Target: You must decide on your target beforehand. While doing this, it is recommended to target a combination of users, resellers and dealers. Targeting only a small audience will not be profitable.

Specify the terms and conditions: This is not merely marketing hype but an official legal document that has the eligibility, terms and conditions of the program mentioned in it. It is mandatory for the participants to agree on this.

Achievable targets for earning rewards: The channel incentive program should be both persuasive and easy in terms of understanding. In short, keep it short and sweet.

Should not be difficult to validate: The toughness of the audit train should be proportional to the size of the reward.

Failing to validate the program: Although this is legal in all jurisdictions targeted; it is good if you do not follow suit.

Wrong channel segment or partners: This may be a major mistake. It may be after inking the deal that you may find that the partners do not sell the product or they are not comfortable with the strategy.

Do not neglect advanced registration: You will be able give out pre-registration offers if there are more than one claim by any of the participants, provided the terms allows them to. Advanced registration provides standards on involvement levels, and shapes the claim process.

These are some important things that you will have to avoid while planning a channel incentive program.

For a PRM strategy to be successful, it is important that your approach should allow changes in business processes based on the demands of partners, suppliers and customers.

PRM used for training

PRM has revolutionised partner development, preparation and knowledge sharing. Systems with incorporated e-learning tools have training programs designed for the personal profile of sales, marketing and expert staff in the partner group. They give training in an engrossing and entertaining way with use of multimedia technologies. They also use partner portal or an extranet and online testing to automate the certification procedure.

Such tools can assure the accurate checking of test results for training certifications. PRM automation ensures that the most entitled training programs are advertised, managed and rendered to the most deserving individuals within the community. This reduces the costs associated with time spent in classroom training and managing these complex business processes.

Loyalty programs

Most producer loyalty programs contain the same inevitable collection of branded program productions, which are poorly handled and barely evaluated by partners, but this is not the case with an efficient partner relationship management plot. This will assure that manufacturers coordinate their partner programs to bring value to the partners and their clients. Loyalty programs should aim at providing associates with the infrastructure and tools to support their marketing, sales and customer-support systems.

Once the base for the loyalty program has been built, it is time to reward the deserving team/partner.

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.

For a PRM strategy to succeed it is significant that your approach should include alterations in business processes based on the requirements of partners, suppliers and customers. Factors to implement PRM successfully include the training of your employees to make them comprehend the principles of PRM. It also consists of implementation of IT systems to facilitate the company to accomplish its PRM strategy.

Benefits of PRM in business

A PRM strategy implemented with healthy systems, methods and procedures allow you to administer all your partner relations through the partner lifecycle. Your first concern should be accurate data. It is crucial to keep the information transparent in any partner relationship management plan. The manufacturer can plan a unified partner program that will control the capabilities of their partners and help them with their business goals by combining accurate partner data with a single master data repository.

Comprehensive partner involvement can bring about big improvements in the quality, aptness, and relevance of partner interactions and will ensure that the messages of manufacturers are accurately targeted.

A manufacturer’s partner selection and segmentation has been motivated by supply volumes and sales performance. PRM allows you to analyse a partner’s worth based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Big box reseller: They play the role of middle men who look into activities such as moving bulk volume.

Master distributor: Master distributors purchase adequate supplies for small scale dealers.

Buying group: Buying groups obtain from the manufacturer or distributor in bulk.

Channel: Moves the products and services to the end user.

Broker: The broker negotiates the deals, partnerships, and sales between companies.

Independent representative: This is one of the most important aspects of partner portals; independent representatives will help in providing a sales service which will offer local market access to manufacturers.

Dealer: A dealer is a reseller who is given the authority to offer customer support by vendors, in most cases. They are independent companies and are usually involved in the automobile or heavy equipment industry.

All these aspects come together in order to generate a smoother functioning business. The vendor has to impart important company related information to the channel partners. This information will let your partners know more about your new product or strategy for better organisation.

These portals not only inform the partners about a new product/service, but they also educate them about new strategies and ways of conducting business. Involve your channel partners in your business with the use of efficient and well-planned partner portals.

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.

Deal registration is a program which allows channel partners to send a message to the vendor or business owner about the new lead.

The significance of deal registration for your business

The main aim of the deal registration program is to reduce conflicts between channel partners and the vendor’s sales team. This program helps partners to develop new programs and increase their profitability. In most cases, business owners also offer channel incentives to partners for their pre-sale investments. These incentives are only for the partner who registers first for the lead.

There are many companies who have opted for deal registration to protect their partners’ profit margin. The latest deal registration program also uses online software. By using this feature, the business owners can increase their indirect sales to some extent.

Once you have decided to opt for a deal registration program it is important to educate your partners regarding the new program. Proper training will help them to understand all the facilities of the program. Even briefing your partners about your business objectives is important.

Improve your business productivity and efficiency using a deal registration program.

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.

One of the challenges is to discover what happened to leads sent to the channel. You may face some questions like:

• The leads that your partner followed up
• The amount of leads that turned into sales
• The total return on investment for each program that created the leads

A channel sales representative can help your partners follow up the leads and close them. This will be an indication that you are on the right track and are doing a good job. There is a chance that many leads still do not close. In such a situation, these leads are of no use. Each partner representative may work with many partners in the channel and each of the partners may have as many leads as possible. A single representative works on one lead at a time so the rest are kept on hold.

This scenario calls for good lead management.

Partner portal strategies are very effective as they serve as a focal point in joint business ventures, business convergences, communication and collaborations.

A partner portal system can be defined as an internet based application that allows a manufacturer’s pipeline or partners to gain access to valuable information such as marketing strategies, pricing, support and overall sales. It can be accessed from the manufacturer’s main website and you will require logon credentials to log into it. You can thus assign logon credentials to important partners and they can access the necessary information at any give time. Partner portals can be a critical component of a successful strategy that will be useful for a small business.

Given below are the various features of partner portals:

Capture leads - Partner portals will assist leads and will also decrease the number of quarrels over a lead. Partner portals can be accessed anywhere and you can access it from any computer 24/7.

Content management system – A portal manager will allow you to instantly upload content on your portal via a dashboard. You do not need any prior training for this and you can upload your content without affecting the current layout of your site.

Password protection - By using a password protected log in, your associates can instantly access company related content.

Use partner portals systems to make you business more efficient.