Vendors compete for the ‘mindshare’ and investment of the best partners. IPO helps Channel Managers develop the skills and insight required to influence partner business imperatives and drive partner behavior towards win-win results.
Imagine being a sales manager with a large sales target to achieve, but whose sales team all work for other companies! That’s the life of a Channel Manager! Selling through and with partners is very different to direct sales - partners will do what they do for their own reasons – so Channel Managers must be highly skilled at understanding and influencing partner imperatives and motivating partners to sell on their behalf.
Channel Enablers Influencing Partnership Outcomes program introduces the Partnering Influence Process to recruit new partners and motivate existing partners to make necessary changes and investments. Topics include:
- establishing credibility and creating interest with new or prospective partners
- questioning skills to uncover partner priorities and reasons for investment
- the communication skills essential to building trusted business relationships
- developing imperatives for partnership growth
- gaining commitments and dealing with partner concerns
Workshop Content
Day One
- The changing role of the Channel Manager
- What partners value – and what Channel Managers really ‘sell’
- Changing partner behavior to change outcomes in the field
- The partnering influence process
- Approach and opening. Creating initial value propositions that create interest with prospective partners and new stakeholders. Building business rapport, establishing credibility and gaining interest
- Questioning to build awareness of partnership value and momentum for change. Understanding a partner’s driving influences and their perception of partnership value
- Further developing perceived partnership value through active listening and questioning techniques
Day Two
- Reflective listening
- Dealing with partner concerns. Uncovering the real reasons why partners don’t act and developing strategies for each type of objection
- Investigation and value awareness video role play
- Gaining commitments – asking for the right commitment, in the right way and at the right time
- Getting It Together - personal development planning. Participants are guided to develop their own specific 90 day plan of action to apply key learning outcomes in the field
Workshop Benefits
The best partners are sought after by multiple vendors, and prospective channel or alliance partners will sometimes have difficulty choosing between business propositions put forward by competing vendors. When programs and products are perceived to be similar the Channel Manager’s level of skill and ‘professionalism’ may become THE point of difference between productive, revenue-generating partnership, and no partnership at all. This program helps to build the engagement skills and steps necessary to:
- positively differentiate vendors in the minds of their current and prospective channel and alliance partners
- reduce the time and investment necessary to influence partners towards desirable business outcomes
- secure the commitments necessary to generate tangible returns
- build more resilient relationships at multiple organizational levels
- raise partner awareness of the need to change
Workshop Format and Media
People learn in different ways, so this workshop employs a variety of learning strategies.
- We provide extensive notes, tools and guides for use in the field and as an ongoing reference, covering all parts of the partnering influence process
- Lectures and discussions relate partner influencing principles to a participant’s own situation, partners and opportunities
- Role plays are a major part of the program and provide the opportunity to practise selling skills using participants’ own products, partners and channel sales situations
- Video analysis provides a powerful method of coaching participants