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!
The questions that are among the most consistently asked of the channel professionals at hawkeye are often tied to MDF and co-op fund utilization. From a foundational level of understanding metrics to a more complex level of application analysis, there is much room for error and confusion. However, we have identified two mutually exclusive categories that account for almost all under-utilization that occurs with MDF and co-op programs.
The first category is fairly straight-forward, and involves under-consumption of MDF and co-op dollars by partners. Under-consumption translates to lost opportunities for both you and your partners.
If that doesn’t sound like you, you may fall into the second category, which essentially boils down to vendors leaving their channel partners wanting more support. Partners have identified 3 top reasons for MDF under-utilization:
- Complexities and administrative burden
- Long delays in approvals and payment
- Unfamiliarity or unawareness of the program
While knowing the problem may be half the battle, reaching a solution is what you really care about, right? Here are some ideas for improving utilization:
Being a data-driven organization, hawkeye has a firm belief in utilizing analytics. Learn how to use data to improve your MDF by creating a baseline for measuring partner sales over a period of time. This is essential for tracking growth and identifying problems. With this, are able to begin gathering ROI data on programs and to track activities from beginning to completion. Lastly, offering execution services often results in a drastic change, because it addresses the issue of providing support for partners.
The key to a successful MDF program is in ensuring that you and your partners have a solid foundation to build from and structured, data-oriented strategy to build with. Communicating expectations in a structured way is essential for maintaining an open and successful relationship with partners. Once this has been established, an MDF program has the necessary footing to provide value to both you and your partners.
In 2007, Amazon Consulting’s CEO Diane Krakora wrote an article declaring “The Demise of PRM As We Know It.” Her article sealed the fate at that time of a shift in attention from PRM to CRM solutions and the literature was virtually silent on the merits of PRM for a time.
Google Trends is by no means a scientific research tool (tracking, as it does, searches and frequency in internet content of the words for which you seek trend information).* However, it does provide some interesting food for thought when you can trend words or acronyms with fairly specific meaning…like “PRM” and “CRM.”
The Google Trends view for PRM vs. CRM popularity shows that indeed, at the time of Krakora’s article, PRM had essentially flat-lined as far as interest expressed online.
Source: http://google.com/trends; pulled June 2011.
Source: http://google.com/trends; pulled June 2011
Some interesting things happened in 2008 though. One of those things was increasing talk of a recession. (“Recession” is shown separately because the volume of mentions for it is so huge, that when trended in the same graph with CRM and PRM, it compresses the scale so much that we are unable to see what is happening with PRM and CRM). The second thing that happened – that leads us to our topic of PRM – is that about the time that “recession” entered the news, interest in CRM greatly perked up, and interest in PRM returned in mid-2008. Many businesses saw the gathering thunderclouds and quickly realized that they needed the information from their CRM and PRM systems to provide them with the insight target their efforts to effective partners and segments to keep business – if not strong, then at least maintained – through the rough waters ahead.
With the incredible belt-tightening that accompanied several years of global recession, many companies “made do” with existing PRM and CRM solutions – bolting together existing data repositories and occasionally expanding efforts to add, say, a cloud solution like Salesforce’s cost effective CRM solution. Companies are now experiencing somewhat more expanded budgets and are looking at existing systems for managing their customers and partners. Integration is a key tool to melding your internal PRM system with cloud-based CRM platform for cost effective-solutions that link together data across your company’s business units.
Integration can be a messy and difficult process though. I’m currently working with Dave Hafermann, our resident PRM/CRM guru (and Chuck Norris fan) and Ian Hutchieson, our Managing Director in the UK on webinar content for later this month. In the webinar, they will talk about things to keep in mind as you begin your own integration journey like why you should integrate your PRM and CRM solutions, some of the challenges you may face, and suggestions for designing and implementing an integrated solution.
*For an intriguing example of the limitations of Google Trends, try trending “Cloud” – any incidence of the word “cloud” trends whether it is the new iCloud or a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland!
Peter Ostrow, a Research Director at Aberdeen Group, is conducting a survey that will help companies with indirect selling partners assist them in hitting their quota more consistently. By participating in this brief survey, you will be able to see how your experiences in partner relationship management and channel enablement compare with those of your peers. This study offers a unique opportunity to benchmark your year-to-year accomplishments in terms of channel sales and marketing effectiveness. If your company is planning on implementing a channel or partner-based selling solution, or is simply evaluating the potential benefits, we would appreciate your feedback in this brief, 10-minute survey.
In appreciation for sharing your time and thoughts with us, Aberdeen will provide complimentary access for you to the full benchmark report (a $399 value). Individual responses will be kept strictly confidential, and data will only be used in aggregate. We look forward to hearing from you, and greatly appreciate your time and participation.
Thank you!
