How Channel Managers Generate More Sales

Channel managers in growing companies have huge demands on their time, but trying to stay in front of partners and customers to support increased sales should be their first priority. However, too often, they’re anchored to their computer, trying to make sense of obscure or erratic sales data.

A channel manager stuck in their office is bad news for your program – being in front of partners is the number one way they’re going to increase sales. But they need to be in front of the right partners, which means they need to know which partners are sliding and when partners are not performing well enough against the models.

If your channel managers don’t have easy access to actionable sales info, your channel program is undoubtedly hobbled. You want channel managers to make fast, well-informed decisions – and then get back out in the field.

The only way that can happen is when all the info they need is easily accessible from one location. Coordinating data from several locations is a huge time-waster, and the process of manually transferring numbers increases the probability for error – a lot. According to a study by the Aberdeen Group,  firms that utilize manual processing experience 80% more processing errors. What’s more, having to troubleshoot a lot of different systems slows things down even more.

The key to a channel manager making decisions that will generate more sales is providing him a single automated dashboard that reports on results from CRM, PRM and other relevant systems. In other words, we can’t just give them big data. We need to give them big data that is can be easily maneuvered and configured to show relevant trends and information.

That way he can quickly decide: “Okay. This week, I have to work on all of these partners that just aren’t getting it. We need to do more training,” and that quick, informed decision making will be able to help direct his limited time much more effectively.