We know that deal registration is a critical component to be successful in winning partner mindshare. It provides; exclusivity, price protection and helps eliminate conflict with a vendor’s direct sales teams. However, Channel Mechanics’ own polling tells us that only two-thirds (66%) of organizations currently have a deal registration program, with 19% currently evaluating one.
This places those vendors without a program in jeopardy, and at risk of losing partner mindshare, as deal registration is seen as table stakes for any partner engagement. “Partners won’t share business with you unless they’re protected,” noted Channel Mechanics CEO Kenneth Fox.
“Having a deal registration program is Channel 101. If you want to be a channel company, not a company with a channel, you must have deal registration. It all starts with deal registration because that builds that fundamental trust with your partners.”
So what can you, as a vendor, do to ensure your deal registration program is successful in today’s complex ecosystem? In our recent webinar dedicated to the subject, Fox joined Skyhigh Security’s Scott Goree, and Extreme Networks’ Kate Price to get their key takeaways for winning partner mindshare with deal registration.
Here are Their Top 3 Recommendations to Ensure your Deal Registration Program is Successful:
1. Executive Buy-In
Goree advised to get sales buy-in early, at an executive level. “Get your sellers to believe in your rules of engagement, and not try to break them when it’s end of quarter or the pressure’s on. This is really where we make our money as channel leaders, as holding true to [those] rules of engagement. That’s my key number one.”
Price agreed there needs to be buy-in from all stakeholders. “Because it can’t be just in the channel; it has to about inside sales and so on.”
2. Global Program, Regional Flexibility
Price also advocated for a global program with regional variances, to avoid managing hundreds of different programs. “Have a good program as the underlying basis for it,” she said.
3. Make it Easy to Work with You
Fox referenced the headwinds facing the tech industry, and the need to do more with less. For this reason, he said, growth in the channel will accelerate over the next couple of years as vendors rely more on partners for their go-to-market. Therefore, his biggest recommendation for vendors is to make it easy for partners to work with you.
“People don’t realize but partners will work with anywhere between seven and 12 vendors on average. They have choices,” he said. So if you decide you have the finest deal registration request form in the world, but it has 25 questions, it’s a complete turnoff. “You need to be thinking of about five to seven questions max. You need to keep it short and sweet.”
To Conclude
This is a critical piece of advice for winning partner mindshare – especially in an increasingly complex channel ecosystem, and the transition to new business models. As channel analyst Canalys noted:
“While partners are looking to the cloud to futureproof their customers’ businesses, cloud partner programs are complex or riddled with unintuitive technical jargon, so partners need to climb a steep learning curve or take a more proactive role in engaging these vendors.”
As such, securing buy-in, enabling you can quickly respond to partners’ different needs and making the engagement as simple as possible, are key to winning partner mindshare for successful deal registration.
To ensure your Deal Registration is winning you business, contact our team today!