The Channel CARMA processes

Driving and measuring new sales, pipelines, and ROI within the channel ecosystem

 

On June 23^rd Tony Serino conducted a “Best Practice Channel Development” webinar for 52 IT Vendors and Channel companies.  Channel sales and channel marketing managers represented participating vendors and C-Level executives from Solution Providers, VARs, MSPs, and other channel businesses were in attendance.  They learned how to plan and execute Channel CARMA campaigns to accelerate their businesses and vendor relationships.

The Channel CARMA solution is a “Best Practice” process for vendors and channel managers.  Taken together the Channel CARMA process includes the following four items.  First, and most important, it must drive sales in the short run.  If there are sales, all things are possible.  Next, the program should build the new opportunity pipelines needed to make sales budgets in coming quarters.  Third, it needs to calculate and share campaign results and program ROI for all links in the sales channel.  Finally, it must evolve the partnering relationship beyond “enabled” into the highly productive “motivated” state.

CARMA is an acronym representing the process.  In a minute we will detail each of the letters, but here is the acronym spelled out:

·         Control of messaging and resource deployment

·         Accountability

·         Return On Investment

·         Motivation

·         Acceleration

Let’s take a look at each of these concepts and briefly explain what each of them means.  “Control of messaging and resource deployment” involves two concepts.  First we have messaging.  Assume that our channel is a simple one made up of a vendor, a channel partner, and an end customer.  The vendor needs to meet their corporate communications needs within a scalable framework.  The channel must showcase their customer-facing brand, skills, and focus, experience.  And for this messaging to work the end customer should understand that the partnership implied in this channel provides a solution to their needs.

The “C” of CARMA has a second component.  That is the resources part.  It should be obvious that the vendor must judiciously invest in marketing resources.  The vendor cannot just sit back and have the channel partner do all the work and spend his own resources.  In a like manner the channel needs to invest in sales and technical resources.  This is a two way street.

The next letter of the acronym, “A” stands for “Accountability.”  Too often marketing programs lack this vital element.  It is bad enough when a vendor goes direct to market lacking accountability.  It is far worse in a channels setting.  All of the channel partners should define the individual responsibilities within this Go-To-Market framework, plan, and process.  Further they must calculate and assess the individual and overall results through objective measurement.  If this is done upfront with everyone agreeing to the metrics it will be easy to measure the results.

And measurement takes us to the “R” in CARMA, “Return On Investment.”  If we have set up our accounting wisely and our program is strong, we will create revenue and measure the results consistently and accurately.  Clearly, all members of the channel will understand the impact of the investment made by each of them.  In any successful channel venture there is a high degree of trust.  This is made operational by due diligence and the calculation of the ROI of the effort.  This will be made visible to all channel partners.

The “M” in CARMA does not stand for magic.  It represents “Motivation.”  Of course we are all in this for the money, but when you are in a channels setting you cannot simply order your channel partners to do anything.  They are all individual firms.  Therefore we motivate by helping people understand the plan and their role within it.  By focusing people’s efforts on what they do best we remove the time-wasting obstacles.  If we do this successfully the relationship evolves beyond enablement to a higher state.  That is one that is one of the most fulfilling and prosperous environment of a motivated partnership.

When the process is working well you find that you have achieved sales “Acceleration.”  You and your channel partners are filling the sales pipeline at an accelerated rate.  There is an inertia because of the partnering relationships.  And last, but far from least we see an acceleration of fulfilling the needs of the customer.

The Channel CARMA process is a creation of hands-on channel experts who possess a deep first-hand understanding of what it takes to be successful in the channel. Channel CARMA is derived from what was learned by Tony and other channel experts.  This was amassed during thousands of face-to-face sales calls, hundreds of joint vendor/channel strategies and execution sessions, and extensive communication with IT decision makers and business executives.  These are the people who recommend and purchase technology to make their businesses strong and able.

Tony is happy to share the materials from the webinar with any person needing to drive top line results, pipelines, or define and/or conduct channel audits.  The webinar includes how to produce and quantify result and how to calculate the ROI of joint vendor/channel as objective measurements.  It also addresses how and why motivating all the people from all of the partnering companies is the best assurance of enthusiastic participation by all and, as such, the best path leading to maximized results.

Channel CARMA Lead Generation Solutions begin by identifying end customers with business needs that can be resolved by the partnering vendor and channel companies together.  Channel CARMA solutions result in the win-win-win scenario of:

 

·         Achieving a sales budget in the short term

·         Building a strong forecast as the basis for continued superior sales performance

·         Deploying the solution to the end customers’ problems