Selling and sales management is tough enough when that's with your own colleagues, directly selling your own products and services, as we have been finding out throughout The Canterbury Tales. And now we come to...
Recorded - The Supplier's Tale - Complimentary Webinar <---RECORDED
For this and all other recorded webinars currently available on ModernSelling.com, you will need a free download of Windows Media Player - click here.
We've looked at What's broken in current sales processes, then What Modern Buyers do differently, so What Modern Sellers need to change, then How to Work with Modern Marketers, and How to Make Modern Selling numbers add up.
| Selling is hard; Channel Sales harder (pic - SmartCatalog) |
But what happens when what we sell goes or comes via a Channel - with Partners or Distributors or Value Added Re-Sellers (VAR)? How do we "recruit" and then "motivate" vast armies of sales people who don't even work for our company?
Or what if we're in a Country Subsidiary and Head Office decides all the rules, provides the marketing support, even fulfils and supplies the orders we get? That's got to be a LOT harder, hasn't it?
Yes - I'm afraid it is, but fear not, help is at hand to make it as easy as possible, so...
Watch the The Supplier's Tale now
And meet our guest presenters for this most vital of guided tours, who will also be happy to look at any specific questions or problems you may have. They are...
Tim Barnsley - co-Founder and Managing Partner of Channel Dynamics Ltd who - with a background in having helped the channel developments and partnership alliances of suppliers like ICL, Honeywell Bull, Accenture, BT, Cisco and Xerox, and where he himself also set up the UK Association of Alliance Managers to now be the UK arm of the global Association of Alliance Professionals (ASAP) - is an ally you need to meet and learn from ASAP (as soon as possible!).
Jeremy Spiller - continuing to lead The Canterbury Tales by popular demand, having startled us all with his killer slide on The Marketer's Tale (the invisible sales person one), is also going to be sharing his considerable knowledge gained from working with and for partners and channels from clients of White Hat Media like Microsoft and Toshiba. And I'm sure he'll agree with us all that the complications of Channel Sales, be you Supplier or Re-Seller are many and varied, but so much easier when you have some experience and knowledge, with the wisdom to apply it all.
Subject to your input via questions and comments below, we will be discussing how to...
- Build profitable partnerships between suppliers and resellers.
- Manage partner channels to increase sales.
- Encourage and train advocates to sell for you.
- Create effective partner feedback processes.
And even if you cannot make our convenient lunch-time slot, please do get involved and register anyway, because the recording will then be made available, and your questions and comments can still be discussed, before and afterwards, as you can see happening on the other Canterbury Tales. And that makes them an even more valuable resource for us all, so...
Please let me see this webinar
For this and all other recorded webinars currently available on ModernSelling.com, you will need a free download of Windows Media Player - click here.
...and my question or comment is...
And if you click the Log in with LinkedIn button / option (below, upper right or home page), you'll find that the connections and updates and so on are automatic, from there - e.g. you'll get an email prod when somebody answers or adds their point too - plus your LinkedIn name link and profile will automatically appear.
Questions & Comments
If LinkedIn is your preferred Business Profile (and it should be!)...
...then please feel free to use it, with the "Log in with LinkedIn" button you can see there, and then your questions and comments will be posted like this, hooking back automatically to you and your picture / profile - for example if you click on my "Neil Warren" name highlighted below.
Then all can talk to all, and make sense.
And you'll also find 2,000+ of us in the ModernSelling.com LinkedIn Group...
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Modern-Selling-com-1328087
...and with an extension of this discussion...
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/You-are-invited-Canterbury-Tale-1328087.S.78185693
...if you prefer and that helps?
Posted by Neil Warren on
Yes it's Tim
Just done the rehearsal - this is good stuff. Get in touch through this if you have comments or questions
Posted by Tim Barnsley on
Any questions, feedback, discussion welcome
If anyone has any questions about the topic of the webinar or would like to discuss it, please feel free to post here or comment.
Jeremy
Posted by Jeremy Spiller on
If Salesforce.com think channels & partnerships are big...
Let me also just stick this Salesforce.com reference page in here...
http://www.salesforce.com/uk/crm/sales-force-automation/partner-channel-management/
...to give us some further clues about how big and relevant all this channel and partnership activity has become.
It's also "Connect & Collaborate" (rather than Command & Control), which avid followers of ModernSelling might have noticed me mentioning...
http://www.modernselling.com/news-and-events/sales-editorial-comment/connect-collaborate-books-change-your-life-selling-sales-management-20114023.aspx
...here and there?
Posted by Neil Warren on
Follow up questions...
With apologies to all concerned, for the slight delay (it's a bit new still, all this linking technology and people), here are some of the questions we missed from this webinar.
You first Tim, from "London" (but who may not be deliberately anonymous for the above reason)...
Hi Tim - My question is on the summary table you showed setting out partners and countries results by vendor - presumably companies have to sign up to allowing that to be visible or is this a value add from your team (again with the permission of all vendors)?
Posted by Neil Warren on
Keith - Cool Tech Group - Brighton
Then you Jeremy, on your plea for all sales people to get properly equipped for the future...
Q: Any advantages of iPad over Android or vice-versa?
Posted by Neil Warren on
Brian MacIver for Tim
We caught one or two of Brian's in there Tim, but a couple more that we did not were...
Q: What went wrong at BT/ATT joint Venture Concert?
Q: Alliance measurement is "Survey" based, a perception snapshot taken at a point in time, How do you verify this with real data?
Posted by Neil Warren on
"London" = "Richard" Question
Sorry again for lack of editing features (yet) on our posts here (so maybe do that in Notepad folks, before a copy/paste here - Word also does not translate all that well), but I see now that the "London" question above is the same one from "Richard" that I started to read out right at the end, and said we'd pick up on here.
Posted by Neil Warren on
Alliance Measurement
Brian, our view is that there are 2 complementary sets of metrics which make or break an for an alliance. Both of them are essential to develop and maintain a healthy alliance. The first is the revenue and profit that the alliance has generated in the past: this is the rear view mirror.
The second is the current set of perceptions of the stakeholders in the 2 companies: do we have the right offers; are we aligned; have we set up the right management structure; is there a sensible sales engagement model in place; do we understand each others' business priorities.........? Interpreted with patience and experience, these metrics can give powerful insights into likely future success for the alliance. Probably even more important is the fact that when the stakeholders answer these questions their awareness of what is important and effective/defective is expanded and they become sensitised to the real agenda. As a result they start to acknowledge what needs to be done to improve the performance of the joint teams.
Collaborative behaviour is not for most people in our experience an innate skill - It has to be learned, preferably not the hard way!
Posted by Tim Barnsley on
Teamwork, from Buyer to Seller to Marketer to Bean-counter, via Alliance Partners, and don't forget
(I suspect Brian might be along in a moment Tim)....Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Grand Finale of The Canterbury Tales surely could only be The Boss's Tale, now open for seat reservations...
http://www.modernselling.com/news-and-events/webinar-corner/boss-tale-workshop-webinar-discussion-series-neil-warren-jeremy-spiller-20114049.aspx
...and of course your supplementary or consequential Questions & Comments arising.
Should make for a Happy New Year (or decade or two), if we can make some of these changes stick?
Posted by Neil Warren on
Alliance Measurement
Thank you, Tim. Your two dimensions are insightful and Practical. Your conclusion that Collaboration in the hardest lesson to learn, but one which life teaches, if you survive long enough, I also agree with.
Perhaps part of the problem was the ?labels? we attach. Everybody understands the word ?Takeover?, you assess what you want, discard the rest then integrate. I had personal experience with this on Memorex?s acquisition of Telex Corp.
Alliance, Joint Venture and Merger present other problems. Who is in charge, Joint CEO?s never seems to work (Cameron and Clegg?). If we use your word ?Collaboration?, then we might as well use the two dimensions ?what do I get out of this, and what do you get out of this??
Collaboration is where we both work for a win/win. But, why should I if I can achieve a win without your help? (Competitive) Or, if I see you winning when I can?t win, will I resist the temptation to work against you and create a Lose/lose?
The reality of many Alliances is not Collaboration, but ?Compromise?; Win some, lose some or we neither gets what we want, but we both get some of what we want. The way to Collaboration is through the door of ?Accommodation? where even though I am not yet winning, I enable and help you to win, and see and believe that you are making great efforts to enable my win!
Or, sometimes it is just faster to turn the ?Alliance? into a ?Takeover?!
Posted by Brian MacIver on
My Question / Comment Is...
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