The benefits of deal registration

• Builds strong relationships with your network of vendors or associates
• Lessens channel conflicts
• Increases business opportunities
• High deal closure rate
• Improving the ROI by closing the loop on marketing
• Understand the sale strategies adopted by partners
• Enhances forecasting and resource allotment.

Delivering Return on Investment (ROI)

Deal registration is the most cost effective program, automating the whole back office. This helps in reducing the cost of operations. Along with this, it delivers good results.

Improves relationships with your associates

Deal registration helps you and your partner’s sales division to work in finding opportunities and closing the deal. This increases the ability to complete the deal quicker and eliminates channel conflicts. It lets you know how your partners are selling, and to whom.

Transparency in the entire process

Choosing an indirect sales model makes sure that the major sales chances are veiled from the dealer. An automated system on the other hand will allow associates to record opportunities and will permit you to track them and help in concluding them.

With the changing landscape of channel programs, many companies are re-thinking and re-launching deal registration management initiatives. The major objective behind deal registration was to help vendors increase their channel sales. It provided information about existing opportunities that offer additional or guaranteed margins to partners who register a deal. Deal registration also protects end users from a barrage of sales people.

Avoid partner conflicts with deal registration

When deal registration programs were initially introduced, it was believed that they could only work in circumstances where the sales cycle was long and price point was a bit high. Deal registration provides the complete visibility of channel sales to both partners and manufacturing companies.

Deal registration is generally employed to minimise the chances of channel conflicts. With a well designed deal registration program, partners can work with their clients without worrying about other companies or salespeople trying to provide similar products at considerably low cost. As deal registration programs are beneficial for manufacturers, end users and partners, it should be well planned and executed in a sales channel.

Partner portals are web based applications which are designed in such a way that the parent companies and partners can easily share information and views. If you own a business and are finding it difficult to manage business relationships then you should opt for a partner portal.

Before partner portals, business owners used to share information via emails, fax and phone calls. Although these are useful, these methods do not offer quick results. With the help of partner portals, the parent company can easily connect and interact with all their partners whenever they want.

Partner portals offer real time information to partners

To access partner portals, your channel partners have to provide authorised credentials. This feature of partner portals allows you to protect your business-related information from strangers. Information such as leads, contacts, reseller programs, deal registration and spreadsheets can be shared via partner portals. Due to latest advances in technology, business partners can get real time information easily.

Partner portals also have a feedback section which allows business owners to modify the website when required. The latest partner portals are designed to integrate a deal registration program onto the portal to reduce the chances of channel conflicts. This will eventually increase sales volume and hence profits.

What is deal registration - Deal registrations will provide you and your partners with a secure and reliable partner portal. This process will allow your partners to register deals online and will also provide protection to your deals or leads. A deal registration can also be equipped with a partner portal.

Partner portal – This is a web-based application that permits a company’s partner to attain a direct access to the company’s pricing and sales information, marketing resources, etc. You can also obtain technical details that might be unavailable to the common public. A partner portal can also update your partners on various new promotions and discounts that will be beneficial for your partners.

This can increase your company’s revenue- Thanks to deal registrations and partner portals, your partners may readily put your product on sale. This will increase your sales and profits. A partner portal can be accessed on the manufacturer’s website. You will have to provide your partners with secure logon credentials and this will help them to monitor the progress of your channel.

Use partner portals to create a feeling of mutual trust and this will help you strengthen your relationships with your partners.

Some important components that make up channel clouds:

Big Box Reseller:

These are the middlemen that are interested in moving mass volumes instead of offering specialised services.

Master Distributor:

They are distributors that purchase enough goods for small scale dealers.

Buying Group:

These are companies that obtain goods in bulk from the distributor or manufacturer. They are co-ops and loose affiliates who purchase goods in bulk to get huge discounts.

Dealer:

A dealer is actually a reseller who is given the power to offer customer support by vendors.

The importance of partner portals in channel management

Employing the use of a partner relationship strategy is one of the biggest business trends today. Numerous organisations implement partner relationship management strategies into their channel due to the many advantages they offer.

Revenue generation and productivity are some major advantages that a sound PRM strategy offers.

A PRM strategy is most effective when partner portals are used. This is because the partner portal acts as a point where all involved parties in the joint business venture can collaborate and communicate with each other. So, if you want to make the most from your sales channel, integrating a PRM strategy can prove to be very helpful.

The lead management software can show the list of potential customers that visited your company website, the links they clicked on and how long they were on your site. Getting a list of leads is crucial as they can not only lead to a sale, but can also result in repeat customers.

Why is it a must to use lead management?

Although partners like to get more and more leads, it takes a lot of resource and effort to obtain them. Once you have the leads, it is important to follow them up and manage them properly. A lead management module offers you the required information and tools for managing the entire process effectively and easily. This involves processes right from distribution to closure.

Advantages of lead management:

• New lead notification delivered to partners via email
• Partners can open, view and download their leads
• Run reports to view the leads by date, status or partner assignment
• Partners can close the loop and update opportunity status

With lead management software, you can easily enter leads by linking to the company API, manually filling the entry form or uploading from a spreadsheet. Moreover, the lead administration dashboard also allows you to view assigned, unassigned leads and the breakdown graphs by partner, source and opportunity.

Managing Your Channel – Channel management is a complex business process which involves a lot of challenges. A vendor can have multiple channel partners in their country as well as in other parts of the world. Managing so many partners can be quite a task and this will mean ironing out any channel conflicts. A vendor and a company simply cannot afford to have channel conflicts as it can affect sales.

When Do Conflicts Arise?

Channel conflicts often arise due to competition between resellers and vendors. Competition is fierce as there are limited customers and the competition increases if you are dealing with high value products or small markets. Resellers might steal potential leads from other resellers or vendors. All this takes place before a deal can be finalised. In some cases, even the vendors compete with a partner in an attempt to claim the total profit for themselves.

Thankfully, there are web based applications and software solutions that can help a channel manager to assist their channel partner’s activities. Deal registration will help partners and vendors to register a lead. This will improve the workflow and increase the sales opportunities.

Partner Relationship Management – how does it help?

Return on investment (ROI) is a tool which measures the profit levels of companies. PRM ensures that the professional relationships between companies and channels are maintained. Selling through indirect channels has become much easier due to the advances in the PRM software. In addition to this, PRM helps in cutting down channel management costs, as traditional manual methods of communication and transactions have been changed to electronic means.

PRM helps a great deal in solving various difficulties faced by different companies. PRM is a web-based solution and therefore it helps in collaborating with indirect channels without having to meet face to face.

PRM also enhances your marketing skills, which further improves your return on investment. PRM software has been installed in many organisations in hope of creating a better working relationship between the parent company and their partners.

How does the lead generation process work?

Lead generation is the process of attracting the attention of consumers. Thus, with the help of advertisement, marketers can attract customers so that they can collect the required data. This data is then verified and prioritised. The sales team then contacts the consumer. This is also known as a follow up which is done to convert the lead into a sale and long-term customer.

The following are some examples of how the lead management process works.

Lead generation via print ads

Lead generation can be done via printed advertisements in newspapers. For instance, a prospect comes across an insurance ad given in a newspaper and he/she likes it instantly. Contact details such as phone numbers and email id might be provided in the ad as well. Thus, the prospect will contact the company on the basis of the sales pitch. Therefore, the sales team of the company will note down the contact details of the prospect and try his/her best to convert the enquiry into a customer.

Online lead generation

Online ads usually generate a lead with the use of landing pages or hyperlinks which direct the prospect to another page. For instance, the user might read an article on the internet with the title ‘Five ways to become rich.’ At the end of the article, the prospect might click on a link which specifies ‘how to become rich using the internet.’ The prospect will then have to fill out the given form and submit it along with other contact details. This simply means that you are now a lead.

What happens after the deal registration? – A partner will have a limited period of time to close a deal after their lead has registered with a vendor. This time period is critical as other channel members are restricted from negotiating terms with a registered lead. This also applies to the vendor’s own sales team. Deal registrations might not be offered by all vendors as some vendors choose to offer them to certain channel partners only.

Why are deal registrations necessary? – Deal registrations are generally added to decrease the chances of channel conflicts. If there were no deal registrations, it might cause channel partners to compete against each other. Even the vendor’s internal sales team might have conflicts among each other for valuable leads.

The benefits of a deal registration program – A deal registration program will ensure that your partners can negotiate terms with a client without the fear of other companies interfering. Other companies might try to offer your clients a service or product at a cheaper rate, but a deal registration program will help your partners stick to their clients.

Some vendors might suggest various tips to aid their partners in the sales process. Smoothen the process and minimise conflict by making use of deal registration programs.