No organization can grow in isolation. Channel partners play a key role in helping you meet the needs of end-user customers, generate revenue, and deliver your products and services on time. And when it comes to delivering technology upgrades to end-users,
strong relationships with your channel partners can be a game-changer for your organization. Solid and well-built relationships position your business as a leading brand in the market amongst your competition and ensure customers will keep asking for your products.
A Key Tool for Facilitating Channel Sales
One of the keys to building successful partner relationships is to deploy a partner portal, which can serve as the powerhouse of your organization. A portal functions as an informative hub—with all the details you want to share with partners about your growth, product details, and other company insights. When designed well, the portal facilitates sales for your channel partners. While designing your partner portal, make sure it is easily accessible to partners and your internal teams. In addition to providing assistance to your partners, the portal makes it easier to manage your entire channel and communicate information cross-functionally. When done correctly, the portal can reinforce your brand while also clearly communicating your partner's messaging.
Must-Have Elements for Partner Portals
The following are four of the must-have elements to look for when selecting your partner portal:
1. Partner Flexibility
The partner portal should make things easily accessible for your partners with a hassle-free, single sign-on and an asset repository they can quickly search. Partners should have real-time access to all the information they need as well as marketing collateral and other product-related information. And given that the world is moving towards fast and easy access to resources and information, it is also important to set up the portal to scale to fit the screen size of mobile devices. This makes it easy for partners to get information and close deals whenever and wherever they want.
2. It is All About Your Partners!
Creating the best experience for your channel partners should be your utmost priority. A
fully customized portal gives them the freedom to access content tailored to their usage, engagement, and activity levels. Real-time collaboration, a dashboard showing accurate analytics, and a regular newsfeed will save time for partners and help them close deals faster with much more confidence.
3. Keep Partners Engaged
It’s almost impossible to track real-time communication and collaboration without a well-designed partner portal. All communications with partners can happen within the portal as channel managers provide details such as resources, sales forecasts, opportunities, and other shared information. Strong messaging while collaborating with partners instills confidence in your products while also increasing partner engagement, productivity, loyalty, and profitability.
4. Track Partner KPIs
Just like the KPIs you set for your internal team, it is essential to determine the KPIs for your partners. Through the partner portal, the KPIs can be documented and tracked, which leads to positive results for your partners and your company. Identify where partners have succeeded and where they need improvement across engagements, leads, opportunities, and other sales metrics. Tracking the metrics also helps you understand where your overall channel programs need improvement and if any areas require further investment.
The Answer to Your Portal Challenges
Your portal is a significant contributing factor to your company’s channel success. Without a partner portal, relationships will not flourish over the long run. To solve the partner portal challenge, many
technology vendors have turned to Vartopia. Our partner portal platform closes the vendor-partner gap by helping you manage sales and marketing initiatives from one common source of data. We transform your CRM to capture and synchronize all pertinent data from initial deal registration through to the renewal of that opportunity—with every touchpoint and KPI in between. You can make smarter, more effective decisions while the easy-to-use platform has no learning curve for your partners—our deal registration process is likely already in place. To learn more,
request a demo of the Vartopia partner portal solution and start your journey to make it easy for your partners to access information and sell your products.
