ChannelVision Jan-Feb 2017

63 / 76

with vendors that make it easy to work
with them – even if a particular vendor hap-
pens to not be the least expensive. Speed
and ease of use have costs, and value is
comprised of many components. Treat your
indirect channel partners to the same ben-
efits of doing business that you want from
vendors you conduct business with. Call it
the “Golden Rule” of business.
Your PRM portal is the door to your
business, so don’t make your indirect
channel partners jimmy open a window
and climb through. There isn’t enough
chochkies and overrides in the world to
sustain that behavior.
Make Guests
Feel at Home
Once inside, a world-class, purpose-
designed PRM has to satisfy a growing
number of channel partner needs, even
a short list of which must address the
following basic needs:
• Partner sales enablement
• Deal registration
• POS solutions
• Lead management and distribution
• Channel marketing and management
• Social recruitment
• Channel incentives management
• Learning management systems
• Channel data management
Any DIY or re-purposed CRM could be
overwhelmed with just one of these. Leave
these basic needs wanting in the eyes of
your channel partners at your own peril. It
isn’t like they are without options or alter-
natives. They have needs and are motivat-
ed to satisfy them. More to the point, your
competitors are in a race with you to meet
those needs and reap the benefits.
PRM as Needs Be
Moving beyond human basic needs,
Maslow describes psychological needs,
including belongingness, esteem and,
ultimately, self-actualization, as the
ability of one to realize their full po-
tential. Your channel partners, while
not necessarily expressing it so, want
peace of mind that comes with seeing
results proportional to their efforts, in
realizing their full potential.
Your choice in a PRM should be
driven by which one has the proven ca-
pabilities to reduce friction points and
provide the kind of comprehensive tool
set that makes doing business with you
not just sticky but irresistible, to use a
consumer space term.
We all have needs and are motivated
in various ways to satisfy them. Make
no mistake about it, a channel partner’s
decision to partner with you satisfies
a need, but it also is an investment
decision, one that is never taken lightly
and that occurs in a world of suppliers
increasingly vying for attention. Satisfy-
ing their needs requires taking the un-
certainty out of that decision by offering
them a world-class PRM. o
Dave Taylor is chief marketing officer
for
Looking for a
competitive
differentiator?
KADENCE Ticketing System (KTS)
supports customer retention
strategies and enables providers
to deliver preferential support.
KTS Advantages
Schedule a demo!
Related tickets
identify trends
Create + track
trouble tickets
Timer feature for
managing SLAs
Customer access
via portal
KPI dashboard
and reporting
Flexible ticket
links + workflows
63
January - February, 2017 | ChannelVision