When you think about it, manufacturers can make a case for viewing their channel partners as part of their employee organization. While that would be an extreme and inaccurate assumption, the channel is indeed an extremely important extension of your sales and marketing organization. And just as with your internal personnel, you must periodically evaluate to determine how well channel partners are performing on your company's behalf.
As is the case with your own employees, fair and accurate performance measurement requires setting and adhering to mutually agreed upon sales goals during regular time intervals. Instead of awarding pay increases and bonuses, however, you will dole out rewards and incentives to your channel partners.
These will be based on the ability of your partner and its sales staff to leverage your own (and jointly developed) promotional and marketing campaigns, which increases sales and revenue for the corporate coffers-yours and your partner's.
The process doesn't end there. You and your channel partners are mutually committed to each other's long-term growth and continued success. A reseller's performance during a particular month or quarter may meet, exceed, or fail to match expectations. If it's exceeding all goals, you and your partner must resist the temptation of taking an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to the next month or quarter. Your company's goal and your partner's goal are always the same: more, more, more!
Take time to jointly devise new, loftier-though-attainable goals for the next measuring period, making sure to also increase corporate and individual incentives for your partners to make the extra effort worthwhile. Also, don't fall victim to tunnel vision by planning only for the period directly ahead. Get a firmer hold of future channel sales projections, however idealistic they may seem, by formulating quantitative (A, B, C, or D), as well as qualitative questionnaires in which you ask your own sales personnel and channel partners to expound upon what they feel is working, what can be improved, and what might be better off tossed into the trash.
You are bound to come away with a bounty of new ideas as you provide your own employees and channel partners a clearer vision of their goals and responsibilities toward the achievement of agreed upon sales projections. You'll also garner a more loyal channel, as you provide a dose of affirmation that you value their contributions and are counting on them in the future. This provides a reassuring sense of comfort about their future job status, which is especially important during these perilous economic times.
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