| Communicating With Partners: Five Simple Rules |
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| Channels Web Stories - In: Asian Channels August 2007 | |
| Written by Greg Eckstein, Vice President, Channel Enablers | |
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Many high tech vendors simply do not communicate effectively with their resellers. It's not that vendors don't send out a lot of information. (They do!) And it's not always that the information is bad. (It isn't!) The problem is the way they send it out - and the lack of coherency when all the messages reach the channel. There is no plan, no strategy, no consistency in the communications - just thousands of vendor messages raining down every day on resellers who have long ago learned how to filter them out. The result is missed opportunities for everyone. There are many ways that vendors communicate with their partners, including telephone calls, partner meetings, webinars, marketing announcements, blogs, training sessions and, of course, email. Studies show that these vendor communications are usually scanned or processed quickly and then largely forgotten. It is not enough for a vendor to transmit a message to a reseller and assume the job is done. In fact, exchanging information between channel partners can quickly become a monumental problem. If there are 10 people in your company who communicate regularly with a partner, and there are 10 people at the partner who regularly communicate back, that means there are 100 communication channels active all the time! In this environment it is impossible to have clarity, consistency, or focus. No wonder that vendors complain they can't break through the clutter and get their marketing messages noticed - and resellers complain that they can't sell anything because of all the time they spend filtering, prioritizing, and responding to vendor communications. To minimize all this chaos, we recommend to clients that they follow five rules when communicating with their partners 1. Keep it simple and direct Pick no more than two "themes" or messages a quarter and then stay "on message" with all your communications. Resellers need to hear or see something as many as seven times before they retain the information. Getting through to them once or twice with a message is just not effective. 2. Emphasize customer benefits - not vendor benefits - in all communications A subject line that includes "Help your customers solve problems" is much more meaningful than one that says "Release 4.2 now shipping for an extra charge." The clearer the customer connection, the more meaningful to the reseller. 3. Create a consistent look and feel to your communications So partners know immediately who sent the information. Don't go overboard on this. Simple but distinctive colors, fonts, or layouts are very effective at standing out if they are used on everything including the web site, email, and printed documents 4. Focus your communications through an up-to-date partner web site Make it proactive and alert partners when something important has been added or updated by sending out a short notice. It is easier for them to find useful data through a well-managed and organized web site than looking through email files. (Put important emails onto the web site in a special section). 5. Establish a formal communications plan (and calendar) That includes a list of important ways to communicate (meetings, conference calls, emails, web updates, etc.) and the dates or times when they will occur. For example, the communications plan might include some of the following:
The added benefit of a formal communications plan is that it allows everyone to schedule important communications activities, and the time required to organize meetings, conference calls, webinars, email blasts, etc. goes way down. Resellers know when and what is coming and can better organize their time. It is sobering to contemplate that "on average" a reseller begins to tune out a vendor in just a few seconds if they are speaking and, in the very best scenario, the reseller retains less than 30% of what they actually hear from their vendor - and up to 90% of vendor email is never read. Vendors that cannot make their messages more relevant to resellers (and easier to manage) should not expect to be heard above the "noise" that the typical reseller sales person hears every day.◊ By Greg Eckstein, Vice President, Channel Enablers |
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