4 Strategies to Create a Results Driven Channel Partner Technology Stack

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Are you throwing technology darts at a wall and hoping they land near the bulls-eye?

We all know that technology can play a critical role in fixing challenging business processes.

But technology — by itself — isn’t a magic pill. Anyone who has dealt with the data silos, underutilized technology, and integration headaches all caused by the “throwing darts” method will attest to that.

The goal, then, is to move away from “random acts of technology” and create a logical, functional structure based on well-defined processes. Think of it as the drumbeat of your marketing technology.

If you’re new to the concept of technology stacking in marketing, here’s a quick primer: It’s the grouping of technologies that organizations use to conduct and improve their marketing activities, and are most often associated with making the difficult processes easier.

The conversation around marketing TechStack has largely been used in context of traditional B2B or B2C companies. Below, we explain the core categories required for channel-based selling organizations to build a successful ChannelTech Stack.

The four essential building blocks of a ChannelTech Stack are:

1. Communication

  • Build a closed loop and integrated communication flow between you and your channel partners.
  • Create lines of bi-directional communication
  • Disperse information in the right place (including mobile) at the right time so that lead quality increases, conversion rates improve and revenue generation increases

2. Engagement

  • Supply proactive relationship management whereby channel partners receive the sales support, product training/certifications, and incentives they need when they need it
  • Offer sales support in-context; don’t expect partners to seek it out (ie, portals)
  • Previously referred to as Partner Relationship Management (PRM), evolve your processes to a more active engagement at scale with a channel partner network

3. Orchestration

  • Map and optimize workflow related to finding, engaging, and converting customers
  • Look beyond the automation of repetitive tasks like Partner Marketing Automation, to orchestrating the entire sales processes

4. Insights

  • Expect better data on sales cycles, buying patterns, win/loss ratios
  • Analyze data in a single system of record for channel revenue execution

Building a ChannelTech based on these core principles leads to greater efficiencies, revenue optimization and competitive differentiation, but finding them all in a single platform, until now, has proved elusive. With a Channel Revenue Optimization platform like LeadMethod, companies can deploy their ChannelTech stack on a single platform.

In our next blog post, we’ll explore in more detail the features and functions of a well-designed ChannelTech Stack. Stay tuned.