By Gary Morris

Ask just about any channel chief and they’ll tell you one of their most precious resources is their channel account managers (CAMs). Yet, for many, the team that manages and supports resellers with growth planning, training and enablement are stretched too thin to provide deep coverage beyond the top 10 percent to 15 percent of their channel network. CAMs are expensive positions to staff and it is difficult for companies to justify investment in team members who provide proactive management of resellers below the top levels. As a result, their channel network is producing only a fraction of its potential revenue growth.

How, then, can vendors provide more efficient and effective coverage of a larger percentage of resellers in their network? The only way to do more with less is to change the economics of the CAM service delivery model. Channel chiefs need to find a way to enable channel account manager productivity and efficiency while also providing effective support to resellers to drive more growth.

The place to start is an assessment of CAMs’ role and refine how they spend their time. Currently, roughly 80 percent of a typical CAM’s time is spent on reseller planning and goal-setting, reseller deal support and reseller training—activities that are inefficiently managed and severely reduce CAMs’ capacity to support reseller growth. CAMs are very valuable field experts and their time needs to be spent on the most productive activities to generate the highest ROI for both the company and the reseller.

How to Gain a 300% Improvement in CAM Capacity and Reseller Management Effectiveness

Web tools designed to help with reseller investment planning, business-case selling and real-time training can dramatically improve the capacity and productivity of each CAM task area. Such tools can provide a professional guided process to engage reseller owners, reseller sales executives and reseller end customers in a planning, goal-setting and ROI calculation process.

Today the model for delivering these services involves many ad hoc meetings that are inefficient, different from CAM to CAM, and have little trackability and measurability. Guided web tools can make them more productive and streamlined, and deliver the service in a fraction of the time.

Web tools guide a reseller and a reseller’s customer through a professional, needs-based process for creating a highly customized action plan. Below is a summary of what each tool can provide to improve CAM productivity.

Channel Account Managers and their resellers can dramatically change the way they conduct business, the way they plan, and the way they sell with the support of these tools. These tools don’t take the focus off of personal contact, they enhance it. Because the guided process does all the “hard work” in building plans and proposals, CAMs can focus their valuable time on consultation and support in the investment planning, selling and training processes. It also allows channel chiefs to rethink the way they staff the CAM position and manage them for improved performance.

Gary Morris is founder and CEO of Successful Channels Inc., which helps executives in companies responsible for their indirect channel to generate more revenue growth.