Nowadays, due to the evolution of markets & expanded territories, most organizations have adopted to sell their products & services indirectly i.e. through some outsourced channels, which can be distributors, wholesalers & retailers or agents.
It saves a lot of capital & also increases their reach into the market. Unlike Direct Sales, a particular product or service is being sold at multiple levels i.e. Organization to Channel & Channel to end consumers.
But, due to multiple levels of selling points & large territories, it is again a complicated task to manage the complete process of sales in this model. Here, CRM for Channel Sales can be helpful.
In Channel Sales, the organization is unaware of its end-users, they know only their partners, who are selling their products & services on their behalf. Here the organization need to take care of the coordination between them & their managers & then with the channel partners.
That makes this process more complicated. In CRM for Channel Sales, an organization can get the complete watch of the sales process at all levels, which helps them to minimize the error of miscommunication within a system.
Barriers in Channel Sales Management
- How to manage relations with channel partners @ micro level?
- How to Improve Supply Chain functionality @ distributor level?
- How to manage various Secondary tiers of your channel sales business?
- How to make cordial relation with Dealers & Distributors and wholesalers?
- Is it possible to Track & Improve dealers & retailers sales?
- How to boost partner sales tier lucratively?
- Is it possible to set Visibility Parameter on channel sales tree?
- How to maintain distributor inventory levels?
- How to improve transparency in between OEM and its associate channel partners?
Components of an ideal Channel sale partner :
- Commitment level – Question yourself how much commitment you might require for success. For example, your partner needs to spend one full day per quarter at your office to get trained. On the other end, everyone needs a basic understanding of the products which they can learn in a 30 minutes video.
- Technical expertise – Identify how much technical knowledge might need to sell the products. You might also need a partner with an outside sales team or inside sales time sometimes.
- Marketing expertise – You have to do a little education and little support or you have to a great deal. Although training your partner will require more time and resources, it will give them an additional incentive to work with you.
- Your potential level – Even if your partner is very valuable for your business, they would not be interested to work with you unless they are also benefited. Just figure out who would be able to help you by enabling them to sell some additional services, reach out to new clients, or also enhance the value of the product or services.
- Market – You should also consider whether your partner will be benefited from your products. Also that they are demanding additional support, solutions, or also features that your partner currently cannot provide.
- Process – Your partner’s sales process must be compatible with yours. There are always natural points in their sales or services for upselling your products.
Benefits & Features of CRM in Channel Partner Sales
SalesBabu CRM is one of the best channel sales management software which can organise and track every phase of sales life cycle and create and integrated solution for better management of its sales process and maintain long term relationship with its end customers and distributors.
Some of the features of Salesbabu CRM sales management process
Single platform for sales channel
SalesBabu CRM enables organizations to manage & synchronize entire chain of Partner Sales Channels on one platform. It also allows companies to take real time visibility and accuracy on Channel partner sales transactions, using a single cloud based repository which keeps a track of every sales transaction happening within and outside the organisation.
Get 360° Vision on Channel Partner Sales
CRM for Channel Sales can organize & synchronize the entire sales workforce on a single screen where you can take an entire look at the complete sales process and daily Sales tasks within a few clicks from anywhere at any time.
Dashboard features enable individual users and managers to track their daily work items through a single screen and set reminders and alerts to track every incoming sales activity and follow up in an organised manner.
Mobile sales app features improve flexibility in the sale process by providing on-the-go features for the sales and marketing teams which help individuals to track their work item, quotation creation, sales order generation, live location sharing and more.
These features facilitate sales management with just a few clicks at any time and anywhere. These features provide a perfect work-life balance and help the sales team to stay connected with clients at all times.
Read More – Get 360 Degree Approach to Business
Streamlining of Sales Force
As we all know and discuss earlier, the channel partner sales process is much more complex, where it is so difficult to streamline & synchronize the entire sales force on a single screen.
But with the help of CRM, we can do this in a few seconds and can synchronize the entire sales task in a couple of seconds. Integrated databases of a complete set of sales information help in streamlining the process by creating various activities, follow-up reminders and a tracking system to organize the whole sales lifecycle for the firm.
Fill the Communication Gap in between OEM (Company) and Channel Partners
CRM for Channel Sales enables companies to take real-time reporting, enabling you to fill the communication gap between the sole company and its partners, which removes the burden of the organization for any expected or unexpected communication gap between all the Channel trees. SalesBabu CRM facilitates MIS features, which can be used as a Business Intelligence Tool for future reference.
With different tracking reports, sales managers and company leads can build a bridge of communication gap between the channel partner by understanding the sales process in a detailed manner and pointing out the pain areas of the process and working towards more systematic solutions to the sales process limitations.
With well-defined reports and analysis of data, communication between the stakeholders is made more convenient and holistic in nature which creates productive sales channel management.
Read More – MIS: Now Get All Your Reports Just by a Single Click
Inventory Management
SalesBabu CRM helps to Manage Inventory flow in such a lucrative manner, which helps you to provide prior intimation on available stock for that particular item in Inventory @ your partner warehouse level.
An organised system of inventory handlings like centralised tracking of raw materials, vendors, distributors, delivery challan, GRNs and more help in keeping track of every delivery incoming and outgoing from the warehouses.
Inventory management also helps in maintaining an appropriate amount of stock in your warehouse by different methods of demand forecasting to circulate income cash flow in the company.
In many cases, companies fail to forecast their product requirements and end up in over stock situation which can restrict the liquid cash of the organisation and cause huge losses due to wastage and thefts. With an organised system of analysis and demand forecasting, Channel sales management is made easy and more productive.
Efficiency
One channel manager paired with many channel partners will be able to bring the same amount of revenue as the six or five salespeople at the fraction of the cost. This is very easy to bring on new partners than hiring new salespersons , especially once when you created some programs and worked out on the kinks.
Conclusion
In Channel Sales, the OEM Company directly not deal with end users and not aware about its end-users interest level, OEM companies know only their channel partners, who are selling their products & services on their behalf. CRM for Channel Sales can help organizations to get 360 degree watch of complete sales process at micro level & enable them to increase their sales bucket.
