CF20: 20 Channel Sales Tips to Supercharge Revenue
Customer obsession can give you a competitive advantage in sales.
![20 channel sales tips and advice 20 channel sales tips and advice](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt92d86ca5292f6185/6523ecacab64d4e6decd3416/Gold-Twenty.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
JÖRGE RÖSE-OBERREICH/SHUTTERSTOCK
Switching from owner-led sales to team-led sales can increase the valuation of an MSP, said Trans4mers’ Michael Schmidtmann.
“When it comes time to sell the business, you get different valuations,” he said. “If it's owner-led and the owner leaves, that valuation will be low because the owner's responsible for selling things and the only value they'll get is the value of your recurring revenue that you already have under contract. Now, if that MSP has a sales team that generates sales on their own, that will stay with them after they buy, that sale gets a much higher multiple; they get a much higher price. So my point is, if they can graduate from owner-led to having a sales team, that will not only double their sales or triple their sales, it will double or triple their multiple of sales. So let's say they grow three times and they also get three times the multiple. They just increased the value of their business by nine times. So graduating to a sales team is a big deal.”
By the end of the year, the majority buyer will be millennial, and millennials have a different psychology, said Canalys’ Jay McBain. (Canalys is owned by Channel Futures' parent company, Informa.)
![Canalys' Jay McBain Canalys' Jay McBain](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt83263e870dfd7423/654b761705c57d040a6f50c5/McBain_Jay_Canalys_2023.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Canalys' Jay McBain
They have different buying behaviors and they have a different buying journey. They’re buying digital first as 75% of them don’t want to talk to a human. That's if you're a small partner in a small town or a Fortune-sized partner and everybody in between, “you're dealing with a new buyer.”
The average customer, driven by younger buyers, prefers to surround themselves with seven partners to help them along the journey, not just in those first moments, but at the point of sale and every 30 days after in a subscription or consumption model, McBain said.
In this team model, the buyer is going to buy a seven-layer solution.
“They surround themselves with experts, so you're going to be working with others,” McBain said. “Almost every deal is going to be a multi-partner deal. And it's not somebody competing against you. They're out doing integration work, or they're doing creative or digital agency work, or they're building software as ISVs. But you're going to be in the room together and there are seven trusted seats. And to sell, it's more about earning one of those seats that help usher the customer for life through what they need.”
Being opportunistic is key to generating new customers, Schmidtmann said.
“Every account these guys want is owned by somebody, so if you want to win a new account you've got to dislodge an incumbent, and that's hard,” he said. “It could be that an executive in an organization leaves and a new person comes in. A lot of times a new person will re-evaluate the technology and it could be the incumbent screwed up somewhere. It could be that there's a game-changing technology on the horizon. It could be the incumbent is kind of fat, dumb and happy, and you bring a new idea to somebody. So if I had to boil it down, the single biggest attribute for these killers is being opportunistic, offering value, being ready and waiting for something to happen that gives them a chance. And often it is a change in personnel, it's an account, or maybe a big company gets hacked and they want to look at somebody new.”
Enhancing existing resellers' productivity can expedite sales growth without the lead times associated with recruiting new resellers, said NCTech Imaging's John Buttery. This approach ensures existing resellers operate efficiently and align with the company's strategic goals.
Immediate actions:
Visit all resellers. Review operations comprehensively and identify areas of challenge and opportunity in current dealerships. Make sales calls to prospects with the reseller.
Create a business plan for resellers. Work closely with resellers to refine their business strategies and ensure alignment with company objectives.
Train sales and installers. Offer training and support to strengthen reseller capabilities and confidence in product knowledge, sales techniques and market positioning.
On average, buyers go through 28 measurable moments during the buying process, from the point of having a problem to the point of buying something, McBain said. And 2024 is now the end of the cookie. Google is ending third-party cookies for all Chrome users in 2024.
"If your 28 moments are completely yours and no one else is lurking … it’s now partners who wrap around those moments,” he said. “And your vendors are going to be really interested to share those moments — at least line of sight to those moments — with you and that should be worth money. I'm not telling partners that they're going to become Facebook; we're not all just going to sell the private data of our customers, but we're going to work closer together with our vendors, with our TSDs, with our distributors, with everybody to solve the problem and maybe guide the customer through the rest of the moments.”
The new buyer is digital-first and digital-only, McBain said. They’re subscription- and consumption-friendly.
“They grew up with Netflix, Spotify, spending $1 a month for their toothbrush forever,” he said. “So this is a group of people where, whether you’re selling hardware or software services, they’re totally OK with paying by the month and maybe it never ends. That makes them very marketplace-friendly. Digital marketplaces are changing the selling process because they’re growing at 86% compounded. It took distributors like TD Synnex and Ingram Micro over 40 years to get into that top 10, to get to that size in the world. It took Amazon Web Services (AWS) less than three years.”
For agents, the keys to success are “be really good at what you do,” be easy to work with and give people great advice, Schmidtmann said.
“Let's say I'm [Eclipse Telecom CEO] Dave Dyson, I go into a big account and it's a friggin sh**show,” he said. “You've got all sorts of connectivity. So you've got Verizon over here. You've got Windstream over here. You've got AT&T over there. None of them is running on it.
"Then you've got SD-WAN in there and nobody's managing all this stuff. And the bills are all coming in to different places and the amounts aren't right and it's just freaking chaos. And they're not getting the best pricing. And you get somebody like Dave or [Hyde Group president] Michelle Hyde coming in and saying, 'Look, we're going to do all this. We're going to streamline it all. We're going to get you one point of contact, we're going to simplify it. And the CEOs are saying, 'Thank God, where have you been my whole life? Somebody good, knowledgeable and who cares about me is going to make it simple. That's what those agents do, and they're really good at it. So those people do really well," Schmidtmann said.
Carefully designed incentive programs motivate resellers to achieve immediate sales increases, Buttery said. These incentives drive resellers to close deals more quickly, generating significant sales momentum as we head into the next quarter.
Immediate actions:
Launch Q2 2024 sales incentive programs. Implement short-term incentive initiatives to motivate resellers and generate sales momentum.
Set revenue thresholds for incentives. Establish clear goals for resellers and offer rewards like rebates or free products for reaching these thresholds.
Reward exceptional performance. Celebrate overachievers with exclusive recognitions like a "president's club" to encourage continued excellence.
The new buyer is integration-first and they’re basing their buying decisions on this, McBain said.
“Price might be important to some people,” he said. “Service, support or your brand reputation might be important to some and they might weigh each of those differently in an RFP or how they think about it. What's come to the top right now is integrations. I need you to work in my environment. So I would end up as a buyer buying a product that's 80% as good as the next one if it worked better in my environment. In technology, we're a bit better with integrations, but we're not fully there. When you're buying 6,500 security products, they don't all integrate with each other; there's no APIs that connect it all. There's no data and telemetry that’s shared; that world doesn't exist. But the companies that get there faster are going to win more deals. So as a seller, you're not really focused on the price as much as you are integration.”
Providing comprehensive marketing support, including collaborative funding and resource sharing for key marketing activities, enables resellers to capitalize on brand recognition with minimal effort, Buttery said.
Integrated actions:
Provide marketing kits. Offer resellers comprehensive marketing campaigns with localized templates for easy adaptation. Ensure all graphics and resources are readily available on a reseller-accessible website.
Support with co-branded funds. Collaborate with resellers in co-branded social media and digital advertising efforts, including sharing the costs for increased impact.
Facilitate shared costs for trade shows and events. Work with resellers to co-fund and organize trade show booths, reseller demo days and customer appreciation events, fostering a more substantial reseller presence.
Customer obsession can give you a competitive advantage in sales, McBain said.
“When you get obsessed over your customer and the demographics, firmographics and everything that you know surrounds your ideal buyer, then you start peeling away to say, 'Who surrounds my buyer?'” he said. “'What do they read? What do they listen to? Where do they go and who do they follow?' So as a seller, I'm trying to surround my buyer and earn seven of those 28 spots through the places they already trust. It's just a matter of, I need to know that. I need to know the magazines they read. I need to know the peer groups they're in. I need to know an association that they're a part of. I need to know the events that they go to. There are 14 spheres of influence around my buyer and if I get obsessed over my buyer, I start to learn where I need to be. And those are going to answer what I should and shouldn't do.”
In selling as a team sport, you can work with others to help influence your buyer as a team, McBain said.
“The better I work with a team, we can share resources,” he said. “And if I can't get to that podcast, maybe my partner can and say something nice about me in the podcast. That's the surround strategy.”
There’s an abundance of resources out there to help with co-selling, McBain said.
“There are more than 200 tools out there today to help me recognize who I'm working with, who I could be collaborating with, communicating with and who I could be working around to come in as a team to that customer,” he said. “Wouldn't it be great to team up with somebody who knows maybe how to run a marketing campaign, but you know the technology underneath on how to connect Marketo or Eloqua, or HubSpot to 13,080 other ISVs? One plus one equals three and the customer is delighted. So I would be looking for technology tools, and these could be Slack channels. These could be Subreddits local. They could be Discord channels, the LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, all the types of tools, and maybe my vendor has some tools as well that can do this pairing. I want to be asking as many questions as possible. 'How can I join the team? How do I get on the field? How do I go do my job on the field?'”
As a seller, you want to take advantage of what your partners’ technology is doing with AI and generative AI (GenAI), McBain said.
“GenAI to a seller is actually going to show up in the tools they use, as opposed to a prompt or some sort of consumer-level search engine,” he said. “So can I do my emails better? Yes. Can I do my outreach better? Yes. Can I understand my ideal customer better? Yes. Can I look at the 28 moments and have GenAI help me understand that buyer and do a better job of intercepting seven of those moments? Yes. Without going to buy five new pieces of marketing tech or ad tech to help me, I would be pushing my current stack of tools on what they're doing to help me.”
GenAI is going to hyper personalize the sales process like it's never been before, McBain said.
“I'm going to be able to send an email to you. 'I know what you did last weekend, and I know what you've done over the last few years,'” he said. “'I've seen you on the internet for years.' The level of personal touch to that email when I'm trying to sell you a security product is going to be incredible to the point where you're questioning whether it is a bot, and whether you are being phished or scammed.”
Too much personalization via GenAI could lead to mistrust and skepticism among potential buyers, McBain said.
“I might actually turn around and want human touch because I'm nervous about deep fakes,” he said. “I'm nervous now about anything getting a little bit too personal and at some point I actually want to reach out and say, 'Hey, are you real?' And it might even be physical, not digital. So that 75% who don't want to talk to humans, GenAI might actually have a reverse effect of [inserting] humans into the sales process before I spend $1 million or before I buy a car. It's that last moment of trust. And for anything that we can't trust, the human-to-human handshake, the eyeball-to-eyeball deal might be what I need to get over my anxiety that GenAI has ushered me through my 28 moments.”
Don’t include customers in an email blast if they don’t like newsletters, and don’t force them into a webinar when they’re not webinar people, McBain said.
“Sometimes it's not the best product that wins, but sometimes it's the least friction that wins,” he said. “So it may not be the best product price, place or promotion, but it just didn't stop me. It didn't slow me down. It didn't cause me frustration. It didn't cause me anxiety. It didn't cause me any emotional feelings because you reduced the amount of friction to get to where I needed to, which was to solve a problem, to maybe keep my job or a litany of other things that the seller should know what that outcome is.”
As you're thinking about your customer, forget about whether they like webinars or podcasts and start to think about who they are, McBain said. The best salespeople in the world mirror their customers.
“There's this thing about mirroring, talking at the same pace, being at the same energy level, but also understanding the things that they may not exactly show in every moment,” he said. “But if you solve for them, and you're the most obsessive-compulsive seller to an obsessive-compulsive buyer, you may win the deal over your competitor because you mirrored those traits and you solved for those deficiencies in terms of the sales process. Being a psychologist as a seller is an incredible skill.”
All of the big partners offer services incorporating AI to help partners locate who’s most likely to answer their phone, and who’s most likely to answer your email or LinkedIn request, Schmidtmann said.
“And all of my salespeople I work with use AI to give them a better list,” he said. “I want people between 100 and 500 in manufacturing, or logistics in these four states, and I need the CIO's cellphone number if possible, and direct email account. And you say that to AI, and AI gives you that list. You couldn't do that five years ago.”
Schmidtmann said based on his experience, the most successful salespeople don’t have one thing in common. But what they do possess is a “superpower.”
“So some were really technical, some were really strategic, some were really good networkers, some were really good team leaders and some were really good problem solvers,” he said. “They had a superpower. And my job as a manager was to put him/her in a role where they could use that superpower. So the greater the superpower, the bigger the Achilles heel.”
Schmidtmann said based on his experience, the most successful salespeople don’t have one thing in common. But what they do possess is a “superpower.”
“So some were really technical, some were really strategic, some were really good networkers, some were really good team leaders and some were really good problem solvers,” he said. “They had a superpower. And my job as a manager was to put him/her in a role where they could use that superpower. So the greater the superpower, the bigger the Achilles heel.”
What does it take to be a channel sales superstar?
Salespeople are dealing with constant changes in strategy, rapidly evolving technology and a shifting customer demographic. And what works for one might not work for another depending on their role.
Our latest CF20 features 20 tips for channel sales success in various roles. The tips are directed at vendors and a variety of partner types.
Three experts in channel sales provided the tips:
Jay McBain, chief analyst at Canalys.
Michael Schmidtmann, peer group facilitator and business coach with Trans4mers.
John Buttery, senior business development at NCTech Imaging.
Three megatrends are happening in channel sales, Schmidtmann said. They are: more specialization, fewer people selling more, and far more automation.
![Trans4mers' Mike Schmidtmann Trans4mers' Mike Schmidtmann](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt53503942c1c4d459/653979fc55ed99e257654406/Schmidtmann_Mike_Trans4mers.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Trans4mers' Mike Schmidtmann
“It used to be that salespeople did everything,” he said. “We did our own prospecting, we did our own designs and quotes, we did the proposal, we even helped install stuff, and we'd do support calls. And now you have inside salespeople and outside salespeople. You get vertical market specialists, business development people, you've got technical overlays, you've got senior account managers; there are at least 10 flavors of salespeople, so it's more specialized.”
There are fewer and fewer outside salespeople who have bigger and bigger numbers, Schmidtmann said.
“When I was running my sales organization, a good number was $1 million a year in gross profit; that was an A,” he said. “Now junior salespeople have to do $1 million or $2 million. I know people making $10 million-$15 million in gross profit, so fewer people are selling more.”
More Automation in Channel Sales
In addition, things are getting more automated with customers doing self-service, especially with Microsoft and SaaS, Schmidtmann said.
“They don't even want a salesperson,” he said. “And a big part of what's going on now in sales is how we automate it more. So I think all three of those trends will continue."
Reflecting on the journey through countless sales channel optimizations, the importance of nurturing existing relationships while strategically driving performance has never been more apparent, Buttery said.
![NCTech Imaging's John Buttery NCTech Imaging's John Buttery](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt2ddd0b5d117d5d3a/65fb4494232a08040738d1d6/Buttery_John_NCTech_Imaging_2024.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
NCTech Imaging's John Buttery
“Each [reseller] holds untapped potential that can lead to exponential growth when aligned with the company's vision through comprehensive support and strategic incentives,” he said. “My experiences have taught me that the path to remarkable sales records lies in a partnership that values continuous improvement and shared success.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for 20 channel sales tips from the experts.
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