I’m a bit suspicious when I hear a Partner or Channel Manager complain that their partner’s sales reps “can’t sell”. It’s often just a veiled attempt to portray themselves as indispensable and suggest no revenue would happen without them. It’s a red flag indicating the Partner or Channel Manager sees themself as a “super rep” rather than the sales enabler. And you can’t grow partner or channel revenue with “super reps”.
It is true that some partner organizations are managed by technical people or consultants who have little or no sales experience themselves and little expertise in hiring competent sales professionals; and it’s true that other partner organizations have sales reps capable of selling their own solution or services, but not yours.
Faced with these realities, it might be tempting to simply “take over” any deals that need to be closed. However, that approach simply maintains the status quo and means that next quarter will be just as hard as this quarter and last quarter. And worse, it creates and encourages dependency between the partner and vendor that is both unhealthy and unhelpful.
Growing revenue requires Partner or Channel Managers who are sales enablers. Individuals who act as virtual sales managers or sales directors over the partner sellers involved with their solution. This “virtual” role requires them to build and refine the partner’s sales skills to increase the level of self-sufficiency. The best Partner and Channel Managers work to create a portfolio of partners that produce increasing revenue with decreasing effort from themselves.
That requires a careful balance between sales enabling activities and closing revenue for the current quarter (revenue that we often desperately need!). Partner or Channel Managers need to use active opportunities as the platform to both assist in closing business and enable improved partner selling skills. They must balance between Opportunity Reviews (where they can provide strategic advice and high-level support on many opportunities), Opportunity Coaching (where they can provide tactical recommendations and detail-level support on fewer opportunities), and Co-Selling (where they can model and coach appropriate selling skills on select opportunities).
Transitioning from a “super rep” to a sales enabler is a challenging move for most Partner or Channel Managers – but one that’s necessary for channel revenue growth.
What are you doing in your organization to help transition your Partner or Channel Managers from “super rep” to sales enabler?