Designing and building your channel

Our goal is to help you create an organised, motivated, market-focussed, high performance channel engine. We will work with you to assess the characteristics of your products, leading to a clear understanding of the most suitable range of channels. By carefully defining the scope of each channel we can rapidly recruit to these requirements by utilising our extensive database of contacts and familiarity with local markets.

To define the scope of each channel we will need to consider these questions:

• Have we defined your high value, high complexity ‘sweet spot’? Will this be the focus of a direct or indirect sales channel? Or Both?
• How can your channels increase the quality and extend the reach of your solutions and services?
• What impact will local market culture have on your regional strategy?
• Which design approach will minimise channel conflict and maximise market presence?
• What effect will new channels have on existing partners?
• Which Tele-channels should you use and when should you use them?
• How will you manage the partner's customer experience?
• What should you expect to achieve from your E-commerce and Internet strategy?

Having determined what mix of channels is required we develop plans to target partners for your indirect channels and we also assess the applicability of Tele-channels and whether these should use outsource solutions or be kept in-house. At the same time we help you to decide on your approach to direct sales depending on the complexity of your solutions and the need to target major accounts.

ProSecta Profiling

Our design strategy is based on understanding your corporate goals and the characteristics of your products and solutions. These characteristics will help to define the feasibility and range of channel solutions in relation to the preferences and buying behaviours of your customers. We will also assess the relative merits of different channel solutions in economic terms so that costs are kept low whilst return on investment and potential sales volumes are maximised.

New channels will sometimes require some level of redesign or reconfiguration of your product, marketing or support services in order to achieve ‘channel readiness’. Most often for organisations targeting international channels this will involve language localisation of products and marketing literature. We can help you to prioritise and plan these efforts and in some instances arrange resources to achieve these tasks.

Customer Relationships

Your channel strategy will be designed to use the strengths of your partners to deliver a quality solution to your customer. However, you will still need to leverage those customer relationships without taking direct control of them.

Whether you are using CRM or not we will help you to develop capabilities to help your partners to be more effective in developing the customer experience.

The importance of gaining an insight into your customers' satisfaction levels, buying habits and changing business needs is essential to the success of the channel and your business.

Channel Policy

Success of the channel over time can be positively impacted by robust and carefully engineered contracts and agreements. On their own these serve to give clear understanding of the responsibilities of each party.

However, they do not alone create motivation and it is our belief and experience that attractive channel policies should be designed to encourage performance and foster a close working relationship with the channel. 

Nevertheless, it is also imperative to develop and use a vigorous but not invasive set of channel performance measures to ensure that customers service is maintained at a high level and that revenue targets are achieved.

Channel Infrastructure

Finally, to achieve optimum performance of the channel it must be supported by a robust infrastructure. ProSecta services can provide an option to outsource all or part of your channel operation.

We can design, develop and recruit to your channel plan and use our in-house channel management and pre sales and post sales expertise to achieve your goals.