How to create a Channel Engagement framework

Let's start with what channel marketing is. It's called many things: local marketing, indirect marketing. It's someone that sells your product outside of your organization. It is a severely under-resourced segment with most marketing departments.

If you pay a person to sell, and they hit the market with a number/goal, you know you either got your investment in them back, or surpassed, or lost the investment. When you go to indirect model:  Product/thought leadership at one company or selling and marketing at another company,  you now have two companies to align.

$1000 invested  - what does that turn into?
Did it convert to $10000 or is it $1000 I didn't get back?

This makes companies hesitant to invest in it. So, typically companies put one person on channel marketing. Example of a $2.2B company with 35K employees, 40% of revenue comes from channel, and they have ONE marketing resource. How can you be effective with that type of opportunity?

For Example: marketing resource, Janet, is reactive to channel requests and does random acts of marketing. Everything she does is NOT strategic. She needs help with scale and a platform and infrastructure so they can market on their own. Cobrand, launch.

Averetek does this in a frictionless way. This allows Janet to drive more through the channel because they can get their own materials.

Listen to the show to find out where you and your company may be missing opportunities by not allocating resources effectively.  This can be HUGE. 

About our guest:

Peter Thomas is the founder and CEO of Averetek. This team of marketers, engineers, and product developers seek new ways to engage channel partners through software and services. Since its beginning in 2000, Averetek has grown to manage more than 70,000 reseller organizations and 300,000 registered users.

In Averetek’s work with brands, Peter has found that companies focus too much time and money on the top 10% of their channel partners. The remaining partners simply need the right nudge to shift from opportunistic to strategic sellers. When brands devote more attention to the 90% segment, they drive more leads, close more sales, and grow their business.

Peter combines his observations with partner behavior data from the Averetek platform, sharing this knowledge to help clients attract, engage, and monetize their partners more effectively.