Why Emerging Vendors Need Multi-Vendor Deal Registration

Deal registration was originally created to help vendors manage channel conflicts while enabling channel partners to protect profits and compete on a level playing field. Since it first emerged, the concept has proven to work very well—to the point that deal registration is now a key component of virtually every technology vendor’s partner program. Inspired by this success, leading vendors are now increasingly moving to multi-vendor deal registration solutions, which represent the next stage in the evolution of deal registration. Not only do multi-vendor tools enable vendors to manage complex programs on a single pane of glass, but they also increase the chances partner programs will deliver the intended results. Think about the difference between a partner bundling your product or service as part of a multi-vendor solution instead of trying to sell it as a post-sale upsell opportunity. Getting attached to the initial opportunity is far preferable to competing for upsell opportunities. What’s driving this shift? Too much of a good thing can sometimes become a big problem. As a result of the success of deal registration, partners now find themselves having to manage a seemingly endless number of different registration programs. And many of them simply lack the internal capacity they need to juggle all of these different programs effectively. This is precisely why more than 40 percent of qualified opportunities never get registered, according to industry estimates. By investing in tools that support multi-vendor deal registration, you can make the registration process much more manageable—which, in turn, helps vendors sell more products. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why organizations like yours should consider investing in solutions that enable you to offer partners the ease and simplicity they need to reach their full potential as channel partners.

Bringing Partners the Consistency They Need for Deal Registration

Most partners can’t afford to spend a ton of time tracking down discounts, rebates, and other benefits for every new vendor in their portfolio. For new opportunities, registering new customers or deals is time-consuming enough to begin with. As a value added reseller (VAR) or solution provider, you may need to combine multiple vendors into one solution for the end customer, which makes things even worse. This is why many large partner organizations in North America have invested in Vartopia to aggregate registration forms for their partners. As a result, their partners are able to register each component of a customer solution on one pane of glass instead of going to each vendor’s partner portal. No one has to log into multiple portals to register the same deal over and over again. A multi-vendor deal registration network like Vartopia’s supports both multi-vendor and single-vendor deals like no single-vendor registration platform can. When channel partners can use one network for all of their registrations, they realize a number of benefits, including:

• More visibility. Because all information—including vendor disposition, turnaround times, and close ratios—is tracked from one central location, all channel partners have great visibility into all of their activity on a vendor-by-vendor basis.
• Operational alignment. Partners can manage their registrations according to their own preferences. They can either directly register with their individual partner sales rep or register on their behalf as an authorized administrator, so the information flow is consistent and uniform.
• Simplicity. Partners will enjoy unprecedented simplicity with a single, easy-to-use workflow that captures all customer data and all vendor data.

Making Deal Registration Easier for Vendors

This one-stop shop for opportunity registration stops short when partners’ preferred vendors don’t participate in the registration network. At the same time, this creates an ease of doing business—particularly for emerging vendors that have products and services tightly integrated with major vendor ecosystems. Let’s face it: No matter how you slice it, adding one more deal registration form, portal, or login doesn’t make things easier for the partner. Integrating your registrations inside a partner’s business process does. How much of your business is stand-alone from your partner’s perspective? The easier you make it for channel partners to include you in a multi-vendor solution, the better.

Delivering Persistent Insights to Both Partners and Vendors

Whether you have a legit channel or a hybrid direct-indirect model, persistent registration of every opportunity is an effective way to maximize partner pipeline activity visibility and minimize the potential for channel conflict. But without clear and compelling benefits, your partners aren’t likely to register as much activity—or at least won’t do so into it’s too late for you to help them win a deal. By providing additional content and tools, you can help partners move approved opportunities through the pipeline faster. One way to do this is by automating workflows. That way, when your channel account manager approves a deal registration, you can automatically share links to relevant sales playbooks and other content, making it that much easier for partners to sell on your behalf. Remember, don’t stop at provisioning the content and tools. Measure their impact and incorporate partners’ progress into account managers’ quarterly reviews. That way, you can continuously optimize both to make sure partners have the latest tools on the market. One advantage of using a multi-vendor network instead of a stand-alone registration process is that it will likely give channel partners better data because it is consolidated in one place. By leveraging their reports, you can identify and resolve bottlenecks, track your performance against SLAs, and drill down on converted opportunities to close deals and identify areas of improvement. Bottom line? Use registration data to provide better support to your partners and demonstrate value.

One Final Thought: How Multi-Vendor Deal Registration Impacts Partner Recruitment

According to research conducted within the last decade, more than 80 percent of reseller firms said that a deal registration program is a critical or important factor when it comes to deciding whether to partner with a vendor. At the same time, more than 60 percent said that there were significant challenges with said programs—poor communications and technical difficulties chief among them. By partnering with a proven registration network, emerging vendors can eliminate many of these technical challenges. Although it might not make your entire partner relationship, it can eliminate an obstacle that helps ensure a smoother partner onboarding process. As for the partners already using the multi-vendor network? Well, there’s no learning curve. For more information on the best way to approach deal registration, check out our free e-book, Deal Registration Best Practices for Technology Vendors.