We know deal registration is a critical part of any partner program. But as a vendor, often you will gain greater value from your deal registration program by pairing it with other complementary solutions and programs. But what are some of the best programs to complement deal registration?
During our recent webinar, What Modern Deal Registration Programs Look Like, Channel Mechanics’ VP of Sales, John McArdle, Head of Business Development, John Bird, A.J. Tedesco, VP Channels, Securly and Kate Price, Channel Operations Manager, Extreme Networks weighed in on the best programs to combine with deal registration.
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One of the most common complementary offerings is a spiff program. In fact, the two are now frequently linked due to the ongoing transition to services. A SaaS-based economy sees the sales lifecycle changing enormously from traditional transaction sales, said McArdle.
“Now you’ve got to go on a journey with the customer. Or your partner has to go on the journey with you. You will need to register the deal so the opportunity is on the table. Then you may have to do a proof of concept. Or you may have to have a bed-in period, and hopefully then you close win that opportunity.”
Driving and Closing Opportunities
McCardle believes spiffs are driving two behaviors. Firstly, creating more opportunities to view the pipeline. And secondly, driving faster closure of those opportunities.
This is the case for Securly in the education market, said Tedesco: “There are times we know when schools are going to be purchasing, so we want to drive certain behavior during different quarters with our partners. For example, there are certain quarters when most of the pipeline building takes place. So we want to incentivize partners to register early. Therefore we will have incentives around deal registration. Then during the time of year when all the deals are closing, we will offer an increased margin incentive to get the deal in and close it in a shorter period of time.”
Similarly, Extreme Networks tightly integrates its deal registration program and other initiatives and incentive programs.
“It’s integrated with our channel self-service enabling resellers and distributors to get immediate approvals, based on their level of promos and other parameters like deal registration for example,” said Price. “Deal registration is also part of several incentive programs and spiffs. For Extreme, deal registration is really more a carrot than a stick. We try to increase benefits, and motivate partners. But we don’t downgrade anybody or force anybody to do a certain percentage of their overall revenue.”
Deal Registration as a Requirement
Elsewhere, the tiering of partners with partner programs is increasingly being linked to deal registration.
“You’ll often see there is a specific requirement of partner eligibility, that you must achieve a certain number of deal registrations every quarter. I had a really interesting discussion with a couple of vendors recently, and they said that they would rather work with partners that generate 20 deals at €50,000 per annum than one partner that brings in one deal by €1 million per annum,” said McArdle.
“You’re trying to drive repeatable sales activity, repeatable sales behaviors. And you see a lot of vendors looking into having systems of measurement in place to reflect the number of deal registrations in their QBRs. Dashboards that they can see if they’ve got a sales performing partner rather than just a one-off revenue transacting partner.”
Whether running on its own or with programs to complement deal registration such as spiffs and incentives, as a metric it can demonstrate commitment of partners. Moreover, it encourages them to share more. Be more transparent. And finally understand the ways in which they can minimize friction – which is ultimately better for their business too.