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October 6, 2006
Co-op Woes: Leaving Money On The Table
I read a terrific article on Ziff-Davis' eWeek Channel Insider Website, titled "Leaving Money On The Table." As I have seen repeatedly at Cierant, companies deploy marketing support services for their resellers then presume that the resellers, dealers, brokers, etc. will instantly adopt the tools and market to all their contacts.
For many reasons, this is rarely the case. First, the materials supplied are often completely inappropriate. Manufacturers love to talk about their products, forgetting that the resellers want to talk about themselves. A word to the wise in designing materials for use by channel partners -- their logo is more important than yours if you want them to use the pieces. However, quality or relevance aside, the company deploying the campaigns or online tools often forgets that what their resellers really need is "marketing expertise" -- i.e. market research, effective strategies, how they should market and what works best. Then, adding insult to injury, in a remarkable number of cases, we have seen clients deploy tools then fail to adequately fund the merchandising of the implementation! (Just because you mail or e-mail information to channel partners, don't presume they see or read everything you send. Typical resellers only absorb a small fraction of the information most manufacturers send out!)
In perhaps one of the more pointed statements in the article, the author quotes Stephen DiFranco, corporate vice president of consumer sales and markets at Advanced Micro Devices, who notes: "Vendors have to have a sales force in place to sell MDF, which means telling partners about programs, teaching them how to use the money and reporting back to them their successes."
Channel partners remain a vital component in the distribution mix. But getting them to perform at a high level is not a "hands-off" process. Especially in markets where partners have a choice of solutions to select from, marketing can be a powerful tool in building loyalty in the channel. But remember that the first part of good marketing is strategy. Sure they will say "we know what we're doing" and "I don't need your help" but let results dictate whether that is true! Ensuring that your partners know all the tools available to them, monitoring adoption, and helping them understand usage of self-service tools can make all the difference.
Posted by jcioban at October 6, 2006 6:10 PM
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