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Partner Channels - be they consultants, resellers, developers, integrators, dealers or distributors usually play a vitally important role in any large scale sales and marketing operations, especially in cases where you need to reach a Europewide market. When you are dealing with a large number of demanding customers spread across a number of different countries it becomes very difficult to have a direct relationship with all of them. That is why partner channels become so important - often they represent the primary means by which your customers have contact with your organisation.

The key to ensuring that all elements of the relationship are working well is, of course, good communications. Put simply, you need to have a full understanding of how your Partner Channels are working. That means receiving regular objective feedback from them so that you can be sure what areas are working well and what areas are causing problems.

There are a number of ways in which this can be achieved, such as regular review meetings which ensure that all partners, including the less vocal ones, have an opportunity to provide formal feedback. Another valuable tool that many companies chose to employ is a formal survey of opinions and attitudes in the Partner Channel. Such a survey can be employed to provide you with some invaluable feedback regarding both problem areas and success stories. It can offer a number of important benefits:

  • Helps to identify genuine key strengths that can be emphasised in future promotional activities.
  • Demonstrates a serious structured commitment to the future development of partner relationships.
  • Allows an objective differentiation to be drawn between issues of genuine importance and relatively minor issues.
  • Provides a good understanding of future priorities in terms of ways in which the performance of the Partner Channels might be enhanced.
  • Provides an initial benchmark measure of the overall situation that can then be monitored over time to identify trends in performance and the impact of various initiatives and process changes.
  • Provides an opportunity to sound out new ideas and concepts in the Partner Channels.
  • Most importantly, it provides a formal and objective way of monitoring activities in the Partner Channels that takes full account of a broad range of partner opinions - not just the views of a vocal minority. Thus it provides a solid and objective basis around which future strategy can be formulated.
  • When run by an independent professional Market Research agency in such a manner where the anonymity of individual Partners is guaranteed it is possible to obtain honest, detailed feedback that would not normally be obtainable in other circumstances.

Download Channels Development Research Service outline

In recent years Benchmark has successfully designed and undertaken a number of surveys relating to Partner Channels in both the UK and EMEA region as a whole on behalf of various suppliers. We have employed a number of different methodologies, depending upon the situation, often using a number of different languages to achieve the best possible coverage.

Email us for more information, or to discuss your employee research needs in more detail call us on 01322 626999.


Case Studies.

Owned by Rootdamages by FasT

Published on 14 September 2004
ARCO is one of the UK's leading providers of workwear, safety products and maintenance equipment. As part of its efforts to improve its customer offering, the company identified the need to review and improve the performance of its supply chain and distributor network. Research was conducted using telephone and online conjoint methods to measure customer expectations of service and delivery requirements.
 
Owned by Rootdamages by FasT

Published on 13 September 2004
Mercury is the global leader in business technology optimization. Mercury wished to undertake a comprehensive survey of its partner channels network across the EMEA region. The purpose of the study was to measure the strength of the relationship and to identify areas of good performance as well as areas for improvement.
 
Owned by Rootdamages by FasT

Published on 14 September 2001
A leading supplier of infrastructure management solutions needed to assess its relationship with its VAR network.