Is a Solid Channel Program the foundation for increasing your sales?

This is the fourth blog posting about VAR Channel programs.In my first blog entry I claimed that the ISV needs to realize that it works for the channel, not the other way around. In the second blog entry, I initiated the discussion of why it is important for an ISV to really pay attention for its channel program and educate the channel specifically in the cloud transformation as that is what the channel is saying is needed.  In the third blog entry I explained the channel program developed by SolidWorks and what type of findings that this ISV found out as reason for its successful channel development and results.

In this blog entry I wanted to portray the VAR Development Program modules that SolidWorks developed with some comments around these. The program “Channel Capabilities Assessment” is divided into four separate areas in following way:

When you review the areas above, there isn’t really big surprises as such, but what is interesting is that most ISVs neglect many of these areas and this will hurt the ISV in the long run. If the ISV does not know its channel and its partners well, how can the CAM estimate anything in respect to forecasting or even the skillsets that the channel partner has in the sales process itself.

What David Skok explains in this blog entry is that to really understand the channel, SolidWorks had to put a “social scientists” hat one to really study the behavior of the partner and to understand their capabilities and what was really needed from the ISV. It is so easy for us to ignore to reach out to our customer/partners/prospects to ask: “how can I help you guys to become successful”. If you are working with a channel, ask yourself how much you really know about your channel partner business? I would bet that not much. To be transparent, I have had the same issue myself, still have but have tried to really dig into my customer case and understand what is needed. It is an ongoing battle and challenge.

In the SolidWorks case, a survey of 65-questions was created with six categories: Business Planning, Finance, HR, Sales, Marketing and Technical Support. Two person teams where trained to do face-to-face interviews and each interview took an entire day.  What I find fascinating is the way these VARs where ranked. Two dimension was created, one that portrays “Vision and Execution” and the second was based on “Willing and Able”.

The process was not only good for the ISV to achieve better understanding of the VAR channel, but it was also interesting for the VAR channel partner to understand its needs and also to get a better understanding how the ISV can help the channel to become better. SolidWorks used a modified or variant of GE Market Management model to categorize the VAR channel partners and I will present this in my next blog entry of this topic.

The conclusion that we can make of this blog entry is that an ISV needs to put time and effort to understand its channel and this will take time and money. Besides this, it is imperative to rank and categorize the business partners so the ISV can allocate its resources to the partners that are “Willing and Able” to perform and invest in the joint future.

Stay tuned for more….