Channel Training Trouble? Where to Look for Help

If your company sells products and services through channel partners (as opposed to selling directly to customers), you likely face a major challenge: finding ways to enhance your channels' selling skills without appearing as if your company is trying to dictate how its channel partners run their businesses.

The good news? If you depend on your channel partners for sales results, there's a simple way around this problem: enlisting the help of three external entities for help in influencing your channel, including...

Why make this move? Because associations, conferences and industry "drivers" are independent of manufacturers and distributors (namely, you!), they can make objective recommendations to your channel partners based on their own knowledge of the channel and industry sales best practices. Additionally, by allowing these entities to serve as a sort of intermediary between you and your channels, your channel partners are less likely to feel as though you're being overly pushy about the ways in which you'd like them to conduct business.

Here's a look at all three entities, as well as some tips for leveraging them to your advantage:

Associations

Professional associations have the ability to assess the skills of channel members and make suggestions regarding how they can improve and what their training should include. This assessment typically leads to the implementation of any necessary training (which the association itself conducts in order to keep it impartial) and assistance in transforming a channel partner's sales approach to improve sales.

Conferences

Industry conferences provide associations with a forum to present training sessions. As a key step in the development of curricula for these conferences, event organizers typically reach out to manufacturers and distributors and ask them to suggest training sessions and content that they believe will continue to advance industry growth. Once the associations decide what the key training sessions should be, they plan the conference around them and invite the most relevant and informed speakers and trainers to conduct the training.

Channel partners from throughout the industry attend these conferences, typically because they are either sponsored by a professional association to which the channel partners belong or because the conference was recommended to them by such an association-or by the manufacturer/distributor for which the channel partner sells products and services.

Drivers

A key contributor to successful associations and conferences are industry "drivers." Drivers are firms (or people) who specialize in all aspects of sales. These subject-matter experts are able to present best practices to channel partners and help them heighten their level of expertise and strengthen their sales skills. Drivers often partner with associations to assist with writing assessments and to present training sessions at conferences, all based on their understanding of what knowledge is needed to meet the manufacturers' needs. Drivers also understand what measures are needed to be successful, and how channel partners can meet manufacturer expectations.

Tips for Success

How do you leverage all three of these industry resources to your advantage?

• Get involved with the associations your channel partners join or those that target your channel.
• Volunteer to participate on associations' conference committees to recommend topics of importance to your channel.
• Recommend speakers-on topics where you see key needs in your channel-to associations that are planning conferences. Arrange follow-up training sessions, mentoring or speaking engagements with the same speakers at your own channel meetings to provide reinforcement.
• Recommend conferences addressing pertinent topics to your channel. Offer to fund all or part of your channel partners' participation in these events.
• Consider requiring that your channel partners attend specific conferences and specific training sessions while at these conferences in order to become licensed and certified to sell your products and services. You can require attendance at these sessions as part of a certification path, as part of required training that must be completed each year, and/or as a requirement for receiving market-development funding.
• Work with a thought-leading association to identify other companies that have similar channel education needs to form a council to address those needs.
• Connect thought-leading associations and one or two firms (drivers) that specialize in all aspects of selling for your channel. Work together to form a three-way council to address your channel partners' needs.
• Also consider creating an advisory council including several of your top channel partners.