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cat5e home runs that the partner will install.”
Other facts you could add, “The partner will enjoy
our Spring Fling SPIFF of $500 for this sale as the spiff
program runs from April 1, until June 30. That spiff is
in addition to the regular commission.” That takes you
to 129 words without even thinking.
Next, you want to use social media to drive traffic to
this post – and awareness of the real world benefit of
the services. Social media is for reach.
A simple tweet could be as follows: Partner closes
mid-sized hosted PBX deal. Read the details here. Link.
The Facebook post could be similar, although you
could use the brand name of the product. You could
give a shout out to the partner (with permission).
You could give a shout out to the client (with permis-
sion). This could be re-used on LinkedIn as a group
post for partners.
If you wanted to get in-depth, you could do a pod-
cast with the partner and/or customer or something
simpler such as an email interview asking questions
such as: How did you find this opportunity? (prospect-
ing tip); What questions were asked? (discovery tip);
What won the deal, and who was the competition?
(market analysis).
If you did that just once per week for just four
months, you would have about 17 stories, 17 concrete
ideas about when your services are deployed – and
hopefully why.
Any of these stories could be used to link to training
(live, webinar or recorded) or a PowerPoint presentation
on the product. At least, a link to a data sheet could be
included. These could be construed as calls to action for
the partners (readers). Smart marketing would make
those actions measurable.
One reason to utilize your own Web site or blog is the
ability to add analytics to the pages. The data collected
can tell you what products are popular topics: who is vis-
iting the page, and where they are jumping from.
The jump from point would be which link the visitor
clicked to get to the blog post. Was it a tweet, LinkedIn,
Facebook or even better an email? Data collected can
tell you where to focus your time. It can tell you what
social network is driving traffic; and which one isn’t.
One reason to do this is to let other partners know
that sales are happening. Another reason is to target
partners that typically sell just simple network. To get
them to sell other services, these partners need to be
shown (time and again) that other partners are selling
other products and banking on it.
What if you don’t have a lot of partner sales (yet)?
Use sales data from the direct team. Any sales force –
direct or indirect – needs to know that the products are
selling, what they are being used for, who is buying and
why. We remember best through stories.
Here is the best part of stories: they are easy to
tell and easy to pass on. Word of mouth is the best
marketing. Social media just echoes that word of
mouth through shares and re-tweets.
SMART CONVERSATIONS
Have smarter conversations. (Hugh MacLeod talks
about this often.) If you are having the same conversa-
tions year after year with your partners, you will get
the same results. Shake it up.
Share discovery questions with them. For instance,
what is that customer going to do with 20MB of DIA?
• Why the big pipe? What are they running on it?
• Are they using VoIP or video or teal-time apps?
• What cloud apps are they accessing?
• Is there a backup service?
• Are their compliance issues?
• Do they have a call center? If so, call center soft-
ware or voice backup?
• How vital is Internet to their business?
• What is the most vital software for the business?
• On MPLS, is one of the nodes a data center?
Discovery questions open up the possibility
for add-on services as well as finding the hot but-
ton issue of the buyer. Discovery allows for a more
complete solution to be designed for the buyer. The
complete solution design is the differentiator (in
some cases).
During the economic downturn, I was consulting with
a top master agency on its social media. The strategy was
to let agents know that business was still being done, that
sales were still closing. We used social media to announce
most of the orders that came in. “A jewelry store just
bought a PRI.” “A bank just ordered an MPLS.” Being spe-
cific like that – what I call granular – allows the partner to
know specifically what to think about in a given situation.
Maybe he would never have thought that a jewelry store
would buy a PRI. Maybe he thought they were two POTS
lines and a DSL and that’s all, sir.
It opens opportunity. You can do it via Twitter or via email.
You also can mention the money. As the joke
goes, the way salespeople keep score – the money!
“Jewelry store bought a PRI. Agent scores $500 Spiff!”
“IT shop deploys 25 HPBX seats including three call
center licenses. Agent goes to President Club.”
“Did you know there are 4x MRC spiffs on backup,
Lync and Exchange?”
Looking at the service provider promotions, we
often see several free months for customers as well
as several spiffs on new products such as Managed
Office. Good stuff to pass on.
Peter Radizeski
22
THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S
PLAYBOOK