while partners should also not need to break through several levels of management to gain access to the person who can help.

3. Save partners’ time

Partners should not have to adapt to a vendor’s business processes. By freeing partners from routine actions and difficulties, you can allow them to focus on their business and not waste time on tedious tasks.

For example, the routine process of ordering licenses can take hours or even days – for emails, calls, discussions about products and bundles, approvals pending, and so on. Vendors can free up this time and let partners spend it on something more meaningful.

This was the main goal when we reimagined our License Management Portal (LMP) this year. LMP integrates deeply with our Partner Portal to provide automated deal registration, license ordering and renewals placement experience, so partners could do all this online in a few minutes by just clicking a couple of buttons.

4. Focus on the partner experience

Simplicity of a partner program and tools to make the partner experience better are essential building blocks to drive sales. For example, if a partner plans marketing activities once a semester, but the vendor requires quarterly plans and doesn’t allow planning for future periods, it will be very difficult to align with one another. So, if the partner was to submit their plan late, it might not be able to receive marketing support for the entire quarter, meaning it will have to wait for the next quarter. At Kaspersky, we have introduced flexible marketing planning and simplified the process on our partner portal.

Big vendors have plenty of products, tiers, services, and solutions – totaling hundreds of items in the pricelist. Of course, partners should understand a vendor’s product portfolio but giving them an online tool for quick and easy product selection for ordering is crucial. Such a configurator helps partners build the most effective set of products for particular customers and highlights low-hanging upsell opportunities. On our License Management Portal this is offered in the form of an online solution chooser, to which we are all well accustomed to using since the beginning of pandemic – simply choose the products you need and make an order with several clicks.

5. Provide expertise and technical support

Selling complex solutions requires special technical expertise, which vendors should provide to partners in the form of sales and technical education and access to pre-sales resources. It is important to support partners in this way, but vendors’ expertise should complement their knowledge. Vendors can take care of the proof of concept, allocate sales and pre-sales experts to the partner, or even help in launching marketing campaigns in the regions. This also works for new offerings, as partners need help to be confident with the technical background of a new product.

***

Each step requires effort, resources and investment from vendors, but it will definitely lead to better trust, efficiencies and ultimately higher channel sales. The closer the partner and vendor work together, the better they can delve into the technical details of the product, the vendor’s brand values ​​and strategy, and as a result unlock more sales opportunities by understanding customer needs.

Investment in creating the most convenient environment for the channel also gives partners an incentive to invest in return. Loyal partners are more likely to promote the vendor to their customers – through marketing campaigns, the appointment of a business development manager for the vendor, or by delivering internal readiness and setting internal sales KPIs. At the end of the day, this mutual contribution results in what we call a strong sales channel, delivering outstanding business results.

By Kirill Astrakhan, Head of Channel, Global Sales, Kaspersky

Strong partners and distributors are key business enablers for vendors focused on B2B sales. To help develop this much needed resource, vendors must equip partners with the right tools which allow them to sell more with less effort.

At Kaspersky, our approach to building a strong channel focuses on three key pillars: profitability of the channel, ease of doing business for our partners, and best-in-class business support. As a result, in 2020, our channel showed double-digit growth in revenue, and key partners grew two and a half times faster than the market average, showing our efforts are not in vain.

So, how can all businesses best help their partners to become more effective? Here are a few steps that we have tried and tested ourselves, with good success:

1.     Be flexible

Flexibility towards partners means meeting their requests, even if they are not part of the usual offering. This may include discounts, special conditions, or even special product bundles for a specific project. To make this possible, vendors need to be agile at HQ level and provide some extent of freedom of action to regional offices. Although it demands extra effort, these measures will result in mutual business benefits and faster growth for vendors and partners.

2. Communicate clearly and professionally

According to recent research, channel partners named business support from a vendor as the top benefit when choosing who to work with. This can be achieved by having a professional partner account manager on the vendor’s side, who quickly solves any problems or answers the partner’s questions. But most importantly, this person should also be able to help in business development: understand how the partner’s business works, how it earns and spends money and its P&L (profit and loss) statement principles. This leads to setting realistic goals and relevant business development plans, evaluating progress, and developing effective marketing campaigns which drive return on investment.

It’s very important for partners to know what to expect from the vendor. There should be an established way to communicate company strategy to the channel, so partners can better plan their actions in the market or sort out any challenges. Strategy updates, webinars and in-person meetings with key partners should be held every quarter or several times a year. Networking through informal chats during events is also a good way to help strengthen business ties. Senior management should not refuse to communicate with partners, while partners should also not need to break through several levels of management to gain access to the person who can help.

3. Save partners’ time

Partners should not have to adapt to a vendor’s business processes. By freeing partners from routine actions and difficulties, you can allow them to focus on their business and not waste time on tedious tasks.

For example, the routine process of ordering licenses can take hours or even days – for emails, calls, discussions about products and bundles, approvals pending, and so on. Vendors can free up this time and let partners spend it on something more meaningful.

This was the main goal when we reimagined our License Management Portal (LMP) this year. LMP integrates deeply with our Partner Portal to provide automated deal registration, license ordering and renewals placement experience, so partners could do all this online in a few minutes by just clicking a couple of buttons.

4. Focus on the partner experience

Simplicity of a partner program and tools to make the partner experience better are essential building blocks to drive sales. For example, if a partner plans marketing activities once a semester, but the vendor requires quarterly plans and doesn’t allow planning for future periods, it will be very difficult to align with one another. So, if the partner was to submit their plan late, it might not be able to receive marketing support for the entire quarter, meaning it will have to wait for the next quarter. At Kaspersky, we have introduced flexible marketing planning and simplified the process on our partner portal.

Big vendors have plenty of products, tiers, services, and solutions – totaling hundreds of items in the pricelist. Of course, partners should understand a vendor’s product portfolio but giving them an online tool for quick and easy product selection for ordering is crucial. Such a configurator helps partners build the most effective set of products for particular customers and highlights low-hanging upsell opportunities. On our License Management Portal this is offered in the form of an online solution chooser, to which we are all well accustomed to using since the beginning of pandemic – simply choose the products you need and make an order with several clicks.

5. Provide expertise and technical support

Selling complex solutions requires special technical expertise, which vendors should provide to partners in the form of sales and technical education and access to pre-sales resources. It is important to support partners in this way, but vendors’ expertise should complement their knowledge. Vendors can take care of the proof of concept, allocate sales and pre-sales experts to the partner, or even help in launching marketing campaigns in the regions. This also works for new offerings, as partners need help to be confident with the technical background of a new product.

***

Each step requires effort, resources and investment from vendors, but it will definitely lead to better trust, efficiencies and ultimately higher channel sales. The closer the partner and vendor work together, the better they can delve into the technical details of the product, the vendor’s brand values ​​and strategy, and as a result unlock more sales opportunities by understanding customer needs.

Investment in creating the most convenient environment for the channel also gives partners an incentive to invest in return. Loyal partners are more likely to promote the vendor to their customers – through marketing campaigns, the appointment of a business development manager for the vendor, or by delivering internal readiness and setting internal sales KPIs. At the end of the day, this mutual contribution results in what we call a strong sales channel, delivering outstanding business results.