Partner Communications

---

Improve Communications With Your Business Partners

Staying connected with your network of business partners--franchisees, dealers, distributors, brokers, and resellers--is critical to the long-term success of your business because your channel can drive sales and distribution of your products and services.  Partners have tremendous influence with customers and can be instrumental in identifying new product and market opportunities.  The channel also plays an integral role in servicing and supporting your customers.


Communicate Proactively With Your Partners

One way to earn the attention and efforts of your partner network is to communicate frequently, be responsive, and provide information that helps partners profit. By proactively reaching out to partners, and providing useful, actionable information, your partner program will deliver a competitive advantage that your channel needs and wants.

Each partner has different information requirements, though, and while your Partner Relationship Management (PRM) system may handle the back-end processes (order management, lead distribution, proposal generation), many systems don’t have a way to communicate and collaborate with the channel.

kNEWS simplifies channel communications by making it easy to distribute actionable information that will help your partners generate revenue.

A study by the Gartner Group found that when customers go to dealers for assistance, 77% do not have a specific brand in mind. Of those customers who are not “pre-branded”, resellers report that nearly 90% of the customers purchase a brand recommended by the reseller. And even if the customer is pre-branded, resellers report that they switch the customer to an alternative brand 53% of the time.

--Marketing of High-Technology Products and Innovations, Jakki Mohr.

Enhance Your Partner Website

kNEWS can extend the value of your PRM system or partner extranet by providing a means to reach out and encourage partners to visit. Often, the information you want to share with partners is already located on your portal or website somewhere. kNEWS helps organize this information, notify partners via e-mail and RSS, and make it easy for them to locate the content they need.


The Business Results

Consistent, relevant communications with your reseller network keeps partners informed and thinking about you.  Effective communications with your agents, brokers, and resellers establishes trust, generates loyalty, and will differentiate your channel program.

Before you embark on an enterprise-level PRM implementation, or to extend the value of an existing PRM system, consider a focused partner communications program. 


The Content Of Successful Channel Newsletters

There is a host of information and expertise that your company can communicate during the pre-sales, sales, and post-sales processes that will serve your channel: 

• Successful sales and marketing strategies
• Ongoing education and product training
• Sales and marketing collateral—price lists, brochures, product specifications, datasheets, etc.
• Competitive intelligence
• Partner promotions, marketing opportunities, and benefits
• Partner comments, suggestions, and best practices
• New product and service information
• Policy and procedure information regarding your distributor program
• Product support information.

An Application Scenario

The Challenge

To keep its network of distributors and resellers informed, Supersonic Software sends weekly faxes and monthly mailings.  This communications process is tedious, however, because the fax process is prone to error and takes a lot of time to complete.  The company is concerned that its distributors aren’t receiving the information the company is sending out, and they would like to be able to communicate more frequently. 

Supersonic has also invested heavily in a partner portal that they encourage partners to use.  Much of the information Supersonic wants partners to be aware of, is already on the portal so they don’t always want to create new content, simply leverage what is already there.


The Strategy

Using kNEWS, Supersonic starts a weekly e-mail newsletter focused on:

• Highlighting useful areas of the partner portal
• Sharing sales and marketing strategies of their most successful partners
• Presenting partner’s suggestions and comments.

They also include general partner program information, technical updates, software fixes, new product releases, and competitive intelligence. 

Partners customize their own subscription profiles and select the topics that are most relevant to them.  Supersonic also decided to incorporate an online discussion forum to facilitate partner-to-partner interaction as well as collaboration with the company.


The Results

Partners at all levels are more informed and responsive thanks to the e-newsletters.  Supersonic spends less time managing the partner communications process and more time locating valuable expertise and actionable information partners can use.  By sharing tips and tricks for Supersonic's online ordering system, the company has lowered the number of order entry errors and inaccuracies. Sales volume through its indirect channels is growing and they have increased the number of resellers in their partner program.