ChannelVision Magazine

channel management forgotten and the pressure of life on the road can grow to be substantial. Solution: Travel smart. I’ve seen channel managers try to get away with a day trip or an overnight trip to a city or region instead of spending three or four days in that city to maximize the number of appointments they can get to. As a result, additional trips back to the same area end up being neces- sary – trips that are not only costly for the service provider but costly to the home life of the channel manager as well. Furthermore, channel managers should communicate important per- sonal events with partners in advance in an effort to schedule around them. Business can sometimes have a flex- ible schedule, but some events in life only happen once. Challenge three: Heavy Competi- tion. While some direct sales profes- sional may look at the channel as a never-ending lead generation ma- chine, the amount of competition is more than anything that a direct seller will face. In a typical customer sale, a direct seller may end up competing against four or five providers before the field of competition is narrowed. In the channel, many channel managers have to fight through the noise of be- ing one of 100 or more providers in an agent’s portfolio. This not only makes it hard to gain an audience and build relationships, but finding a clear and distinct value proposition can be in- credibly challenging. Solution: Less is more. Channel managers can tend to walk into a new agent relationship with a bag of tricks bigger than Santa’s magic sack. They spend an incredible amount of time and energy on a PowerPoint slide deck showing everything they can do instead of listening to the partner, identifying a challenge or two that is important, then focusing their efforts on helping to solve those problems. Channel managers should listen more and talk less – and almost never talk first unless absolutely necessary. Ultimately, the channel is about instant gratification and universal availability when partners are in need. When partners know they can almost always reach a particular channel man- ager (night or day, vacation or not), that channel manager will get more of the partner’s business opportunities regardless of product, company capa- bilities or presentation skills. Channel managers that learn when, how and how often their key partners like to communicate are the most successful channel managers in the industry. The position is often miscast and incredibly difficult to succeed in, but the select few that work hard and smart end up having fruitful, long-lasting careers. o Bruce Wirt has 15 years in channel sales leadership and is cur- rently the channel chief at Telesystem, which includes the LSI organization as well. Connect with him on LinkedIN to share your success stories. September - October, 2018 | Channel Vision 65

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