Early-stage companies often think they are too small for a channel program. They’re wrong. If you want to grow your business, a channel program can be a great way to do it. But not all channel programs are the same. In order to get the best results, you need to take the right approach to your channel. And that starts with creating a winning
deal registration program, which requires investing in powerful channel technology solutions.
Why do early-stage programs need channel technology?
Simply put, you need digital tools to succeed in the digital era. When you implement a channel early—and you invest in channel technology from the outset—a number of mission-critical KPIs are impacted for the better:
- The cost to acquire customers decreases
- Churn decreases
- The length of the sales cycle decreases
- The average contract value increases
Plus, you’re also able to tap into new verticals and new geographies. What’s not to like? If you need a little more convincing about why channel technology should be in the foundation of your channel program, here are three key reasons.
1. It’s the sensible thing to do.
Look inside any new startup and you’ll see the same thing: Marketing has marketing automation tools, sales has sales enablement tools, and engineering has developer toolkits. You don’t force these teams to hop from one platform to the next to do their jobs. You give them a robust solution they can work inside all day because it’s more efficient. You’re already investing in tech everywhere else. Why wouldn’t you take the same approach with your channel? Building your channel program on top of leading-edge channel technology just makes good business sense.
2. It’s easier to measure impact.
When you don’t have the right tools in place, it’s impossible to measure the impact of your efforts out of the gate. Let’s say you’ve hired a full-time employee to manage your channel program at $180,000 (e.g., a split of salary and variable compensation based on revenue and quota attainment plus an extra 17 percent for benefits and insurance). How are you planning to measure their success in recruiting partners, activating those partners, and then driving those partners toward the desired behavior of impacting revenue? Are you really going to rely on spreadsheets and email inboxes to determine whether you’re investing your money effectively? When it comes to measuring the impact of your new hire, you don’t want to leave anything to chance. When you put a deal registration program in place to measure performance on day one, you won’t have to. Think of it like an insurance policy on your investment in human capital.
3. It’s scalable.
If you start up a bare-bones channel program, what happens when your program starts to scale? Managing it all by hand or in the inbox will rapidly become an insurmountable task. On the flip side, when you build your program on top of modern channel technology, you create a system that can keep pace with your business as your business grows. This, in turn, enables your channel program to operate more efficiently from the outset. When you’re just starting out, you might not think you need channel technology. You don’t have any partners yet, so why spend money? You’re not just trying to start a channel program. You’re trying to start an
awesome channel program. When your channel takes off, the last thing you want is to have to divert energy or resources into rebuilding the foundation. Build for success from the outset, and you can focus all of your energy on growing your program instead of dealing with the minutiae.
Ready to supercharge your early-stage channel program?
Whether you’re thinking about launching a channel program for the first time or you kicked things off recently, you need to give channel managers the same purpose-built tools you give everyone else in your organization. Not only does it make their jobs easier, but it also enables you to improve the partner experience, track more data, and, ultimately, generate more revenue. We might be a bit biased, but we believe that Vartopia is the perfect solution for nascent channel programs. But don’t just take our word for it.
Request a demo of Vartopia today to see how our technology can help your brand-new program deliver rapid ROI.
