Greg Eckstein: The Future Of Channel Sales Enablement

“In a mature economy and mature industry, in order to grow, the differentiating factor is your ability to capture partner mindshare.” – Greg Eckstein

Your channel team’s ability to articulate your value proposition relative to your partner’s business model is a key factor in capturing partner mindshare. That’s the first step in building an effective channel ecosystem. The next step is enabling your channel to articulate a joint vendor/partner value proposition to your target end customers.

Greg Eckstein, CEO of Channel Sales World, is on a mission to help IT vendors grow their channel sales through virtual education. I recently spoke with Greg about changes in the IT channel and best practices in channel sales enablement on a Channel Journeys podcast.

Key Take-Aways

1. Train your channel managers on articulating your value proposition to partners, down to the vertical or even micro-vertical level.
2. Webinars and on-demand e-learning still works for internal channel sales manager training, but not as well with partners.
3. It’s no longer about the brand of the vendor. It’s about what you add to the partners' business model.
4. Provide your partner training in 15-minute modules with short easily consumed chapters, leveraging video, and podcasts in their local language.
5. Rather than putting all the certification questions at the end of the module, insert 2 questions at the end of each chapter.

Take Action - One Thing You Can Do Today

Review your internal and external channel sales training. Are you training on your brand or your value proposition? Are you providing information in short, easy to digest bites? Listen to the complete Channel Journeys podcast for more details on these best practices in channel sales enablement.

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.