Any company looking to increase revenue should consider a channel partner program. Naturally, you look to your in-house sales team first to help build revenue, but it can cover only part of the market. A well-established partner channel can help you capture untapped revenue. By collaborating with the right channel partners, you can access new revenue sources and new customers that you may never have known existed.

When you have a channel partner program, you need to rely on your channel partners to manage not only customer sales but also the overall customer experience. In the age of software as a service and recurring revenue models, everyone in the value chain has to assume responsibility for customer success. However, your channel partners are on the front line, since they closed the sale and are the first line of defense for customer fulfillment. Therefore, the vendor’s job is to enable channel partner success in order to optimize the customer’s experience.

Successful sales depend on customer success. What is customer success? It’s  the key differentiator between losing sales and ultra-growth, and the new term, especially in the B2B world, is here to stay. 

If you are in sales, your focus is on closing the next deal. However, the post-sales process is just as important as getting the order. You spend time and energy bringing in new customers, and you want to make sure they stay happy, content, and loyal.

The poet John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island.” Donne was talking about the human condition, but he could have been talking about sales and marketing. No organization can successfully deliver goods and services in isolation; every business requires strategic partners with whom it works as a team to close new sales and handle customer fulfillment. That’s why “the channel” was created and why effective channel management has to be a strategic aspect of any successful organization.

Guest Blogger David O'Brien, with Partner Perspectives shares insight gained from living in the partner world (while operating a reseller business). He understands, firsthand, what works and what doesn't work with vendors and the relationship investment made to succeed with channel partners. MarketStar and Partner Perspectives have joined forces to create a Channel Readiness program that provides Channel assessment, planning, implementation, and framework guidance to position vendor channel partners for maximum performance.

Our global teams mirror the organization and support of their U.S. counterparts, but with localized day-to-day management based on in-country culture and laws. Sales as a Service on a global level means a single management platform, a single point of contact, and worldwide consistency in your global center of excellence.

MarketStar sales centers in EMEA are located in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. Our EMEA employees drive client sales through inbound and outbound chats, lead qualification, partner enablement, and partner account management. This post is written by our Dublin thought leader: Anthony E. Byrne.

When the best partners have countless companies vying for their attention, how do you stand out from the rest and build a mutually beneficial relationship? The answer lies in well-executed partner marketing programs and tactics, which happen at the intersection of sales enablement, to-partner marketing, and through-partner marketing.

When developing your channel partner strategy, you need to consider what’s in it for everyone in the value chain. Channel relationships are about creating mutual value, which means not only moving more goods through your distributors and resellers, but helping them help you by providing the marketing tools and expertise to sell the latest IT solutions. Your channel is only as strong as the amount of effort you put in to support it, so when devising a channel partner strategy, you need to help partners keep current with the latest technology trends so they can stay agile, especially when you consider the rapid pace of change in the tech marketplace.

Outsourcing your sales needs to an agency is an investment. That’s why it’s important to consider your needs before you make the switch. It’s important to interface with a vetted, trusted organization with years of experience—and it’s equally essential to partner with an agency that caters to your specific needs. Do you want a Swiss Army Knife? An agency who can do a little bit of everything, without any specializations? Or do you want an agency that is focused on what they do best?