Selling your product using a channel model — enabling partners to sell your products to customers — has a host of benefits including:
- Keeping sales headcount under control
- Scaling your revenue driving activities cheaper and quicker
- Tapping into new markets and customer bases
6sense can support your channel partner strategy by giving you buyer insights that can be passed on to partners — helping them sell more effectively and prioritize your business.
For manufacturers, the channel model represents a huge opportunity to grow your business and scale. In fact, two-thirds of B2B business leaders expect more than 11% of revenue growth from their channel partners.
But to make the most of this supplementary sales channel you need to enable your partners just as you would your own team. Let’s look at some of the strategies you can use to take your channel program to the next level.
Give Your Partners Better Messaging and Content
Your customers aren’t generic. They have unique problems they’re hoping to solve with your solutions. So creating one-size-fits-all content isn’t going to help your partners close more deals.
The best way to identify the topics your buyers and customers actually care about? Capture what they’re researching. 70% of a buyer’s research happens online anonymously. They’re crawling your website, searching the wider internet, and reading industry news.
Uncovering this anonymous activity gives you clear insights into the specific topics, products, and services your target audience cares about. It unlocks unbridled access to the real-time trending keywords and topics that will resonate with your buyers.
Now, instead of relying on old information or educated guesses, your marketing team can deliver next-level content that speaks directly to your audience, including:
- Tailored product sheets for specific use cases
- Benefit-packed eBooks on topics your buyers really care about
- Videos highlighting trending products or solutions
These insights and content pieces are powerful for your own teams, but they’re even more powerful for your partners. Partners are usually starved of relevant information — giving them actionable data on-tap will only improve their performance, helping you scale faster.
How to Deliver Deep Insights to Help Partners Prioritize
Ed Breault, CMO of Aprimo, explains how his company uses 6sense to power growth. Jump to 29:45 to hear him speak specifically about how they use 6sense to enable their channel partners.
Expertly crafted content and real-time data on your buyers’ interests aren’t tools to sniff at. But there’s an even bigger advantage you can give your partners: knowing which prospects are in-market for your solution right now. So a platform that identifies buying signals to uncover the most promising accounts is of significant advantage.
Serving up these insights for your channel partners makes it easier for them to approach potential buyers and speak to their specific needs. With 6sense and Salesforce, these critical buyer insights can sit within your partner portal — making it quick and easy for a channel seller to see which accounts are in-market and most likely to purchase.
By leveraging your prospects’ intent signals — plus AI-based comparisons with your company’s historical deal data — you and your partners will be alerted to which accounts are actively searching for products like yours.
Cut Out The Middleman to Empower Your Partners
Instead of spending valuable time meeting with your teams or prospecting on their own, your partners can be proactive — engaging the buyers most likely to respond to their outreach.
You can cut out the middleman and increase efficiency further with 6sense partner alerts. These alerts can go straight to a partner’s inbox or a shared Slack channel whenever target accounts go in-market or perform important activities, meaning no one misses a revenue moment.
To empower your partners within the systems they use every day, your teams can create partner-specific dashboards showing your partners when local accounts are in-market. With one glance they can easily understand top priorities, and where their efforts can make the most impact — leading to more deals and mutual success.
Enable Your Partners to Scale Faster
Using the channel model for your manufacturing sales lets your business scale without hiring entirely new teams. But your partners success often comes down to how well you enable them.
Think of your partners as another arm of your sales team — give them buyer insights to help them prioritize their activities and you’ll quickly see an uptick in partner performance.
