If your company is at a stage where it is growing and developing an indirect sales team, the ideal way to do it is by implementing partner management software. Partner relationship management software helps to offer a robust support environment for your company to better manage and organize channel relationships.
Partnership software is both a business philosophy and a tech solution. Note that most platforms have not implemented it due to complexity during deployment and cost.
Here are the six best benefits of using partnership management software.
1. Reduces Labor and Complications Linked to Lead Management
A business that operates by selling to the channel, like enterprise and mid-market, tends to have some deal protection program. If the partners have access to your CRM, the process might be cumbersome, lack visibility, create conflict and fail to give you the control you deserve to run your company.
To streamline the distribution of lead management and registration of the deal program, ensure you configure partnership management software. This software will help to minimize the labor and costs involved. Also, it will increase partner satisfaction and eliminate all channel conflicts that are likely to arise when using spreadsheets and other unautomated documents.
2. Increase Satisfaction of Partners
Today’s world is hypercompetitive, and therefore you should take care of your partners. Since most partners have resources, allowing them to do business with you in a better, faster, and easier way, they will gravitate towards you naturally and give ideas of possible solutions for the customer base.
For manufacturing and technology segments, partners look for vendors who make the business process easy and efficient. Having properly configured software will promote partner satisfaction and hence tremendous growth with the partner base.
3. Increase Income from Partner Incentives
Selling to a channel means you are offering partner rebates to the partnership company. It is also possible to reward individuals such as the technical reps and the sales reps from the partnership company for making the process a success. You will also play the role of providing cooperative and market development funds. Tracking these things with software like excel will cause a lot of strain.
However, by configuring and deploying a partner management software with incentive management capability, you will enhance the ROI for your development funds. This is because you can track this growth and reallocate the funds to work more efficiently. This software makes provision of data that you can use to engage with your partners to come up with better plans and implement marketing campaigns.
4. Helps to Streamline Partnership Onboarding
A company with a large channel or trying to expand the channel may be working to recruit other partners. Using a manual technique to recruit new partners wastes most of your internal resources.
On the other hand, implementing the partner relationship software will make the process much easier and promote efficiency. A properly configured software will greatly streamline the onboarding process. It will also boost the satisfaction of your partners and increase the visibility of the entire process.
5. Speed the Distribution Process of Co-branded Assets
A partner management software is a very efficient way of speeding the distribution of co-branded assets. Also, the software enables the partners to log in and co-brand the asset online, promoting partner satisfaction. It also permits the vendors to see the assets a partner is downloading and if they are operating on it or not.
6. Promotes Training and Certification Management
Partner management software has tools for launching, structuring, and managing a training environment accessible 24/7. This technology offers the team of a growing company the ability to launch, create and manage a learning plan associated with individual roles in the company.
The tools on this software help facilitate training techniques, including e-learning, classroom training, workgroup collaboration, webinars, and on-task performance support.
Closing Thoughts
The above-discussed are the benefits that every company that has implemented and deployed the partner management software can enjoy. However, it would be best if you did not stop here.
Continue expanding your management software capabilities, which will strengthen partner satisfaction and engagement at a reduced cost. You can achieve this by obtaining control and visibility. Also, with the capacity to predict the return you are likely to get from the channel.
