The 8 Habits of Successful Channel Managers
A channel manager can solidify a partners' relationship with a vendor. They can also ruin it.
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Toth said channel partners need their channel managers to operate with a sense of urgencies.
“If I call you – if I email you – and I need something, I need it now,” Toth said.
He said he is often dealing with 14 different dependencies in a given deal, from talking to the CIO to putting together the proposal.
“One of those things is, I have to go talk to my vendor about pricing or a product or whatever. The quicker I can get those things, the quicker I can work on these other dependencies, because these other dependencies are somewhat dependent upon getting this response from them,” he said.
Jay Morris currently runs the advisory firm MOReCOMM Voice and Data Solutions, but he has spent much of his career working on the vendor side and in channel management roles.
Morris helped land many large deals, but he notes that he never accomplished those through cold-calling. It always came through existing relationships.
“The one thing I always learned, which I don’t think most adhere to is: stop trying to sell deals to 1,000 subs, 500 subs, 100 subs. You can’t do it; you’ll never be successful.”
Morris said succesful channel managers know how to prioritize the subagents with which they interact.
Morris’ recipe goes like this: identify 2-3 ‘A’ players and 6-12 ‘B’ players. Plan on driving the business predominantly through those A players will working to promote the B players to the A tier.
“Get behind subagents that you believe in. And that will make your job as a channel manager much easier, cement the relationships and award your time to the partners you think can deliver for you,” Morris said.
Morris said channel managers should work to turn their “C” players into B players, but they should be wary. If they find themselves repeatedly giving quotes to partners with no sales ever occuring, it’s not a fit.
“Spend that time figuring out ways to promote them or fire them. Don’t stay in the middle, because they’ll just eat your resources. They’ll take all your time,” Morris said. “They’re dangling a carrot out in front of you. They have not proven to you at all that they are worthwhile to you. You’re just another tool in their bag, placed in front of the customers’ proposal spreadsheet to say, ‘Here’s the six vendors I quoted.’”
Peter Radizeski, president and president of Rad-Info, wrote a book about channel managers. He agreed.
“Enroll aligned Partners, not everyone that can fog a mirror,” Radizeski said.
Toth said there’s value in a channel manager who can identify not just what their company does well, but what it does not so well.
Consider that most companies offer 20 to 25 different types of services. Channel partners that specialize in best-of-breed, vendor-agnostic sourcing don’t want to waste their time selling subpar aspects of a vendor’s technology portfolio.
“I want channel managers to tell me, ‘Hey, we’re really good at this over here. This over here – not as great.’ “
Morris agreed.
“Transparency between supplier and partner is paramount to building trust. Trust builds confidence, confidence builds loyalty, loyalty builds a relationship, and the relationship builds repetition,” Morris said.
Kyle Hall, president of Resourcive, said a good channel manager approaches partners and deals with a long-term vision.
“The best channel managers I work with recognize that the end zone is not a signed contract. Rather, the finish line is once the service or technology is successfully adopted by the cleint and providing the expected value and ROI,” Hall said.
Hall said partners need channel managers to help them wade through the bureacracy of a large vendor organization.
“We count on channel managers to be able to pull in the right resources at the right times to efficiently work with their organization. Knowing how to make things happen within the supplier bureaucracy is vital,” he said.
Toth agreed.
“A good channel manager will say, ‘I got this. I’ll deal with all these people. And I’ll let you know what this looks like in the end,'” he said.
Toth said a tenured channel manager brings value by knowing “where all the bodies are buried.” In other words, they can help the partner avoid leading with a product that will disappoint the customer. Perhaps the channel manager has stuck around the company long enough to know that their UCaaS offering is a mess and is willing to let the partner know.
Toth said straightforwardness goes a long way.
“That’s a guy that’s looking to build a relationship with me long-term, and he is not worried about making his number this month,” Toth said.
In some cases partners need the channel manager to accompany them to a sales pitch. Toth said 75% of the time a channel manager operates as a liason. However channel managers might need to play a more customer-facing role for smaller vendors.
The ability to stand up in front of a customer and articulate the value proposition can set a channel manager apart from their peers.
“Some of these channel managers are just kind like Queen Elizabeth. ‘Just let me know what you need, and I’ll be over here in the corner and let the engineers and sale people take care of stuff,'” Toth said.
In some cases partners need the channel manager to accompany them to a sales pitch. Toth said 75% of the time a channel manager operates as a liason. However channel managers might need to play a more customer-facing role for smaller vendors.
The ability to stand up in front of a customer and articulate the value proposition can set a channel manager apart from their peers.
“Some of these channel managers are just kind like Queen Elizabeth. ‘Just let me know what you need, and I’ll be over here in the corner and let the engineers and sale people take care of stuff,'” Toth said.
Good channel managers can create partner loyalty and drive tons of new business.
But bad channel managers. They can be “devastating,” according to Matthew Toth.
“It is absolutely devastating. We’ve dealt with people, and you’re just like, ‘Do I need to talk to you once a week for the next two years?”” said Toth, who runs the Michigan-based consultancy C3 Technology Advisors.
On the other hand, a solid channel manager “really greases the skids,” Toth said.
“Sometimes even if their product isn’t a 100% fit, if they can make it so easy to do business with them, sometimes that guy ends up winning an unfair share of his business,” Toth told Channel Futures.
Toth urged vendors to do their due diligence in hiring channel managers.
“If you don’t have a guy that can put one foot in front of the next, we’re never bringing this guy in. I don’t care if you’re selling the most amazing UCaaS product that costs 50 cents a month. If you hire the wrong person, that will eliminate your ability to grow in whatever swath that guy was hired for. Because I don’t want to deal with him. I don’t care how good your product is.”
Channel Futures asked Toth and other partner executives about what they value most in their channel managers. Go through the eight images above to see eight habits of successful channel managers.
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