Your Guide To Picking the Right PRM for Your Partner Program

Enabling deal collaboration with channel partners is an important aspect of partner relationship management. Defining deal registration and collaboration processes is critical. Establish clear guidelines and processes for registering and collaborating on deals with partners. This should include criteria for deal registration, rules for sharing deal information, and expectations for collaboration.

Make sure to provide collaboration tools. Equip partners with collaboration tools that enable them to work more effectively with your sales team. This might include tools for sharing information, quoting capabilities, transparent pricing information, tracking progress, and communicating with each other. Encourage regular communication between your sales team and your partners, and provide opportunities for them to interact and collaborate.

One of the biggest challenges for channel leaders is the inability to accurately forecast revenue from channel partners. This is difficult because the data does not reside in your CRM and your channel managers are entirely reliant on your partners to provide deal updates periodically. This is a major challenge at scale and communication overheads tend to spiral out of control, resulting in wasted resources and unpredictable forecasting capabilities.

For managers, PRM automation automates most time-consuming tasks like tracking performance metrics, onboarding new partners and offering them training and support. This enables managers to focus more on strategic activities. Partner automation also empowers partners to be self-sufficient, leading to higher engagement rate and loyalty over time, which further simplifies managers’ day-to-day activities.

Sales enablement is critical for managing channel partners because it helps to ensure that partners have the resources and knowledge they need to sell effectively, which can lead to increased revenue and stronger partnerships. It provides partners with the resources and tools they need to sell more effectively. This can include training materials, marketing collateral, and product information. By providing partners with these resources, they are better equipped to position and sell your products, which can lead to increased sales and revenue.

This is also crucial in building up partner engagement and loyalty. Partners are more likely to be engaged and committed to your brand when they feel supported and equipped to sell effectively. By investing in sales enablement, you are sending a message to your partners that you value their success and are committed to helping them achieve it.

Ultimately, the goal of sales enablement is to drive revenue through the channel. By providing partners with the resources and knowledge they need to sell more effectively, you are increasing the likelihood of closing deals and driving revenue.

Reporting and analytics are critical components of a PRM (Partner Relationship Management) tool because they provide valuable insights into the performance of your partner program and help you make data driven decisions. By analyzing data such as partner performance, deal registration, revenue generated, activities etc, you can identify areas of strength and weakness and make changes to improve performance.This can help you to identify which partners are performing well and which partners need additional support.

One of the main reasons behind failed PRM implementations is poor partner portal adoption. For instance, Forrester research shows less than 55% of your partners are likely to login to the portal at least once in a month. Considering your portal is the primary channel of engagement with your partner network, it is important to consider a platform that will add value to your partners as opposed to merely being a repository of marketing materials.

The best way to remedy this is to provide a portal that improves your level of engagement with partners while also adding value to your partners processes through the partner portal. Consider whether the tool is intuitive and easy to adopt, and how much training might be required to get up to speed.

Pricing models can vary widely among PRM tools. Consider the cost of the tool and whether it offers value for money, taking into account the specific features, functionality, and support offered. Also, if you are a fast growing partner org, ensure pricing structure does not penalize your rate of growth and that it can align with your objectives.

By considering these factors, you can make a more informed decision when choosing the right PRM tool for your organization.