Driving Channel Manager Performance Through Automation

“There’s a lot of great channel technology for partner relationship management, portals, incentive management, MDF, marketing, etc., but the channel account managers are completely underserved.” Gary Morris, Successful Channels

Channel Account Managers (CAMs) have a difficult and complex role. In the same day they often play the role of sales rep, marketing advisor, business consultant, and general manager. But many CAMs are “flapping in the wind,” as Gary Morris, founder of Successful Channels commented in a recent Channel Journeys podcast interview. They often make up their own processes and templates for important tasks, while wasting time with manual administrative work.

Gary found a market need when he noticed that there wasn’t any common platform or technology that partner managers could leverage to learn best practices and apply a common, systematic approach. He launched Successful Channels, a cloud-based Partner Planning and Performance Management tool to solve this problem.

Key Take-Aways

• Lacking proper skills and tools, the most critical part of growing partner performance, like joint business planning and quarterly business reviews, are often skipped.
• Successful Channels provides the under-served Channel Account Manager with automated Partner Planning & Performance tools.
• With Successful Channels, CAMs can quickly assess and compare partners with a partner scorecard, prepare joint business plans and create QBR presentations.

• The Channel has been slow to adopt new technology due to cultural resistance, but that’s starting to change with Business Process Automation tools that improve productivity and ROI like Successful Channels.
• Having partner assessments and scorecards on a common platform breaks down silos and builds collaboration between channel managers and the sales team.

Take Action — One Thing You Can Do Today

Assess how much time your channel account managers spend on low-value administrative work and their ability to gain commitment from their partners and drive performance through joint business planning, performance scorecards, and regular business reviews. Listen to the complete podcast with Gary Morris.

About The Author

Rob Spee is founder and CEO of Channel Journeys Consulting and host of the Channel Journeys podcast. Rob applies his channel expertise to help clients create and execute channel strategies to accelerate revenue growth. His global channel experience spans from building channels at startups to vendors and distributors like Arrow, BMC, Carbonite, and SAS. Follow Rob on Twitter and LinkedIn.