Salesforce has announced Sales Cloud Partner Relationship Management (PRM), an app to help companies turbocharge channel sales.
About one-third of the average company’s revenue comes from partners—and more than two-thirds of revenues for companies in high-tech, manufacturing and telecom, Salesforce said. The PRM app allows companies to build branded partner communities in a point-and-click way, and can bring together both partner and direct sales functions.
Using an interactive wizard, channel managers can configure lead distribution, deal registration, marketing development funds and AppExchange Components such as Xactly for compensation management and NetExam for a learning management system. Additionally, channel managers can automatically assign partners into tiers and provide targeted promotions and customized content based on those tiers.
The Lightning CMS Connect function allows channel managers to create a customized, branded partner experience by dragging and dropping existing website content, graphics and videos into place.
Einstein Content Recommendations use machine learning to surface files as needed. For example, if a partner views a new product description document, Einstein will be able to recommend files including logo graphics, product placement instructions and pricing documentation for that new product.
Channel Marketing Automation will let partners build, track and analyze email campaigns and access messaging and collateral.
“Traditional partner portals tend to be pieced-together legacy systems that are generic and disconnected from CRM,” said Mike Micucci, GM and SVP, Salesforce products. “This results in substandard channel performance and ultimately a poor user experience. Sales Cloud PRM is the solution companies have been looking for—a turnkey app that enables them to extend the world’s best CRM to their partners.”