The calendars have been turned to 2012 and with the holidays behind us, it’s time to roll up our sleeves for a new year. I’m sure we are all looking forward to a prosperous year.
Turning the calendar also means it is time for the annual round of predictions for the industry to surface. I’m working with members of our executive team right now as we polish our own Channel predictions for the year. As part of our upcoming webinar, we survey the landscape setting the stage for the Channel in 2012. These are the six elements that we feel will ground trends within the Channel this year:
- Economic recovery
- Mobile technology
- Social
- Cloud
- Data, and
- Consumerization
Watching the economic indicators and stock market on a daily basis is enough to give anyone vertigo these days. The reality is that economic recovery for the next year is uncertain although the last few weeks have been more encouraging than the rollercoaster of November and most of December. Forrester is predicting slow, but overall positive growth with Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America showing the highest growth rates and Western and Central Europe lagging the most. The channel impact will mean that most companies will plan for slow growth with longer sales cycles and budgets that may be contingent.
In 1949, Popular Mechanics indulged in a bit of prediction and hazarded a guess that “computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons.” What a shock the proliferation of mobile devices – many handheld – would have been! While mobile technology is affecting how we play, more profoundly, it affects how (and where) we work. Gartner estimates that smartphones will outnumber desktops and laptops – combined – in a mere two years (2014). The three verticals most heavily influenced by mobile technology right now are sales, healthcare, and education. And it’s the “sales” member of that trio that may be of interest for vendors in the Channel looking for innovative ways to work with their Channel. Your Partner sales teams are often engaging with customers where they can get the most traction – on site. And that means there are increased opportunities for partner engagement and communication using mobile technology.
One of my favorite bits of trivia making the rounds over the last few months concerns Facebook: if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world with a population somewhere around 500 million (China at 1.35 billion and India at 1.2 billion lead the way). The Channel has moved well beyond the question of “if” around Social and now vendors are more interested in “how” – to use Social. McKinsey reports businesses that maximize Social strategies enjoy a 24% higher revenue growth than less social businesses. Within the Channel, Social means that engagement shifts from thinking less about “Partners” and more about “individuals” – less about faceless, generic groups of companies selling your product, and more about the specific characteristics that make the persons on your Partners’ teams an important part of your extended sales efforts.
In 2001 Tom Siebel was talking about Salesforce.com and suggested “there’s no way that company exists in a year.” Another example of a crystal ball that probably needed a refurbishing. Cloud computing is driving a paradigm shift that is seen by many to be as pervasive as the introduction of the Internet. Estimates on growth vary, but all are aggressive with the global cloud computing market predicted to be somewhere around $150-160 billion by 2013 and as much as $240 billion by 2020 (Forrester, Gartner, Merrill Lynch). The Cloud is driving a huge shift in the Channel as Partners and Vendors alike are working to adapt to a recurring revenue model of business.
The proliferation of data raises a whole host of issues for the industry from security to MDM. Bill Gates had no idea that storage conversations would graduate so quickly to terabytes, petabytes, and zettabytes in 1981 when he said “640k ought to be enough for anybody.” Forrester estimates the growth of data at 800% in just the last five years and IBM believes that business email is growing 25-30% annually (no trouble believing that prediction!). One of the key issues with all this data is that it provides no insight if it is unorganized. Channel Management teams struggle to evaluate the success of their individual programs, communications, campaigns, etc. because they often have too much data and too little insight into what it really means. 2012 should see a greater commitment to analytics in the Channel and integration of programs to yield a “single source of truth” to facilitate program adjustments and maximize Channel investments.
Technology innovation used to flow from the enterprise to the consumer market. That has reversed dramatically in the last few years as the consumer market has become the wellspring for innovation. Today 45% of employees feel their personal computing devices and applications are better than what their IT departments provide. Contrast that with the much smaller 27% of executives who have a clear strategic vision for employee adoption of consumer technologies (Accenture). Employees also expect the same user experience in business that they enjoy using their own technology – from the shopping cart and reviews characteristic of an online experience like Amazon, to the “any time, any where” availability of information. The impact of consumerization on the Channel is Partners are often looking for a similar easy-to-use experience when interacting with Vendors that they get when they use technology in their private lives.
What trends do you see populating this Channel “landscape”? You can join me and our executive team on the 11th by clicking here to find out which trends we’ll be watching this next year.
During these difficult economic times, a priority for our clients is the accurate measurement of performance—which requires that we be smart about spending for the best return.
Time and again our clients experience major challenges measuring channel investment because of “dirty,” fragmented and incomplete sales data being reported. Measurement and decisions require solid sales data. To this end I am especially pleased with our recently announced, strategic alliance with Channelinsight.
Channelinsight offers a number of solutions to the sales and inventory data challenges that plague so many technology vendors’ channel sales reporting. The combination of Channelinsight’s cloud based, sales management solutions and hawkeye’s channelConduit programs empower our clients to measure and take action with unprecedented confidence. Our aligned services ensure:
• Targeted partner programs are developed and managed using validated and accurate data
• Analytics driven incentives and rewards programs can be accurately assigned and measured
• Payments are accurate and secure
As 2011 is begins to wind down, our channel-savvy team at hawkeye is determined that our clients come out of the gate strong in 2012—this year more than ever. Click here to receive your free copy of our newly published whitepaper, New Economy Incentive Programs—Maximizing Value and Motivation, where we present three new best practices for developing compelling and effective channel partner programs for the new year—new economy.
I encourage you to visit www.Channelinsight.com to learn more about improving data accuracy and then head over to their blog at www.optimizingthechannel.com. The folks at Channelinsight have some smart views—I particularly enjoyed Mark Geene’s October 13th post Making Channel Sales as Effective as Direct Sales.
We’re also currently working with our new partners at Channelinsight on a joint webinar to be presented in January. Check back soon for the announcement of the date and time.
I hope you’ll be able to join us.
I recently attended Engagement Expo in Frisco, Texas. This B2B event organized by the Loyalty 360 organization attracted a couple hundred people looking to learn more about loyalty in the B2B space for the next 2012 sales cycle. There were many learnings about effective prospect engagement and acquisition, but two major themes emerged very clearly.
The first is new competition to traditional loyalty programs, along the lines of “group buying”, a formula popularized by Groupon, and Living Social which has also been cloned across every major American city. These programs promise a multitude of subscribers a deal per day, price-discounted from 50% to 80% off regular prices. In a national U.S. survey done by Research Now, 58% of adults said they were enrolled in one or more of these types of programs. There is a problem though: group buying as a customer acquisition strategy is weak when associated to lasting brand loyalty. This is supported by a Rice University study which reported that only ~20% of first-time Groupon customers returned to the businesses where they’d used a coupon.
The second is that a more effective approach to new prospect engagement and acquisition is a data- driven communication strategy across the prospect and customer lifecycle. This tactic ensures that your audience receives the right messages, at the right time, differentiating you from your competition.
To implement a data-driven strategy that targets both decision makers and influencers, you’ve got to start by analyzing your own data, then profile and examine your current customer base in order to identify like prospects. This is very important because by identifying prospects that resemble your current customers, you will substantially increase response rates and build prospect dialogue. Segmentation is the starting point to creating “relevant conversation” because it allows us to apply inferred knowledge in our messaging and enhances our chances “just to get in the game”, as generic messaging does not create dialogue opportunities.
Prospect cultivation strategies that create sales-ready leads, and significantly enhance sales conversion rates are also critical to the success of your efforts to maximizing customer lifetime value. Research has shown it takes 5+ touches just to begin making an impression in your targeted audience, hence less than 5% of all B2B leads generated are sales ready (were only touched once and sent to sales). Synergistic multi-touch cultivation efforts outperform single touch, so you’ve got to wrap a complete campaign around each communication, and please don’t sell, instead, offer. Offer information, motivation and consistent messaging. As you capture and track the dialogue that transpires with a prospect, you position yourself to engage in a personal and relevant conversation based on real information. This information helps you plan and manage through the sales cycle as well as identify up-sell/cross-sell opportunities through data intelligence.
Does this sound familiar? It sure did to me since this is an approach that we encourage our clients to pursue for the most effective engagement with their partners.
Thank you for attending (or not) our webinar on channel incentives for this new economy. During the webinar, we reviewed the effects of the Great Recession on the channel and how it has impacted IT & Telecom vendor’s incentive programs. We also listened to the “voice of the partner” to better understand their challenges participating in your program – followed by a target practice lesson aimed at balancing and delivering the right incentives to the right partners at the right time. It was a lot of content for 45 minutes and we stayed high level in order to please everyone in the audience.
If you felt we stated the obvious, you’ll be pleased to learn that as we go into 2012, we’ll dive into each segment in-depth, and analyze the facts behind the most successful incentive programs hawkeye has managed in the last 15 years. The objective of this analysis is to share key drivers for success in channel incentive programs, and provide you with a better perspective on our data-driven approach to incentives for the 2012 sales cycle.
Incentive programs are prone to generating considerable amounts of waste, as channel marketing teams allocate more and more dollars to their incentives programs without a clear understanding of what really makes them successful. Waste is especially evident on rebate programs that pay partners on volume, without consideration of partner engagement. Without a data-driven approach to recognizing the behavior of successful partners, incentive programs can only be judged by tactical measurements, instead of how well they support the real goal of increasing partner performance.
A data-driven approach to incentive plan design – identifies best practices that already exist within your channel ecosystem, and then places the right incentives to inspire those same behaviors across the targeted partner tier; raising the overall standard of performance, and creating positive changes that last.
We’ll continue to bring you more insights on measuring the true incremental impact of your channel programs in 2012. We know how vital it is to identify and prioritize partners with the greatest potential and align your resources so that you can invest in programs and partners that really make a difference.
The trees are changing color here in Seattle and that means….you thought I was going to say Fall is in the air right? Well, yes, but it also means that we are all thinking about 2012 and not just those Doomsday predictions. It’s time to plan budgets and strategies for the Channel.
We talk a lot about being data driven here at hawkeye and truly believe it needs to be a part of everything we do with our customers in the Channel. For companies seeking to maximize their large investment in incentives provided to partners, access to data and the ability to analyze that data is essential. For example, one of the things we suggest to our clients is that it is not enough to just track metrics with a rebate program – a best-in-class rebate platform should be able to provide modeling to determine your financial exposure.
Next week our Chief Channel Strategist Claudio Ayub will be presenting a webinar on Channel Incentive Programs for a Sluggish Economy. Incentive programs are always of huge interest to Partners but the challenge for Vendors is to maximize the investment: who do you incentivize? Which is better – company level incentives or team/individual incentives? Claudio will look at a variety of incentives programs with advice on how to target the appropriate program to the right partners.
We’re partnering with the Baptie Community for this webinar and look forward to a lively Q&A session after Claudio’s presentation – we hope you’ll join us. Click here to register.
We’re kicking off another interesting project this week at hawkeye. One of our financial service clients has come to us with a really big question… ”Can we (and frankly, should we) use our customer’s online behavior to trigger an offline follow-up communication?” Our first step is going to be diving into millions and millions of rows of click stream data so that we can wrap our heads around what types of reasonable triggers we can come up with. We’ll be looking at things like frequent visits to our site within a short time frame, or maybe clicking on a product specific banner ad. From there, we’ll be building a strategy around what to do with the triggers we’ve defined. What channel(s) do we use? How quickly do we follow-up? How specific is our messaging? All along the way, we’re going to be walking a very fine line between taking advantage of the “hotness” of the lead, and the risk of our client’s customers feeling that we’re being too intrusive with our marketing efforts. Should be a lot of fun!
