Channel Management - Using Deal Registration to Reduce Conflicts

Partner channel sales account for majority of the total sales with an estimated 70% compared to 30% of direct sales from technology, manufacturing and consumer goods in the United States. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 5M sales people were responsible for the 70% indirect sales in the high tech, manufacturing and distribution industry.

Conflicts with partners
With complex business processes like channel management, challenges are expected. Vendors can have many channel partners around the world, not just in their countries. Managing them includes ironing out channel conflicts that are bound to come up sooner or later. Conflicts arise because of major competition between resellers or resellers and vendors. With high value products or vertical markets, competition is fierce because of the limited number of customers. A reseller may have their potential lead stolen under their noses by another reseller from the same vendor at anytime before a deal is finalized. There are cases where the vendor itself would compete with the partner to claim the entire profit for themselves. Fortunately, there are software solutions or web based applications that are available to channel managers that can help facilitate channel partner activities.

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Importance of deal resignation
Deal registration is an important module of every channel partner portal or software. The objectives of deal registration are to enable partners to register leads, improve workflow and turn leads to sales opportunities. The deal registration is initialized when a channel partner submits a potential deal to be reviewed by the channel manager. The module finds duplicate deals and when a duplicate is located, the system automatically sends notification to the channel partner that the deal is rejected. If however, the deal is unique, then it is approved and the sales cycle can begin.

With multiple channel partners in a local area, conflict would arise because of too much competition. Assigning unique deals to each partner ensures that the market is covered but is not oversaturated.

Since 2005, deal registration software have moved from a fancy tool for big vendors into a must have tool for majority of vendors. It has been proven to be the best solution to channel conflicts especially for companies with Value Added Resellers or VARs, and platinum to gold resellers. However the system is only effective depending on the managers and resellers that actually use it.

Implementation and execution
In the integration of deal registration in the channel management process, managers must be consistent with the new implementation. It is important that the executives, with the sales department, are clearly briefed on the objectives of the vendor in investing on this tool. Be honest and fair in dealing with the channel partners. If the channel partner feels that the system is fair, then they would be further motivated to sell.

Managers have to make sure that the partner portal has a user-friendly interface the reseller can easily use. Having a complicated interface would only dissuade the reseller from registering; therefore, the system would result in failure. It is important to choose the right deal registration module that will eliminate most of the paperwork associated with sales reports. A fully automated partner portal would guarantee that the resellers won't spend valuable time manually compiling reports, vouchers, etc.

Channel Management - Using Deal Registration to Reduce Conflicts

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You may want to take a look at a Channel Management web page for more information and details or you may call us directly at 877 226 2564 (TOLL FREE).

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