Convey's Channel Partner MicroCast

It’s Been March Madness in the ChannelConvey Channel Podcast Series I’ll admit that I’m not into basketball, but I do love watching Sister Jean on the sidelines, seeing the Cinderella teams knock out the top seeds, and enjoying the college kids having their moments of glory on the court.  For those of you that like history, the term March Madness came on the scene all the way back in 1939 when it was used to refer to Henry Porter, an Indiana basketball official.  But we all know it from legendary sports commentator Brent Musberger who used it to describe the 1982 college tournament. So why do we call this tournament, March Madness?  The real answer is that what we expect to happen and who is going to win never really happens.  Powerful teams lose; games end in thrilling and unexpected ways, and there never seems a way to predict the outcome.Perhaps we should use “2020 Madness” to describe the last year we’ve had in the channel.  Before COVID we knew what to expect, what services to focus on and who to sell them to, but then 2020 Madness kicked in.  Let’s look at what’s changed in the last year.Have questions? We would love to help, get in Touch »

Conversation with Nationally Recognized Psychologist Dr. Sandra NewesOur social isolation, uncertainty about our business future, lack of entertainment outlets and having to home school our children have taken a toll on all of us. Learn the secrets behind how to maintain your resilience through the pandemic from psychologist Dr. Sandra Newes as she explains resilience, how you lose it and how you get it back.

David Converse, VP of Sales at UCX Markets, visits with Convey CEO Carolyn Bradfield about the digital transformation that vendors and partners will engage in based on the evolution of the buying experience to a more virtual format. Take a listen and then attend Cloud Conventions to hear more from David and UCX. http://cloudconventions.com

Fireside Chat with Bob Paff, speaker at Cloud Conventions and Convey CEO Carolyn BradfieldBob Paff will be leading a session on Wednesday, May 11th at 2:00 on communication strategies during the COVID crisis. Listen to a fireside chat between Bob and Convey CEO Carolyn Bradfield to explore what people need to be thinking about as they communication with employees, customers and prospects in the new virtualized world we find ourselves in.Register for Cloud Conventions »

Carolyn Bradfield and Jon Arnold discuss Jon's upcoming speaker session at Cloud Conventions 2020, a virtual trade show. Session Title:The Evolution of our Workplace StrategiesSession Description: Join Jon Arnold, communications industry researcher and strategist, to navigate the digital transformation of the workplace in our new virtual work from home environment and beyond. The marketplace is now disrupted, but learn how disruptive technologies will help us recover and rebound.Register today at https://cloudconventions.com

A behind the scenes look at the Cloud Conventions Trade Show StrategyConvey went to a great deal of effort and research to understand how to take the elements of a live trade show and build as many of them as possible into a virtual environment to capture the interest and attention of the 30,000 sales partners and vendors we invited to be our guests as attendees. Here is a glimpse at our virtual event strategy that we will execute at Cloud Conventions and that you can use as a guide in the event you are considering an event in the future.Register for Cloud Conventions Today »

Adjusting Your Virtual Strategy, A Lesson from Cloud ConventionsAs many of you know, our company Convey is producing an unprecedented virtual trade show and conference for the telecommunications and cloud channel, launching May 11 called Cloud Conventions. And yes, webinars will be part of the content we offer. But I promise you that we are cognizant of the fact that they cannot be delivered in the same way 95% of our industry does them today. Here is what you can expect from us and adjustments we think you need to make to ensure that you don’t lose your audience when you do a webinar.Register for Cloud Conventions Today »

Understanding the pivot point that business finds itself after COVID 19Cloud Conventions, that likely will be the industry’s largest virtual trade show and conference, takes on a higher purpose. Even though our event is not until May, we know that survival is still going to be an issue for many partners and vendors well into late spring and summer. But even more than that, this disruption is going to lead to business process changes, innovation through technology, and a strong push toward virtualization of the workforce at every level. This podcast focuses on why you and why your customers need to recognize that businesses will be changed forever, and you will be the ones to drive that change.Register for Cloud Conventions Today »

Helping the Channel Get Business Back on Track Cloud Conventions is more important than ever because its purpose is to motivate our industry to keep themselves in gear so they in turn could get their business and help their customers get their businesses back on track as we navigate and emerge from the COVID crisis. Launching on May 11, attendance is open and at no charge to the telecommunications and cloud channel. Listen to the “why” behind Cloud Conventions.Register for Cloud Conventions Today »

How to keep employees socially connectedLet’s face it. Times right now are pretty stressful at best and downright scary at worst. We’ve sent our employees home and changed the way we do business as we cope with how to keep our employees truly connected and business moving forward. Many of our people are more focused on navigating the dangers of going grocery shopping and how to keep their kids educated and entertained.Convey kept its office open and available to employees who wanted to come into work until we decided it was no longer safe to do so and sent everyone home to work virtually. We’ve got a lot going on as we launch our virtual trade show, Cloud Conventions, in May so finding a plan and process to keep everyone motivated, feeling connected and staying productive has been top of mindshare. Right now, we are all being over-webinared to death, so having a better way to stay connected is critical so we don’t just check out.Being a veteran of the conference calling industry, as well as having run an addiction treatment program, I went back to that well of my past experience to create a plan and process for social connecting while social distancing that seems to be working for our company. Here is our plan and process that I want to share with all of you.We start with an 8:15 HuddleFirst thing in the morning, we have a quick huddle over video conferencing that focuses more on how we are doing personally vs. what we are doing professionally. Cameras are turned on, even though we don’t look that great in our pajamas or sweatpants and with no makeup, but we can see the environment that everyone is working in, even if their cats jump on their desk. Here are the three questions we ask our team:1. What did you learn about our current situation with the virus?2. What are you watching that you’d like to recommend to everyone?3. What did you accomplish personally?The answer to the first question is designed to have us talk about the progress our country is making in the fight against Covid-19, debunk any false information, and do a reality check on how long our situation might last. Since we are all streaming Netflix or Amazon, we can connect socially on shows that we are all watching together. Right now, our guilty pleasure is Tiger King, a 7-part documentary about Joe Exotic and his big cat animal park in Oklahoma and his death match with animal rights activist Carol Baskin who runs the Big Cat Animal Rescue in Tampa. This gives us a big laugh and an opportunity to talk about the bizarre story that has gripped the interest of America. We’ll be on to the next binge-worthy show soon. We would have talked about this live in the office and doing so virtually gives us as close to the same experience as possible.The question about personal accomplishments keeps people focused on finding something small they can do to feel they are not just wasting away at home. We have people share their online workouts, something new they cooked for dinner, or even attending support groups online. Tonight, I’m participating in a virtual trivia game that our team is doing vs. going to the restaurant we owned that had to be shuttered during the crisis.Break up the day with a virtual lunch.The first day of our total work from home environment, we had everyone meet for lunch over video. We got a chance to catch up socially, find out what everyone had cooked, and just hang out as we would have at the office. We won’t do that every day, but I suggest once or twice a week as a great way to break up the day. End the day with a 5:00 daily recap.Our last call of the day is at 5:00 and we ask everyone to weigh in on the following:· What was your bi

How Businesses Can Adjust in the face of the CoronavirusYou can’t turn on TV or the radio without having the media create a level of panic about the Coronavirus. The telecommunications, cloud and contact center industry’s largest trade shows were cancelled with moments to spare. And you all know the wild ride we are having on Wall Street. However, because we live in a technology-driven world, perhaps it is time to pivot, not panic and let technology step in while the virus behaves like the flu, has its season, and then goes underground as the weather warms up. Here are some thoughts for our business community.

Reasons why you should not “do it yourself” when it comes to your websiteMany small businesses think it’s OK to take a DIY approach when it comes to their website. They get free technology from WordPress or inexpensive site building programs, set out to build their website or engage an inexpensive intern to do the job for them. But much like those home DIY projects, the results are often not what the business needed or wanted and the results can be a website that is not interesting and engaging, too hard to keep up to date and doesn’t reflect how that business wanted to be viewed in the marketplace.Here are some reasons that having a DIY website may not be your best business decision.

Why WordPress sites are bad for small businessThe current market leader in websites is WordPress powering 50 million websites. It’s “free” technology for creating the site, appeals to the cost-conscious business, seems easy enough and offers some great looking layouts to make site creation easy. If you already have WordPress as the underlying technology your site is built on or are considering using it, here are some downsides that should give you reasons not to use this “market leader”.

Avoiding Website Gotchas We talk about understanding the hidden issues that can bring a website to its knees.When it comes to websites, most people realize that if the website looks bad, is outdated, and difficult to navigate, it hurts rather than helps a business. But what they may not know, is that there are some gotchas in their websites that are often nasty surprises that cause them to spend lots of money in redesign, maintenance or what’s even worse, legal fees.

"You never have a second chance to make a first impression"People make the same snap judgments about website that they do about people. Google and other researched how people react to websites and found out that in about ½ a second, a person will form an opinion about your website and either stay to explore more or leave and go elsewhere. Explore how your website might be leaving a bad first impression.

Explore the tools that make your channel life easier. During the holiday season, we are focusing on gifts. Not those deals and steals, cyber bargains or doorbusters, but the gifts that Convey’s technology brings to master agents, vendors, carriers and partners to make their business lives easier. Today is tool time. Everyone has a tool guy in their life like my husband who has a gadget for everything to build things, repair stuff that breaks or manage just about any landscaping need. He always says that what he doesn’t have one of, he has two of them. Convey likes tools as well and we’ve built quite a few of them into our portals. Our tools let you market to partners and let them market to customers. We built in tools to get people’s feedback, analyze what people are interested in and let you know if they login, look around and click. We have tools to manage your data, keep your contacts organized and remind you to do stuff. If you like tools, then our portals and catalogs are like one giant toolbox with things that you can use to build, repair and renew. Let’s start with our portal marketing toolkit. To us, marketing means getting the word out and in the hands of the right audience, making your offer clear and getting people to respond. And we have lots of tools to do the job. If you own one of our portals, you have a message library with automation built right in, so you don’t have to grind it out creating and delivering messages. The library has automated notifications, reminders and welcome emails that talk to your audience automatically. Those messages remind portal members to login if they have been inactive too long, let them know that they have a file waiting, or have a new marketing campaign ready for them to look at. Newsletters are automated. Create one and add sections, put it on a schedule, and then it automatically goes out with links back to new content and events.And we don’t forget about portal members. We created marketing tools that members can use to deliver content from the portal in just one touch or run a sophisticated marketing campaign created for them with no creativity or work needed. When a piece of content is added to the portal, there is a 1-touch email share button. When a viewer presses the button, their email client pops up with a landing page link to view the content letting them send it out with a personal message. It’s a great tool to share case studies, marketing materials or product information.Then there’s the toolkit every salesperson wants under their tree, Conduct. This tool lets portal owners create email marketing campaigns with 4 outbound emails and a landing page and delivers it right to the members’ dashboards in the portal. Salespeople open up the campaign, set a schedule for delivery, add their list and out the door it goes. All their emails and landing pages are branded for them and they have reports to see who is opening, clicking and signing up.Who doesn’t love organizers, right? There are quite a few of us that like to straighten our drawers, declutter our closets and watch Marie Kondo tell us how to fold clothes. Convey has lots of tools to keep you organized, reduce the chaos and clutter, and save you time looking for things. Let’s start with our CRM tools built right inside each portal. We “decluttered” big CRMs like Salesforce, created a simple tool that anyone can use, and made it perform the most common tasks like holding data, creating notes, assigning tasks and running reports. We have a CRM to hold member data, another one to keep track of administrators in the portal, and a prospect CRM with an automated way to get prospects into the hands of salespeople. It’s a business organizer’s dream.So back to portal members.&nb

Save time in how you manage, message, onboard and connect with your partnersFor this MicroCast series we are focusing on the topic of gifts. Now that doesn’t mean we are going to teach you how to find those deals and steals, get you informed about the latest gadgets or help you with the coolest trending Christmas gift. Rather, we are going to focus on the gifts that Convey’s technology brings to master agents, carriers vendors and sales agents to make their business lives easier. If you ask just about anybody, the one gift we all want but often eludes most of us is the gift of time. Imagine having hours back in your day so you don’t have to work late hours, can spend more time with your family, get to the gym for that workout or just have time to sit down. It’s something we all strive for. In the industries we serve, sales agents and master agents are small business owners, so they have to do it all from selling deals to managing accounts to doing all of the administration to run a business. Vendors and carriers don’t have it any better. They have lots of people to satisfy, need to travel and attend events, and then keep both partners and their customers happy. All of those things can suck time right out of the day with little left over for personal things. Every day, Convey delivers the gift of more time by reducing the time it takes to distribute content, automate processes, managing messaging and outreach, and consolidating content in one place to eliminate wasted time searching all over the internet for what sellers need to serve their customers. Let’s take a look at some of those time-saving opportunities so you know they are out there and how to take advantage of them.We save you time in getting the word out. Marketing spends a lot of time developing product slicks, case studies, incentives, videos and marketing materials. However, that time is wasted if it doesn’t make it into a salesperson’s hands. That’s where Convey’s Hub and Spoke technology comes in. Vendors and carriers have online catalogs where they can tell their story, let partners and producers know what segments of the market they play in, how their products and services fit in and why partners should pay attention. A catalog is a blank canvas where marketing can paint any picture they want. It’s quick to add pages, banners, videos, and marketing materials, but the efficiency of getting that information into the hands of partners is time-savings magic. Put a product slick online in the hub site, press the save button and it magically appears on every master agent portal. It’s not enough to just get information online, you have to get people to pay attention and for portal owners this is automated. Portals send out messages when new content is added, can automatically add content to the home page, and reminds portal members to come look. All of these processes are automated, so no time is wasted in trying to get the word out. We save you time looking for stuff. You can certainly find a lot of content on Convey’s portals online, but the time it takes to search and look on different websites can be lengthy. Portals put information in one online location and make that information easily searchable, saving time looking around. If you are looking at a master agent portal with many vendors and carriers adding information, those vendors give you links to take a deeper dive, so you don’t have to guess where to find it. We save you time onboarding portal members. So, you sign a partner or agency up, now what? Sometimes training and onboarding people can be a time-intensive activity unless you have technology to help you.

Explore how where to find those gifts in our services.This time of year, we are obsessed over gift giving. We’ve now been through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday trying to find just the right gifts for what seems like an ever-expanding list of people that expect them. What makes this time much more stressful is the gift buying season happens to be shorter this year based on the limited number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.When those of us at Convey thought about this gift giving season, we remember you, the customers who give us the gift of your trust, your support, your participation in educating your audiences and your marketing dollars that make what we do possible. Those gifts come to us all year long and we thank and appreciate you for your business and friendship. We’d like to take the time in this MicroCast series to look at the gifts that using our technology brings to you, your businesses and the partners and producers that use our services to help them be better at serving their customers. One of the most precious, and often overlooked presents that we all need is the gift of more time. I’ve watched my master agent friends work long hours to manage all of the activities it takes to run their business. They are on the phone countless hours helping sales partners and producers close business, connecting with their carriers and vendors, processing commissions or resolving issues. The time drain applies to vendors and carriers as they jet around the country, meeting with partners and customers and getting more of them to develop relationships. Time in the industries we serve is precious and often in short supply.Every day, Convey delivers the gift of more time by reducing the time it takes to distribute content, automate processes, managing messaging and outreach, and consolidating content in one place to eliminate wasted time searching all over the internet for what people need to serve their customers. Convey adds tools that helps you manage programs, marketing and messaging. My husband is the ultimate tool guy with a gadget for everything from tools that let him build things, repair stuff that breaks or manage just about any landscaping need. In fact, he likes tools so much, we have duplicates of them across two houses. And I’ll admit, I like tools as well. Alexa is a tool that lets me stay put while she turns on the lights, TV, tells me the time and lets me order stuff. And I have my own color coordinated tool kit to hang pictures and fix stuff.Convey likes tools as well and we’ve built quite a few of them into our portals. Our tools let you market to independent agents and let them market to customers. We built in tools to get people’s feedback, analyze what people are interested in and let you know if they login, look around and click. We have tools to manage your data, keep your contacts organized and remind you to do stuff. If you like tools, then our portals and catalogs are like one giant toolbox with things that you can use to build, repair and renew. And who doesn’t like gifts that make you more efficient. I know tons of people who obsess over watching Marie Kondo show you how to fold things, organizers that keep clutter at bay, or gadgets that help you go faster and do more with less. If you are efficient, you are likely much more effective in both your personal and business life.Convey is built to give you the gift of efficiency. Because we are a small company, we built technology to be automated, manage processes without you having to intervene, onboard and manage partners, remind and message, and manage your communication and marketing...

We keep you from flying blind and make your decisions count. For this MicroCast series we are focusing on the topic of gifts. Now that doesn’t mean we are going to teach you how to find those deals and steals, get you informed about the latest gadgets or help you with the coolest trending Christmas gift. Rather, we are going to focus on the gifts that Convey’s technology brings to master agents, vendors, carriers and partners to make their business lives easier. Whenever I think about how old I’m getting, how long I’ve been in business and how much I can no longer do because I’m not built like a 20-year old, I remember that all the time I have spent on Earth has one huge advantage and that is insight. Insight is something that can come because you’ve had experiences over the years that have taught you to be wiser, more tuned in, and strategic. Convey also gives you the gift of insight without having to spend all of that time and years developing it. We are a data collector and organizer of that data to let you know if partners are interested, what they care about and if your message is getting through. If you take that data and analyze it, then you know what is working and what isn’t so you can adjust and pivot.Let’s start with who is looking. You’ve put together an amazing program, spent countless hours developing marketing resources, added good content and were inspired when you created a killer promotion. But now what? Wouldn’t it be great to know if things are being looked at, who is looking and how much time they are spending engaged with what you added online? If you have a Convey catalog or portal, we give you this insight. If portals are public, then you can see how many views you are collecting on catalog pages, banners or content. If people are behind a login, you can tell which member is looking and their viewing habits. And then, what are people looking at? It’s very informative to know if your message is resonating or being ignored. It’s also very informative to know which of your portal members are engaged and those that just aren’t looking. Convey’s reporting system shows you all of the activity for a content catalog as well as each and every piece of content and event inside. You can see what is being looked at and who is looking if they have logged in. Now that you have the insight about what’s working and what’s not, what should you do next? Remove the clutter of content nobody cares about. Adjust the promotion so more people care. Add more case studies if that’s what gets people’s attention. Spend more time with people that are engaged with you and less time with people that are not inspired by your message or what you sell. Insight lets you adjust.And are your messages getting through and how they are received? For all of the complaining about getting too many emails, let me remind you that email outperforms all social medial combined in getting the message out and producing the right ROI. Convey is email centric because most of our users are businesses that rely on email to stay informed. Convey portals send out notifications, reminders, welcome emails, custom messages and newsletters to portal members. Portal members use our Conduct marketing tools to deliver promotional email campaigns. But how do you know if it’s working? That’s where the insight you get from email reports comes in. Reports tell you if the email was delivered or if it bounced. It tells you if it was opened or not read. Then, we go above and beyond that to let you know if people clicked and how many times they hit those hyperlinks.So, what insight can you gain from our email reports? First, you can see if you have a good or bad email list and remove emails that

We help you get more done in fewer steps.For this MicroCast series we are focusing on the topic of gifts. Now that doesn’t mean we are going to teach you how to find those deals and steals, get you informed about the latest gadgets or help you with the coolest trending Christmas gift. Rather, we are going to focus on the gifts that Convey’s technology brings to master agents, vendors, carriers and partners to make their business lives easier. I know tons of people who obsess over watching Marie Kondo show you how to fold things, organizers that keep clutter at bay, or gadgets that help you go faster and do more with less. If you are efficient, you are likely much more to be effective in both your personal and business life. Convey is built to give you the gift of efficiency. Because we are a small company, we built our technology to be automated, manage processes without you having to intervene, onboard and manage partners, remind and message, and manage your communication and marketing. For most everything in our portals or catalogs, you can just set it and forget it! Let’s start with automation. If you’ve been in business long enough you have suffered through manual processes that create a time suck when you are trying to get things done. What’s worse, is that when processes are not automated, people forget to do things, make mistakes and focus way too much time in administration and not enough time on running the business. Convey has the philosophy that it’s so much easier on you to just “set it and forget it”. We automate how content and events are displayed on our portal home pages by automatically displaying events on the home page calendar, rotating content posts on and off the home page or adding content to directories when it’s posted. It’s now really efficient to keep your information from being old and out of date. It’s super frustrating for people to go look for an incentive only to find one that they get super excited about and find that it was for Q1 and now you are in Q3. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with promotions that are out of date, events that have come and gone or anything that has expired. Convey makes it easy and efficient for you to keep old stuff cleaned out by using our scheduling engine. Take down any banner, event or piece of content by scheduling it to appear and then be removed when it’s no longer relevant.Let’s talk about the efficiency you have in engaging the members of your portal. You would likely stop looking at things unless you are reminded to do so. Think about how many emails you get from that favorite vendor with new products, sneak peaks or special sales. Retailers know that you have to see something a number of times before you click through, take a deeper look and buy that item that they have so diligently been promoting.This process is no different when you think about getting your portal members to pay attention to you. Convey’s technology is built to engage its members and makes it efficient to do it. Start by whether portal members are looking at all. The system knows how long it’s been since the last login and if that is too long, sends a gentle reminder to take a look. The portal invites members to be responsive and take action vs. just look around. You can add forms, links, registrations and other calls to action so portal members have something to do and not just something to look at. You can send emails, newsletters and text reminders to get portal members to remember you are still out there thinking about them.We make training much more efficient. New portal members can land on a dashboard that takes them through the product training they need, gives them more information about your partner program, and lets them know how

MicrocastGaining an EdgeThis year Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide will not be making an appearance in the college football playoffs thanks to Auburn’s stunning victory in the Iron Bowl. But you can count on Coach Saban to be there just about every other year. He has many secrets to being at the top including the undying support of his university and the alumni, a huge budget and good coaches. We have focused our college football MicroCast series on why he has been so successful, and today’s episode is about Saban’s willingness to use technology to get an edge.A few years ago, Alabama began using a GPS system to track the performance and workload of its players. Without getting too technical, this GPS system tracks a player’s top speed or acceleration in practice with his past performance. Saban is looking to see if that player is getting worn out during the season. Alabama lost to Clemson in the final minute of a national championship game, prompting Saban to consider that his team was tired. Once he started using the GPS system to crunch the number, the data showed that the Tide had a performance drop off in post season, so Saban adjusted practice to keep his players fresh. So, if we take a play from Saban’s playbook and use technology to get an edge in our channel program, what technology should we be looking at and how can using that technology help us recruit better, run our program better and get more deals?Start by using the data to be analytical about the ROI for each partner you work with. I’m sure Saban’s GPS was relative complex, but once he used it after losing to Clemson, he won the national championship the next year after adjusting his strategy. Your program likely has quite a bit of data that you need to use to determine what adjustments should be made in your partner strategy. Look at the number of referrals and quotes to closed deals to see if the partner is sending in junk or real opportunities. Look at what it is costing you to recruit and support a partner and adjust if the cost is too high. Geolocate where you have the best partner traction and spend more time going to those locations. If you are in the Convey Channel program, run a catalog report to see which partners are engaged and what they interact with. Create digital experiences that engage partners when you’re not with them. You’ll never have enough staff, money or time to go everywhere and that’s where digital experiences come in. Technology, particularly Convey’s Channel program and partner portals, enable you to educate partners online, be present when partners are doing their research and starting their journey to find the right services and ensure that they are aware of your latest and greatest financial incentives.Use technology to automate your processes. Channel programs have a lot going on, never enough money and almost always are understaffed. One way to get around this dilemma is to invest in a partner portal to make your staff more efficient and do more with less. If you were using one of our portals, we would automate partner onboarding, managing your data, regular messaging and outreach and provide assets for marketing and campaigns. Without automation, your program will never grow and may even have a hard time being relevant and surviving.Leverage technology to make sure partners show up. Saban believes that a full stadium is essential to keeping player morale up and winning games. However, when the Tide is far ahead by halftime, students tend to leave, and the stadium starts to empty. Technology has stepped in to encourage students to stay longer with an app called “Tide Loyalty Points”. If students stay through the 4th quarter, they earn points toward priority access to post-season games. &nb

MicrocastLeadership Counts Nick Saban, legendary football coach at Alabama, has produced more successful head coaches of other programs than anyone in the league. Kirby Smart is leading the Georgia Bulldogs, winning his SEC division 3 years in a row and already having an appearance in the National Championship. After a successful run at Colorado, Jim McElwain lead the Florida Gators, and Will Muschamp moved from Florida to lead South Carolina. The list goes well beyond these standouts as Saban has created a machine for producing successful football leaders.Saban’s secret is to focus on developing leaders by exhibiting the leadership skills he wants his coaches to adopt. In the channel, we have many opportunities to lead our team and lead our partners to get the results we are looking for. Let’s look at Saban’s leadership strategy to see what we can learn from it.At the end of the day, Saban is still the boss and he maintains authority at all times. Watch Saban in a press conference and you’ll see that he is clearly the one in charge and also the one that is accountable if things don’t go Alabama’s way. Knowing that there is a leader in charge of a master agency, a sales partner organization or a provider’s channel program who is willing to step up and be clear about their guidelines, their program and the results inspires confidence in others. Take a lesson from Curt Allen who navigated his Windstream channel program through bankruptcy. You could look to Curt and recognize who was the “leader” in the Windstream channel.Surround yourself with the right people. The results say that Nick Saban is easily the best coach in college football, but he's got a keen sense of understanding that you become the best by hiring the best. He's not afraid to align with prominent personalities and talents as assistant coaches and coordinators because he realizes they can make the difference. If you are in a leadership position in the channel, hire talented people that you can develop into leaders. Then demand excellence. Make sure that the people you invest in are worth it because you only have so much time to spend developing those leaders. Focus on the process over the outcome. Great leaders are fascinated by the process and followers tend to be obsessed with the outcomes. This may be the defining factor between a successful leader and an unsuccessful one. Saban immediately goes back to work after winning a National Championship. Championships are one-time events, but processes are repeated. You’ve seen football teams luck into a win and have setbacks in a game that produces a loss. But processes are a constant and not just a one-time thing. Our teams, businesses, and lives are defined by the processes we choose, so consider being driven to have the right processes in the channel that create success. That might include the process to sell your services, the process to recruit partners or the processes to ensure that customers are happy with you.Leaders know how to adapt and adjust.I will never forget the National Championship game where Georgia faced off against Alabama three years ago. I was there, sitting in the stands at Mercedes Benz stadium cheering on the Bulldogs thinking we had the game in hand after a great first half. But then Saban adapted and adjusted pulling out his starting quarter back and putting in his backup Tua. You know the rest as Alabama went on to win in double overtime. In the channel, good leaders have to show their teams how to adapt to changes, the competition, changing partner needs, and the list goes on. Channel leaders adjust to make sure their program evolves and is healthy.Inspire confidence in your people by sticking to your guns

MicrocastThe ProcessBecause of his success winning national championships, Nick Saban is now the most successful active college football coach in history. He wrote a book called, “Think Like a Warrior” where he described what he calls “The Process” as his secret to success. Simply put, Saban shares that “The Process” is maintaining a relentless focus on things that we can control. It also means not being distracted by the opponent’s perceived strengths or the score, but rather do your job so that you can contribute what you have control over.How many times in your channel job have you gotten distracted over your development team missing a product release date, the reorganization that you think is coming to realign resources, or an install that is taking too long based on that final circuit? Saban teaches his team that they are responsible for what they create, not what the other team has going on that they can’t control.So, when we look at Saban’s “the Process”, how can we apply this and other things that he’s doing to the channel.First, worry only about the things you have control over. Stress comes from things that we feel we can’t control. On game day, there are a million small things that happen on and off the field that could drive players and coaches crazy....the way the ref made that call...the dropped punt and turnover....the missed pass or fumble. The list is endless. Saban coaches his players and his staff to not consume themselves with things that they can’t control but focus on what they can deliver. If you are a channel manager, you have control over which partners you spend time with and how you teach them to interact with you. You can’t control how often they will refer deals and if those deal will translate to revenue. If you are in channel marketing, you can control the quality of your materials, campaigns you run or events you produce. You can’t control what partners will do with the materials you so carefully crafted.Next, organize the process by breaking it down into its component parts.Saban breaks his process down into smaller parts so each routine is understandable, manageable and measurable. We develop software at Convey. No task takes our developers more than a day or two and each new feature is compiled of many smaller tasks that we can manage and measure to keep us on track. Those of us in the channel managing complex sales processes, commissions, installations or other processes should take a lesson from Saban’s playbook to take a big process, break it into its component parts then track and measure it. Don’t get anxious about impending situations. How hard do you think it is to win in the SEC? You have a balanced league with teams like Auburn, Georgia, LSU and Florida who are perpetual powers. Saban is known to be hyper-focused with a work ethic that is unparalleled. He keeps his eye on the prize, winning, and doesn’t pay attention to those other teams that try and distract him or what they may do in the future.It’s easy to be distracted in the channel with one eye on the competition, the partner who is complaining the loudest, or with things that are not in your control. Staying focused and minimizing those distractions is critical to make sure you have the right orientation to keep your eye on the prize – revenue.Strive to be liked, but don’t obsess over it is another play in his playbook. Nick Saban may easily be the best coach in college football because he's got a keen sense of understanding that you become the best by hiring the best. Sometimes we fear hiring people that are better than we are because they might outshine us, replace us, threaten us or be better liked. If your channel program is going to grow, you have to deve

MicrocastPartner RecruitingUnless you are from Birmingham or Tuscaloosa, you may be getting tired of seeing the Crimson Tide of Alabama in the playoffs and as college football national champions year after year. For those who follow Nick Saban, he has many secrets to his success including the undying support of his university and the alumni, a huge budget and good coaches. But many will argue that what really separates his outstanding football program is his focus on recruiting.Unlike other college programs who come in as cheerleaders for their school and tout how great they are, Saban and his coaches have another approach that is very factual, practical and direct. Recruiting coaches are taught to have a conversation that goes somewhat like this, “This is who we are. This is what we do. This is what we’ve done. This is what we feel like we can do for you. This is what we feel like you can do for us. If you want to be a part of it, great. If you don’t, somebody else will.'”In our channel, partner recruitment is an on-going process. Master agents want partners to sell through their contracts, and recruit based on their relationships with providers and what they can do for the partner that other masters can’t. Providers recruit partners to sell services in preference to those of their competition. So, what can we learn from arguably one of the most successful college football coaches of all time about recruiting?The first lesson is to target the right partners. Saban doesn’t want just anybody to play for Alabama. It has to be a win-win. He focuses not only on what Alabama can do for the player, but also what the player can do for Alabama. Master agents and providers need to define the characteristics they value in a partner and then target those that come the closest. Here are some questions to ask your program that help you recruit the right players:· What type of customers are currently in the partner’s portfolio?· How complex of a sales process does it take to win a deal? Some partners are not motivated for a long, strategic and large deal?· What type of relationship does a partner need and want from you and is your program ready to support that type of relationship?You don’t need every partner to affiliate with you, only the ones that create a win-win relationship and score the touchdown and bring the deal in.Once you have defined the right partner, it’s time to narrow the field and focus your efforts. Saban and his coaches can’t scout at every high school football game, meet every parent or bring every player to campus. They have to focus their efforts to be effective. Once a partner program has defined the ideal partner they want to target, then the next step is to eliminate activities that produce partners that are not going to succeed in the program. As an example, if your deal is complex and you want a partner that understands security as a service, a program may want to target managed services providers, attend their events, and gear their marketing message to attract that type of individual.Define what you can do for your partner and what you need them to do for you. Back to Nick Saban. His conversations with prospective recruits was direct and to the point. “This is what Alabama can do for you AND this is what you can do for us.” In the channel, we often forget the part about what we want the partner to do for us. Partner programs should be clear about the benefits of their program, and most programs do this. But you also need to focus on the commitments you want them to make to you and be clear about that.Don’t wait for partners to come to you. Go to them. Although Alabama is an elite pro

MicroCastLessons from Nick SabanThis is the time of year when we get fired up about the college football playoffs, who is going to which Bowl game, and which teams will be in the elite four for a chance at the college football National Championship. Nobody in college football has been to the “big dance” more often and won more national titles than Nick Saban, the coach of the Crimson Tide of Alabama.Now, it pains me to say that because I’m a Georgia Bulldog fan, so Alabama is considered one of our arch enemies, and frankly, I’m tired of seeing them at #1 year after year. Of course, that pleases one of my colleagues Danny who not only is a “Bama Boy”, but also worships at the feet of Tom Brady. But when you have someone that is that successful, you have to take a look at what he does differently and think about what we might learn from his strategy, plan and process to see if there are some lessons we can apply to the channel.Here are four things I’ve researched that break down Nick Saban’s strategy to stay at number one that I think we can all learn from.It all begins with recruiting.In our channel, partner recruitment is an on-going process. Master agents want partners to sell through their contracts, and recruit based on their relationships with providers and what they can do for the partner that other masters can’t. Providers recruit partners to sell services in preference to those of their competitors. So, what can we learn from arguably one of the most successful college football coaches of all time about recruiting?Saban’s recruiting coaches are taught to have a conversation that goes somewhat like this, “This is who we are. This is what we do. This is what we’ve done. This is what we feel like we can do for you. This is what we feel like you can do for us. If you want to be a part of it, great. If you don’t, somebody else will.'” Imagine the clarity that gives a partner to know what your program can do for them, but what you expect in return.Saban never waits for players to come to him, he finds those hidden gems, recruits year-around, and knows he faces stiff competition from the likes of LSU, Georgia or Clemson. That lesson should translate to partner recruiting. You have to go out and find partners proactively and not depend exclusively on passive ways to get them to notice you. Advertise, offer incentives, host lunch and learns, be at regional meetings in order to find partners you want to work with. Next, perfect “the process”.Simply put, Saban shares that “The Process” is maintaining a relentless focus on things that we can control. It also means not being distracted by the opponent’s perceived strengths or the score, but rather do your job so that you can contribute what you have control over. How many times in your channel job have you gotten distracted over your development team missing a product release date, the reorganization that you think is coming to realign resources, or an install that is taking too long on that final circuit? Saban teaches his team that they are responsible for what they create, not what the other team has going on that they can’t control.Saban also breaks his process down into smaller parts so each routine is understandable, manageable and measurable. We develop software at Convey. No task takes our developers manage takes more than a day or two and each new feature is compiled of many smaller tasks that we can manage and measure to keep us on track. Those of us managing complex sales processes, commissions, installations or other processes in the channel should take a lesson from Saban’s playbook to take a big process, break it into its component parts then track and measure it.Use technology to gain a competitive edge.I was astounded to learn that Saban focused hard on&

Being in “the channel” can be a challenge, to say the least. We have to balance our personal lives with our careers, manage through complex relationships, get people to notice us when the field of people who want attention is crowded, and deal with the uncertainties of businesses that combine with each other, go under, or fail to perform like we think that they should.Having said that, there is quite a lot to be grateful about when we think about the decisions we made to chart our careers, run our businesses, and form relationships with colleagues in “the channel”. Being grateful and appreciating what is good about our industry, our careers and our relationships has a number of positive benefits. Being grateful makes you a happier person. Research reveals that if you just spend 5 minutes a day writing down what you are grateful for increases your feeling of long-term happiness. People that express gratitude are generally more well-liked. Social capital never hurts, and gratitude tends to make us nicer, more trusting, more social, and more appreciative. As a result, we have more friendships and better business relationships.Grateful people tend to progress further in their careers. Gratitude can make you a more effective manager or team member, help you network, increase your decision-making capabilities, increase your productivity, and help you attract others to you. The result is that you move up the ladder quicker and your workplace becomes a more friendly and enjoyable place to be.An attitude of gratitude promotes health. Channel careers can take a toll on your health with lots of travel, eating on the road and long hours. Research shows that grateful people are generally healthier, so it’s good to get all the help we can.I’ve had a long career in technology, much of that involving developing and working in the channel. At Convey, we have thousands of sales partners that use our portal services, master agents that we have automated and dozens of vendors that streamline their marketing through our services. The bottom line is that I know the channel and here are some things that we should all be grateful for.The Channel creates entrepreneurs. I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my career, owning my own businesses since 1995. Sales partners and master agents are also business owners. Without needing significant start-up capital, thousands of you left the comfort of your jobs with carriers and vendors to start businesses and create recurring revenue streams that have afforded you very good lifestyles. And for a lucky few, you’ve been able to sell your businesses creating generational wealth for your families.The Channel is constantly evolving. Over the last 5 years, we’ve seen many advances in the channel that have given us more opportunities to serve our customers with a wide breadth of new technologies. We’ve seen businesses move their phones and applications to the cloud, find better ways to connect to the Internet, cloud-based services to run every aspect of a business operation, the Internet of Things to track assets and the list goes on and on. Evolving industries like ours grow, create opportunities for all of us, and ways to keep expanding our businesses. The technology we offer transforms how businesses operate. I spent a good part of my career in the conferencing industry. We made it easy and cheap to have a remote team dial in from anywhere to meet virtually instead of getting on a plane to fly into headquarters. The technology was transformative because management became collaborative, people’s opinions were solicited and valued, and the remote worker became the norm not the exception. Think about how we are transforming businesses with cloud services, contact centers and other technology. &

Listen in to a conversation between Curt Allen and Carolyn Bradfield as Curt shares his transition out of Windstream and involvement in InterAct LifeLine. Carolyn and Curt share the mission of InterAct LifeLine and how this new technology company is poised to take on the opioid crisis and disrupt broken processes in addiction prevention and treatment.

Convey Channel Helps You Define Your Channel Program. Let’s face it. Most of you don’t really want or need every partner out there to try and sell your services. You could try that strategy, but you end up with endless quotes, frustrated partners and very few deals. To have an effective channel program, you have to define who you want to do business with, both on the partner and customer side. Vendors who participate in Convey Channel have numerous opportunities to use their content catalog to define their program, focus partners on the type of accounts that are in your sweet spot, and what partner benefits are part of your channel program.Over the years, we’ve seen a number of vendors and master agents make the mistake of being all things to all partners. Unless you are a huge national master agent with lots of resources or a vendor who has an extremely wide range of services, this strategy creates a recipe for disaster. Partners tend to focus their sales efforts and build a customer base that matches their product expertise and sales skills. The partner that likes to sell complex network deals to healthcare chains is likely not the same person that would be stimulated by pursuing a small business for hosted voice or failover service.Convey has built its content and marketing network to help both the master agent and the vendor to define who they are and the type of partner they want to work with.Start by creating an ideal partner profile and communicate your partner strategy through your Convey Channel content catalog. That statement may seem scary to vendors and master agents because certainly it seems less risky to try and work with every partner, right? But the reality is that 20% of partners are most likely to be those that are active with you and produce 80% of the referrals and your channel revenue. I’ve seen master agents be very successful by focusing on managed services providers as agents or vendors succeeding by attracting the partner who likes to sell complex cloud deals. A content catalog gives you many opportunities to let partners know who you are and how you define your partner program. As an example, you can create a page inside your catalog entitled “Partner Program”. Add text & graphics to let partners know if they are right for you or create a short informational video to communicate the message. Use a banner to direct viewers to that page or a content post that define your program.Then consider creating an “elite partner program” and inviting partners to join it. Ask partners to “sign up” for your elite partner program in order to receive special help and support. You can add a form to any page inside your Convey catalog asking the partner to let you know they are interested. Once the form is filled out, you can designate any person in your channel organization to get notified so they can follow up. If you have one of Convey’s partner portals, partners can apply to become members by linking them straight from your catalog on master agent portals to the member application inside your own portal. You can even automate accepting that partner into your program or screen the application first before you approve that partner.Next use the content catalog to educate partners on the type of customer that you would like them to pursue. Unless you want an endless flow of referrals jamming up your quote desk, taking up your channel managers time and not resulting in transactions, you have to help focus your partners’ efforts. Use your content catalog give partners an education on your target markets, the kind of account you want to work with and the individuals inside that account that are the right decision makers. Here is what works best. Add case studies on sales successes in your best vertical market

A Balanced Channel Marketing DietIt's easy in business to limit yourself to just a few marketing techniques especially if you are in the channel with limited resources and marketing budgets. You might look at the success others are having on social media and want to confine your marketing to LinkedIn and Facebook. Or, if your company has been around for a while, you might feel reluctant to dive into new digital marketing techniques and try instead to keep growing your channel using sponsorships and events.One of the most dangerous phases in American business is “but we’ve always done it that way.” If your channel fails to add the marketing diversity it needs to succeed in the modern market, your channel might continue to grow, but at a slower pace and without many key ingredients needed to sustain that growth. Eventually, a person that tries to survive on only pasta will notice they don't feel as healthy as they once did, and you'll notice the same thing about your channel if you limit yourself to just one or two marketing strategies.Partners will likely interact with your business in a variety of ways before they decide to refer customers to you. They may browse your website, view an ad, scroll through your social media, search for reviews… the list goes on and on. This reinforces the fact that today’s partners are no different than today’s consumers who prefer to start their discovery process online and start exploring without your help. Partners are more autonomous than ever and choose to access information online and on demand. Our goal at Convey is to help you achieve a more balanced diet in your channel marketing strategy by adding that all-important element, digital and online presence through our Convey Channel program. Here is how we help you create a balanced marketing diet.First you have to get the partner to the table, so they know what you are serving. In the world of Convey Channel, you have a wide audience of partners who are hungry for services. There are around 40 master agents who have subscribed their over 23,000 sales partners to a Convey partner portal. If you have a content catalog in our network, partners have many ways to find you because we help those master agents drive traffic to the portal. In 2019 alone, we had over 2 million content views and downloads from partners who began their online journey to find you through Convey.Then it’s time to start the meal with an appetizer. The partner may not know you yet, but they know they are hungry for the type of service you offer because their customers are asking for it. In a balanced digital diet, you give the partner a taste of who you are, so they want to dig deeper. Content catalogs on Convey master agent portals can contain a summary of your services in a battlecard, a quick video about your program, or a page that overviews your value proposition.Now, let’s go to the main course. Now that the partner has come inside your content catalog for a meal, you need to feed them what they want. Partners need to know the type of customers that they should pursue, how to sell to them, how to interact with you and how they make money. Partners looking for a deeper dive want a full meal of case studies, white papers, product features, or descriptions of high target vertical markets. You can vary that meal inside of a Convey catalog by promoting webinars, adding content, or being featured in outbound email campaigns.And no balanced marketing diet would be complete without the dessert. For partners, the dessert is most often that financial incentive that sweetens the deal. We’ve seen Convey providers get very creative about how they showcase their spiffs and promotions. They add creative banners to their content catalogs that can also appear on the master agent home page. They get creative w

Full TranscriptConvey Micro-Cast SeriesThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. One of the key concepts every vendor must keep in the forefront of their mind when it comes to keeping sales partners engaged and interested is “out of sight, out of mind”. With so many vendor choices and services out there, it’s just not enough to sponsor partner events, go to trade shows and travel to meet partners. Communication must be continuous, online, and on-going to keep your company top of mindshare. Your message fades quickly once you are back on the airplane going home after a face to face event. Here are some interesting statistics from the training industry:1. After only one hour, people retain less than half of the information you presented.2. After one day, that drops to 70%.3. After six days, 75 % of the information has gone out the door. So how does a channel program create a communication strategy until the time becomes right for a partner to notice, pay attention, and get engaged with you? You have to go online, attract people to your message, and continuously reinforce your value proposition. Here are 3 simple strategies.# 1 Be present where your target audience is most likely to look.Although sales partners might be on Facebook, they are definitely on LinkedIn, researching companies, finding prospects, and looking for business ideas. They have signed up for email broadcast services like iAgent, Channel Vision or Telecommunications Association. They subscribe to their Convey master agent portal. You need to find a strategy for all of these online or electronic outlets to get to the audience that really matters. #2 Communicate continuously to ensure that your message will be seenYou never know when someone is going to be online trying to find strategies or services to sell to customers. You have to continuously feed the content engine to ensure that when someone is on LinkedIn, they find your post in the Channel Partners group, read your email sent from Channel Vision, or find that SPIFF on a Convey master agent portal. And don’t just say the same thing. Vary your messages, inject new ideas, and communicate in a way that grabs their attention.#3 Reinforce your message after a live eventYou’ve spent a large portion of your marketing dollars on sponsorships and events, only to have that message fade if you don’t do anything else. After the event is over, keep it alive in your social media posts, Convey content posts, or email broadcasts. Take that new product announcement, the latest promotion, or the addition to your channel team that you announced at the regional event and go online to reinforce what partners learned when they met you.The right time to communicate to partners is all of the time and the only way to do this is to have a strong online content strategy that focuses on where your audiences are looking, communicates to them continuously and reinforces your most valuable messages.This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’ve been listening to our “Micro-Cast” from the Convey Channel Partner Program.

Full TranscriptCommunicating the Right MessageConvey Micro-Cast SeriesThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s Micro-Cast audio series. The way we communicate has changed forever. In our personal lives, we send text messages, use Facebook messenger, and use Instagram. Our communication has gotten shorter, more direct, and to the point. In business, however, we fail to recognize that short, sweet and to the point is the way people like to receive our messages. Communicating the right message in the right way in the channel is no different.Here are three critical mistakes we see companies make when they communicate with their sales partners:1. Oversharing. We have thousands of content posts across hundreds of vendors on our master agent portals. When we look inside a vendor content catalog and see dozens of content posts, we worry that the vendor is now oversharing. Most of the time, more is not more and having less material gets people to focus on what is important.2. Focusing only on the product. Knowing the features of the product is important, but it’s not the most critical thing that partners look for. They need to be informed about the right customer, the best markets, and why they should trust you as a vendor.3. Failing to recognize what partners really care about. Partners care about serving the customer but they also care about the bottom line. Is this product easy or hard to sell? What resources will it take to develop a customer base? And how do they make money with you?So how does a channel program deliver the right message to engage a sales partner. Here are 3 simple strategies to help you with messaging.# 1 Add a simple battle card to serve as an overview.We all like to read the summary before we read the book, the review before we see the movie and the battlecard before we dive into a vendor’s services. For those of you less familiar with them, battlecards are a 1-page overview of your partner program, services, and financial incentives. They are the most viewed content, outside of spiffs and promotions, on Convey master agent portals and an essential content piece for all partner programs.#2 Focus on the ideal customer profileYou cannot win every deal that a partner gives you, but you can win the ones that are the best fit. Let the partner know who the ideal customer is by defining the size of the company, vertical markets they exist in, their characteristics, and why they would buy. Knowing who to refer to you is more important than the features of your product and services. #3 Let the partner know how to do business with you and quantify what it’s worthSo, the partner has found the right customer. What’s next? Do you want them to get a quote from you? Register the deal online? Set up a meeting? Or what? Partners need to know the rules of engagement, so they know exactly what to do with the prospect. And certainly, a partner needs to know what’s in it for them. If they sell the deal, what’s the commission value? Is there a promotion to incent the customer to buy or a spiff to reward them for the sale? Make sure they understand the numbers.The right time message is very important when it comes to partner communication and that message needs to be short, clear and direct. It has to focus first on the value of doing business with you, the type of partner and customer you want, where to find them and what to do when they are found, and how partners make money. Convey’s channel program offers many opportunities to deliver the right message i

Some of you listening to this MicroCast don’t know who Convey Channel is. Others of you are wondering how we fit into your channel marketing strategy, and yet others are thinking about expanding your relationship with us. For those of you that don’t know us, Convey Channel is designed to be part of your digital marketing strategy. We run an industry content distribution and marketing network in the channel linking over 40 master agents with their vendors and distributing information to their 23,000 sales partners that subscribe to portals as members.Here are 5 quick reasons to get to know the Convey Channel program, how we help bring efficiency to your communication strategy and how we help you get results.First, Convey helps you eat a balanced marketing diet.Being successful at channel marketing is like eating a balanced diet. Some of us have been on these crazy diet plans where we eat an abundance of one food to the exclusion of others. For me, it’s the cabbage soup diet. But once you are into your diet, you start to crave the foods that aren’t part of the plan. Channel marketing is no different. If you don’t vary the menu, partners will get tired of your meal and start looking elsewhere for something more satisfying. Consider the Convey Channel program to be part of that balanced diet because it puts your information online, keeps it available 24/7 and if you do a good job adding content, provides partners with a satisfying meal every time they look at you.Convey promote efficiency and convenience for you and the partnerThe channel has experienced explosive growth in the last 5 years. Before the cloud, cybersecurity and the move to wireless, partners only had to keep up with a few network vendors, not hundreds of them. And the number of partners selling services has expanded with the entry of VARs, MSPs and other non-traditional referral partners. You don’t have the time to get information in everyone’s hands if you don’t use automation and partners don’t have time to search the web for all things hosted voice and the other services they sell. Convey’s portals puts your information in a single place, make it convenient for partners to find it, help the master agent out because he doesn’t have to distribute it and makes it more efficient for channel marketing to manage it. Third reason: We empower you to define your partner programLet’s face it. Most of you don’t really want or need every partner out there to try and sell your services. You could try that strategy you end up with endless quotes, frustrated partners and very few deals. You have to define who you want to do business with, both on the partner and customer side. Catalog owners inside a Convey master agent portal use pages and content posts to define their program, focus partners on the type of accounts that are in the vendor’s sweet spot, and what partnership benefits are part of their channel program.4th, Convey creates opportunities to engageJust having content to read with no call to action makes it very difficult for a vendor to see if the strategy of having a digital presence is really working. Partners that look at a vendor catalog on any of our master agent or vendor portals need a call to action, and Convey Channel is designed to help partners engage with you by requesting quotes, registering for webinars, requesting access to your partner portal, or filling out contact forms. And last, but not least, Convey keeps your company top of mindshareChannel programs rely too heavily on face to face encounters with partners, but the fact is that when the event is over and the partner is on the way home, most of the information they learned is already on the way out the window. The Convey Channel program

TranscriptSales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace.The concept of providing partners with sales leads is not a new one, but automating the way you collect them, distribute them to partners and a process to ensure those leads are not wasted requires new thinking and automation. In this microcast we are going to share some ideas about how to generate leads for very little money, the business rules you should consider before you decide to give those leads out, and the automation to deliver, manage and track the way leads move through the funnel using Convey’s partner portal technology.Finding sales leads doesn’t have to be time-consuming and expensive. When it comes to finding leads, you have technology-driven options that improve the quantity and quality of leads that you can provide to partners. Your channel organization can engage in content marketing, social media outreach or drip marketing campaigns to drive inbound demand. But for this microcast, I want to focus on a strategy called data scraping to produce larger lead lists. Although you can try data scraping yourself, it’s much easier and cheaper to use freelancers who have technology that scour the web to generate leads. Freelancers use your criteria to create a custom lead list at a fraction of the cost and of much higher quality than any lead lists you might purchase.So how do you gain access to these valuable resources? Freelancers exist all over the world and the hourly rate for someone in India or in the Philippines as an example that can generate a lead list is embarrassingly low for the high-quality output they produce. The best way to engage a high-quality freelancer is to use a service like UpWork or FIVRR, spelled F-I-V-R-R where freelancers are profiled on their portal. You can put in your project requirements, find freelancers who have done projects like this before, and get reviews on their work from other customers. You pay the platform provider and they pay the worker. Freelancers can create a customized lead list using a process called data scraping. In simple terms, they use software to access multiple websites to find information on companies or individuals including names, titles, contact information, email addresses, company size, or locations. That information is delivered to you in a spreadsheet so you can import it into the technology you will use to manage and distribute those leads. You can even take this further and pay a freelancer to do some investigation or calling to qualify that lead.To give you an idea of how effective freelancers and data scraping is as a strategy, Convey employed a freelancer in the Philippines at $3.50 an hour and for less than $600 they delivered a 6,000 person lead list of individuals inside companies in the Southeast that were candidates to use technology in their buildings to reduce energy cost.Set business rules so partners understand your expectations and those leads are not wasted.The worst thing you can do is give leads to someone without any expectation of getting something in return. My suggestion is to have partners opt in to receive leads from you versus just sending them out. Leads are valuable and they should be reserved for partners that have achieved a certain status in your channel, that are willing to act on the leads, and that will allow you to follow up on their progress. Insight from the partner gives you what you need to assess the lead quality, how they marketed to the prosp

TranscriptSales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. Most of the providers that Convey works with would love to have partners use marketing to promote their services, but the reality is that partners rarely do what we think that they should. So why is it that partners don’t use the same marketing strategies that have proven so effective in the technology marketplace?First, partners just don’t have the time to devote to marketing. Partners are generally attached to very small agencies, so they are having to do it all. They have to secure more customers, educate them about services, manage the order and installation process, and respond to issues when the technology doesn’t work the way they expect. Marketing is generally last on the list.Second, being creative doesn’t come easy for partners.In a former life I was an English teacher and taught writing, among other things. I consider myself pretty good at it, but the vast majority of people I work with struggle to put the right words together. So, imagine the difficulty in creating a marketing email, a social media post or a blog if you can’t think of what to say. Third, partners don’t know how to generate a lead list to market to. If you are going to deliver an email campaign, target people to invite to an event or even try and influence people on social media, you have to have a way to generate a list. Partners don’t really have the understanding how to create lists of people that they can work with and then what to do even if they had a list. Convey’s philosophy has always been that if you do the work for partners, provide them marketing tools, and then show them how to get a good list they will be much more likely to add marketing to their revenue strategy. We’ve built marketing tools inside the Convey portal designed to motivate partners to use them. We’ve added an easy way for partners to share content. You’ve uploaded a case study, a white paper or product information that’s meant to be shared with customers. Partners have two easy sharing options every time they access content. An obvious thing they can do is to download a file if you havean uploaded one for viewing but an even easier process is our One Touch Email Share.Here is how it works. Partners see that case study or product literature and then click the email share button. No matter what email client they use, it opens automatically with a link to the content post already in the email. The partner just adds a personal message, then sends the email to their customer or prospect. When the prospect clicks the link, they don’t come back inside your portal, but they do come back to a landing page to view, download or reshare the content. Easy email marketing! And the best news is that our reporting tool shows you which pieces of content were shared, and which partners did that.For partners that really want to commit to an email strategy, we have a unique service inside of every portal called Conduct.For those of you who are now thinking that email marketing is dead, think again! Email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media, according to a study done by McKinsey & Company. The same study also shows that the buying process happens 3 times faster with email than in social media. Moreover, it is also said that most individuals prefer to receive business information via email

TranscriptSales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace.Nowhere is the old phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” more true than in the channel. So many channel programs rely too heavily on face to face encounters at trade shows, regional events or sponsorships, but forget the fact that when the event is over and the partner is on the way home, most of the information they learned is already on its way out the window. Having a digital strategy to reinforce the message and stay in front of partners even when you are not with them is essential to staying top of mindshare. Mindshare is simply the amount of attention you get from your partner network. When a sales opportunity presents itself, are partners thinking of your company first? Keep in mind that your products aren’t the only ones they’re marketing and selling in our crowded telco and cloud space. Your channel program can only have so much to say about the quality, price, and delivery of the products, but you can separate yourself from the competition by winning the mindshare battle with your partners.Here are some general best practices that you should follow when you want partners to notice you and be the first thing they think about when they are in front of a customer.First, be clear about what makes you unique in the marketplace. Is it your market niche? Exceptional service? Highly targeted products and services? Make this value proposition simple and easy to remember. Here is an example in a statement that’s clear, “We provide HIPAA compliant cloud hosting to healthcare.” Second, keep the messages coming. A one-time advertising blitz can get your message out quickly to a large number of partners, but staying top of mindshare requires consistent delivery of messaging over time. Keep it coming.Third, make sure partners know it’s you. Everything from your customer literature to your e-newsletters should have consistent messaging and similar look and feel. One brand, one message.Fourth, use a balanced approach. Stay in front of your audience using multiple channels over time. Awareness is based on repetition.And last, provide information that is useful. Frequency doesn’t have to mean being annoying. Partners should perceive you as a provider of useful information rather than an intrusive pest. Communicate frequently but give your partners genuine value each time.Having a digital strategy that leverages automation allows a channel program to be clear about who they are, have consistent branding, keep the messages coming, and make sure the information is useful. Let’s see how you can accomplish all of those goals using Convey’s technology.Start by defining the type of partner you want, the type of customer you want them to pursue and use technology to get your point across.At Convey, we see that many channel programs trying to be all things to all partners. We have over 20,000 sales partners that use our portals to get information on providers but in reality, only a fraction of those partners will affiliate with you. If a program tries to go “wide” they will end up quoting lots of deals, rejecting many of them because they just aren’t viable, and driving the partner away because they become frustrated.There are digital strategies inside of our Convey programs for providers to define the type of partner they really want to work with and the ideal customer profile they want them to pursue. In our Convey Channel pro

TranscriptSales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace.Convey is a big believer that every channel program should be automated, have a digital strategy and the right technology tools for their partners. And we believe strongly that having a PRM or partner relationship management system is a must-have for all channel programs. Unlike a CRM that is designed primarily for direct sales, a PRM brings a channel program the following benefits.PRMs streamline partner onboarding. If you bring on new partners constantly, using a manual process to onboard them wastes lot of internal resources versus a PRM solution that is more efficient. PRMs manage education and training. A PRM provides programs the ability to execute a well-defined learning plan to make sure partners know which customers to pursue, the markets they exist in, the right sales process and good basic product knowledge. PRMs keep this training online and constantly available. PRMs offer communication & marketing support. They have tools to manage documents, communications, and other marketing assets in one online location. This ensures that partners can find the right information at the right time, allowing them to sell more effectively. PRMs help you get the ROI for marketing or sales expenses. Incentives are an essential element to drive partner performance. PRMs enable you to gauge what motivates them so you can reallocate funds based on what’s working or not. PRMs automate how you get the word out about new products. Having a well-designed PRM solution lets partners know what’s new and provides the ability to give real-time feedback on products. This ensures that launches can go off without a hitch.And last but not least, PRMs increase partner satisfaction. Partners do not have unlimited resources and time, so when you offer a more efficient and beneficial way to do business with you, partners will naturally look to you to provide them with solutions for their customer base vs. your competition. In today’s microcast we are going to focus on the tools inside the Convey PRM system that automate your program, increase your team’s efficiency and make it easy for partners to do business with you. Let’s start with how Convey streamlines partner onboarding. If you participate in Convey’s Channel Program, you may be maintaining a catalog that is viewed on our master agent portals. But those master agents are not going to give you their partner list. Getting partners to become members of your portal allows you to develop personal relationships with and engage directly with them. Convey’s PRM automates how partners become members in the first place by turning on an automated application process. Partners fill out the application, adding information that you find valuable. The PRM can approve partners immediately providing login credentials or have an approval process for you to screen the application and approve or deny it.If you add the partner to the member database directly, Convey delivers a welcome email automatically that you can customize message including a password set link.Convey’s portals are designed to provide education and training.It’s our philosophy that training and education can take many forms, all of which are supported by our portal technology. Portals are divided into content catalogs, so you can choose to conso

TranscriptAutomating and Upgrading Your Channel ProgramSales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. Because Convey lives in the world of automation and digital experiences, we are going to overview several key areas that providers and master agents can execute in an efficient and automated way to distinguish their channel programs in order to attract more partners and keep them engaged. In subsequent microcast sessions, we’ll take each individual segment and devote our podcast to the steps you can take to turn one of these concepts into reality using technology as the backbone to execute the strategy.Technology companies should use technology to make it convenient for partners to get product information, to learn how to sell services, to see real life examples of success, and to understand how they fit into your strategy. If partners find it hard to get information or think it’s difficult to sell your solutions, they will switch to selling other solutions that are easier. Digital strategy #1 is to automate how you find, deliver and manage sales leads for partners.Ask any master agent what partners would like most and most of them will answer, “a good old-fashioned sales lead”. But providers struggle with the time and expense of finding the lead, the best way to distribute those leads to partners, and how to make sure that the leads they deliver are not wasted. When it comes to finding the lead, you have many options rooted in technology. Your organization can engage in content marketing, social media outreach, or an activity called data scraping. Freelancers have technology that scours the web to generate leads based on your criteria that will generate a custom lead list that is at a fraction of the cost and much higher quality than most lead lists you might purchase.When it comes to distributing and managing those leads, Convey has options inside its partner relationship management system to add prospects to a sales partner’s dashboard, set the rules around how they accept the lead and a feedback loop to ensure they are following up.Digital strategy number 2 is to use technology to stay top of mindshare by continually engaging partners.Nowhere is the old phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” more true than in the channel. So many channel programs rely too heavily on face to face encounters at trade shows, regional events or sponsorships, but forget the fact that when the event is over and the partner is on the way home, most of the information they learned is already on its way out the window. Having a digital strategy to reinforce the message and stay in front of partners even when you are not with them is essential to staying top of mindshare.You might still print those 4-color marketing slicks, but partners would rather get your information online. If you don’t have a LinkedIn page or up-to-date profiles for your people, you look unprofessional and disorganized. And if you’re using your corporate website to distribute information to both partners and customers, then partners are missing valuable things they need to do business.Digital strategy number 3 is provide tools for your partners that automate how they engage and market to their prospects and customers.One of the biggest challenges in providing tools to your partners is that partners have all levels of marketing expertise. Some partners may be better at marketing than their vendors, but most have limited capabilities, and some&

Full TranscriptConvey Micro-Cast SeriesThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. This week is our Halloween Micro-Cast series and we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out in our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, can ruin your channel program and destroy your revenue. Today we’re going to focus on the “Invasion of the Sales Partner Snatchers.You used to go to Channel Partners in Vegas and there were thousands of partners wandering through the exhibit hall or attended regional meetings. Then, all of a sudden, the invasion of the partner snatchers descended on the channel and one by one those partners started disappearing snatched away and gone forever.If pods from outer space didn’t spirit partners away, then where did they go? The answer is complicated. People became agents years ago because they may have been in a company’s telecom department, then decided to branch out and start their own business. Many of these partners are now aging out, retiring, or just not active and they are being replaced by new partner models that may not be so obvious to you. So, what are vendors and master agents to do so they don’t experience the nightmare of the disappearing partner on Channel Street? Here are some thoughts:Diversify your partner base.If the only type of sales partner you have focused on is the telecommunications agent, you are missing a variety of other partner types that have the right customer base not only for network services, but for cloud and business as a service. And you may be putting your channel program at risk as your traditional partner base shrinks. Think about including managed services providers, value added resellers and IT service providers. After you do that, look around and consider less traditional partners that are calling on accounts with non-technology-based services.Here is an example. The other day I ate lunch with an insurance agent who is building a practice around commercial insurance for assisted living facilities. That person would make a great referral partner because those facilities need to upgrade their phone system, move applications to the cloud, use technology to make their buildings smarter, and network their locations together. He’s non-traditional but he’s calling on the right customers in a high-value target market. Once you diversify it’s important to understand the different type of partner models and how they function.Let’s take the managed services provider as an example whose business model is different than a telecommunications agent. An MSP owns the customer relationship because they not only manage their IT and network, they also invoice the customer for services rendered. MSPs will often step aside and let the vendor take the lead when it comes to selling services that they don’t have native expertise in, making them an ideal partner who wants a trusted relationship with a master agent or vendor and is willing to make the referral.It’s also important to learn where the new partner types hang out and plan to go where those partners congregate.If you expect these different partner types such as an MSP or VAR to haunt the hallways of Channel Partners in Vegas or other telecommunications-oriented events, think again. They will likely be elsewhere. Expand your presence at organizations like ASCII or shows like IT Expo to find other technology-oriented partners.And think about where other referral partners might be who are not technology sellers. If you sell to healthcare, there are numerous industry tradeshows where you might form relationships with vendors who are selling to the multi-location assisted living facility or

Full TranscriptConvey Micro-Cast SeriesThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. This week is our Halloween Micro-Cast series and we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out in our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, can ruin your channel program and destroy your revenue. Today we’re going to focus on vendors that checked into the Bates Motel, handed over their MDF funds, and thought they were getting the key to channel revenue, only to never come out alive.Your Vegas hotel bill, those huge green fees at the golf tournament, or sponsorships for that expensive cocktail party have been washed down the drain with very few partners that you hoped would engage actually selling your services. You try to wake up from the nightmare where you are being chased by your management team, screaming that you don’t know what the ROI is, which partners were converted and what revenue is going to result from your efforts. You are caught up at the Bates Motel in the Nightmare on Channel Street, but there are ways to make sure that your marketing development funds give you a provable ROI, don’t break your budget and produce partner relationships and customer referrals. Here are some thoughts. Don’t overspend on live events by changing your event strategy.Vendors tend to overspend on events by sponsoring a cocktail party, complete with a killer band, great drinks and in a cool venue. But those events often have other vendors clogging them up and little opportunity to engage directly with the partner that you want relationships with. Consider creating a niche event that is more innovative and creates an exclusive gathering that entices your partners to attend and because you view them as important in your go-to-market strategy. More intimate events that give the partner a personal experience and offer the channel team the opportunity to participate in activities directly with the partner are much less expensive than the big blowout. Think a Top Golf outing, wine tasting, or fireside chat with a local celebrity.And, don't feel you have to go it alone. There are vendors that offer services that are compatible vs. competitive to yours. Invite them to co-sponsor and add an educational component that is not product-focused but more industry and market focused.Create educational, virtual partner events that you can execute for a fraction of the cost of a live event.Webinars and podcasts continue to be a hot trend in content marketing. They are inexpensive and effective if they are done right. Make those events short and use your marketing budget to pay an industry thought leader to bring an expert or knowledge perspective vs. focusing on trying to sell your products and services over the web. People will come to hear the thoughts of people that are different and interesting. Think about the power of Ted Talks that attract massive audiences.Consider offering knowledge on the vertical markets your customers exist in, on selling strategies, and on strategies that partners can use in general to grow their business. Virtual events can be delivered with minimal marketing funds because there is no travel involved and no expense in finding a venue, paying for food and drinks, and those pricey giveaways.Execute a digital strategy to help sales partners market directly to their customers and prospects.Partners have spent years building customer relationships or creating contacts in their local marketplaces that could become customers. However, they don’t have the time, creativity or expertise to execute an effective digital marketing strategy. Allocate your MDF funds to reward partners who are willing to let you help them with a g

TranscriptConvey Micro-Cast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. This week is our Halloween Micro-Cast series and we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out by entitling our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, can ruin your channel program and destroy your revenue. So many of you have seen the Walking Dead, that wildly popular series that has lasted for 9 years and filmed in the state of Georgia, Convey’s home.This episode of the Nightmare on Channel Street starts off easy enough. Partners are throwing deals to you right and left, asking you for quotes and submitting deals. But then the nightmare begins. You’re working way too hard preparing tons of quotes for companies that are just plain wrong for your services. It’s a nightmare because your entire channel team is totally deployed chasing deals that will never convert, partners are frustrated because they don’t know which prospects meet your standards and your channel is being sucked into a never-ending quoting nightmare.What looked like good deals are the now the “walking dead”. How can a channel program hold off those zombies and get deals that will actually convert? If you want to survive this episode, here is what you can do.Make sure that sales partners have a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile.If partners are sending prospects over to you and asking for quotes that never produce a deal, whose fault is it really? I’ve seen many channel programs complain about the wasted time in quoting bad deals, but not enough programs accepting that they were ones at fault because they never educated the partner on what types of customers are ideal for them. Partners need to understand what markets you are strongest in, the size of the company that is right for you, and what type of buyer inside that company you need to talk to. Convey had a vendor that was getting absolutely no traction with partners for their hosting solution. When we explored the type of customers they already had, we found out that 65% of them were healthcare organizations because of the HIPAA-compliant platform the company had. However, their healthcare market focus was never shared with partners, so they had no idea where to focus their efforts. Once partners were educated, the right deals began to flow through.Make sure your program has a clear understanding of the ideal partner you want to represent you.Not every partner that is out there has the customer base, technical expertise, or sales capacity to sell services, yet many channel programs cast a wide net then wonder why they are either ignored by partners or get the wrong referrals.Convey’s Channel program has over 23,000 sales partners that belong to 40 master agent portals but trying to influence and form relationships with all of them when selling your services that are only appropriate for some of them is a recipe for frustration and un-met expectations on both sides.And lastly, clearly define the rules of engagement for deal referral or getting a quote.Partners like a clear understanding of process. They have hundreds of vendor choices and if they are not clear about how to refer, how to ask for a quote, what information you want, and who to deliver it to, they will make up their own process. Consider formalizing your referral and quoting process by creating forms to add the information you care about. Set partners expectation about what you plan to do once you get their information so everyone is on board and on the same page.Referrals and quote requests from partners don’t have to join the army of the Walking Dead if you ensure that partners know what the ideal cus

Full TranscriptConvey Micro-Cast SeriesThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. This week is our Halloween Micro-Cast series and yesterday we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out by entitling our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, ruin your channel program and destroy revenue. Today we’re going to focus how you wake up from the nightmare, run away from the monsters chasing you to not only survive on Channel Street, but to thrive.Let’s focus on the problem of the disappearing commissions. We’ve seen the rapid pace of mergers and acquisitions in the channel, many of those deals financed through debt, saddling the company with large debt-service and interest payments. Take Windstream as a prime example. They snapped up smaller companies like Earthlink and went into debt to do it. You know the rest of the story; this year Windstream had to file bankruptcy in order to survive and protect itself.Now, enter the bankruptcy court, and that channel program lost a level of control over how partners got paid. Commissions became at risk, especially to those partners that stopped selling new Windstream accounts years ago. So how do master agents and partners protect themselves from this nightmare on channel street? Here are some ideas.First, diversify your provider portfolio.The first rule of business is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. Companies that have a top-heavy revenue stream tied up in only a few customers are those at most risk. Although you have your favorite providers, putting most of your revenue in one place elevates your risk. Beyond that, you may be missing new services, new strategies and new opportunities other providers might represent to you and to your customers.Next, upsell existing customers with additional services.If you’ve sold big network deals, you are likely making good commissions from those relationships. However, those companies have evolving technology needs that you can fill. If you affiliate with a master agent that is part of a master agent association like the Technology Solutions Exchange or the Alliance Partners, those master agents very likely own Convey Partner Portals. Inside their portal is a world of other cloud and technology services you can offer your customers to upsell to your customer base and continue to diversify your source of commissionable revenue, reducing your risk.And third, stay abreast of channel developments.Most of the struggles that vendors are facing in the channel are often reported on in the variety of channel publications and websites. Make sure to access those sites and read the tea leaves so that you are not surprised. If you know what might be coming with suppliers you work with, you can make more intelligent decisions about where to place your business so that it is in less jeopardy.The nightmare of being blindsided by changes in your provider’s business is one that can be avoided. Plan now to diversify the providers that you place business on, diversify your portfolio by upselling customers with new services, and stay informed about developments with the suppliers that you are working with. This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’ve been listening to our micro-cast in the Convey Channel Partner special Halloween series.

Full TranscriptThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. This week is our Halloween Micro-Cast series and we’re going to give our old friend Freddy Krueger a shout out by entitling our program, the Nightmare on Channel Street. For those of you who don’t remember Freddy, he starred as a character in the Nightmare on Elm street, an insane child killer, released on a technicality and murdered by the town’s parents. He comes back in people’s dreams and continues to kill through 9 different movies.So in honor of Halloween week, we are going to identify nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, ruin your channel program and destroy revenue.Our first episode in the Nightmare on Channel Street is called “the death of commissions”.This episode of unfolds as nervous channel partners watch in horror as big companies gobble up smaller ones, creating a behemoth that lumbers through the marketplace like a zombie trying to feed itself on dwindling sales with a pack of hungry debt holders hard on their heels. The struggling company darts into court to protect itself from hungry debt holders by filing bankruptcy and then the nightmare really begins, but not for the company, instead for partners that sold its services. A new group of characters come on the scene, the bankruptcy court judges who nullify partner contracts gasping in horror at the commissions flowing out the door to partners who stopped selling their services years ago. Judges rule, commissions begin to die and partners that depended on them start scrambling for new sources of revenue.Episode two is called the “The Invasion of the Sales Partner Snatchers”You used to go to Channel Partners in Vegas and there were thousands of partners in the exhibit hall, or to regional meetings full of partners. Then, all of a sudden, there was the invasion of the body snatchers and one by one those partners started disappearing, seemingly snatched away, gone forever. Where did the partners go? Some of them got discouraged with channel sales and went back to their careers working for a company. Some of them simply aged out and retired from active duty, continuing to take whatever commission checks that were still coming their way. Or some of them just decided that it was not interesting enough to keep coming back, only to hear the same old presentations delivered the same way. And the other explanation for their disappearance is that pods from outer space have landed in the channel, snatching up the partners we used to know and depend on.In Episode three, vendors check into the Bates Motel, hand over their MDF funds and may never have their channel marketing budget come out alive.Your Vegas hotel, those huge greens fees at the golf tournament, or sponsorships for that expensive cocktail party have been washed down the drain with very few partners that you hoped would engage actually selling your services. Now, you wake up in a cold sweat being chased by your management team, screaming that you don’t know what the ROI result is, and which partners were converted and what revenue is going to result from your efforts.Next it’s a cold Halloween night and you’re waiting in the Pumpkin Patch for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. But that never happens because you’re in episode 4 of the Nightmare on Channel Street.If you worry about trying to find partners to represent you in the channel, only to have your trick or treat bag filled with rocks, then you are not alone. The channel has expanded, the number of vendors has grown, and it’s much harder to get partners to pay attention with all of the noise in the channel. Trying to get people to pay attention to you can be one of the nightmares on Channel Street.And our fina

Full TranscriptThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey Micro-Cast audio series. It’s natural to want everyone to like us and nowhere is this more true than in the channel. We get sucked into the idea that engaging thousands of sales partners will create the path to revenue. However, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to executing a good channel strategy.It’s very rare when a service appeals to every partner, that they are comfortable selling, and that they understand. Executing a one-size fits all marketing strategy when it comes to partner recruitment is a sure-fire recipe to confuse the partner and frustrate your team when you are over-quoting for prospects that will never become customers. You have to understand who the right partner audience is for what you do and then help them understand the right customer audience for what you sell.Here are only some of the consequences of connecting to the wrong partner or having partners connect to the wrong customer.1. Engaging the partner who doesn’t get your service increases your cost of sales. You have to spend more time and resources educating partners, holding their hand through the sales process, and going through more prospects to get a deal.2. Partners get frustrated when you reject their referral which can damage your reputation. There is nothing more challenging than to get the wrong type of deal in the door, reject it and then have a partner complain about you to their peers.3. Your attrition rate goes way up. Attrition happens in two places: partners that become disengaged and customers that were less than ideal that don’t stick or renew. So how does a channel program find the right partner audience to connect with and help those partners connect to the right customer audience? Here are three helpful tips:# 1 Define the ideal partner profile to your channel audience.As an example, if your services are more complex or require a higher-level sales skill, then consider creating an “elite partner program”. Define the type of partner you would like to engage with, the type of customer base that you would like them to have that meshes with your service, and some extra perks they might get for being in the elite program.#2 Define the ideal customer profileNo matter what the service is, there is always an audience that is more right for your products and services than others. That audience is referred to as the ideal customer profile. Tell your partner who those customers are by defining the size of the company, the vertical markets you most often find them in, and the decision maker inside the company that will best appreciate your value proposition.#3 Seek out master agents who have partners that come closest to your ideal partner profile. Other than some of the mega master agents like Telarus and Intelisys, many master agents have specialized in certain partner types. They might focus on managed services providers as partners, agents who sell complex network deals, or those that specialize in certain vertical markets. Forming a relationship with a master agent that has your ideal partner profile allows you to go deeper, not wider to attract the right partner.Remember, that it is pretty difficult to be all things to all people and certainly this is very true in the channel. It’s OK to exclude or not focus on partners that don’t have the skill set, customer base or desire to pursue the type of customer you want. And, partners will thank you for not wasting their time and wasting yours chasing the wrong deals. Convey’s channel partner program reaching over 20,000 sales partners provides an excellent outlet to define the right

Full Transcript:Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s Micro-Cast audio series. Many companies focus on customer communication but communicating with channel partners is every bit as important because they are your customers. Communication is a second only to financial incentives as the most important tool to motivate and manage partners. Channel partner communications should be strategic, cost-effective and focus on motivation, education, and engagement.Communication in the channel should include a 3-pronged strategy: communicate to your channel, communicate through your channel and communicate for your channel. Let’s take a look at how to execute each strategy. Start with communicate to your channel.Communicating to your channel is all about providing information, training and motivation that is directed at sales partners. Information and training explain what you want the channel partner to do promote your services, upsell customers, understand the features and benefits of your products and services, and knowhow to best position them against each other and against competitors’ products. Motivational communications explain the rewards that a channel partner receives if they do what you want. That type of communication focuses on promotional activities such as incentive programs, special pricing and deals, or commission accelerators.Communicate continuously to your channel by direct messaging, and email marketing through channel outlets such as iAgent or Channel Vision, or on Convey’s master agent portals.Now let's look at communicating through your channel.Communicating through your channel means providing channel partners with customer-facing materials to get your message directly to the customer. Providing your partners with those tools gives you certain advantages.They allow you to maintain a consistent positioning of your products in the market and against competitors’ products You now have a message that reinforces your brandYou are helping channel partners sell your products and services because you did the hard work for them by creating the tools.If you communicate through your channel, the materials you provide should be simple, easy to access, and easy to deliver to the customer. You should allow for co-branding so that the partner can add their company and contact information. Here are some common tools that partners need from you to accelerate their sales: Product PDFs, data sheets, and 1-page overviews that can be emailed or printedPromotional kits that give partners the tools to feature you on their website, in social media posts, and other literature they use. These kits typically have digital versions of your logo, product photographs or illustrations, sample copy, and other graphics about your offerings. Marketing campaigns developed for the partner so they can email prospects or customers and generate inbound demand.Add marketing development funds (MDF) to help sales partners advertise, use digital marketing, and launch other promotional activities for your products. Make sure to attach strings to the MDF funds that come with provable activity and messaging that you control. Now let’s look at the last one, communicate for your channelThe most valuable commodity a channel partner can get from you other than training and marketing help is a hot sales lead. Use your company’s marketing resources and automation to generate inbound demand, then deliver leads to partners. Leads elevate your value to partners and reward those individuals that are able to convert prospects into customers. Make sure that there is a process in place to deliver the leads, ensure that the partner int

Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s Microcast audio series.We’d like to welcome our listeners to our Channel Partners microcast audio series from Convey Services, a technology specialist that runs a content and marketing portal network in the channel used by over 23K sales partners. Today’s series is all about crafting the right online experience for your channel program.Without fail, most of us begin our buying experience online. We google the product we want to buy, read reviews, compare prices and often complete the transaction without leaving the comfort of our living room. Most of us look at that experience as easy, quick and convenient.However, when it comes to helping our sales partners with an online experience to find services they want to represent, compare options and complete the transactions, vendors in the telecom and cloud marketplace may not be have elevated their strategy enough to make it easy for sales partners to go online and get what they need to sell services.If your company is highly active in face to face interactions by sponsoring partner events, going to trade shows and traveling to meet partners, a key fact that you must remember is that your message fades quickly once you are back on the airplane going home. Here are some interesting statisticsfrom the training industry:After only one hour, people retain less than half of the information presented.After one day, that drops to 70%.After six days, people forget 75 percent of the information has gone out the doorWithout a good online strategy to reinforce your message, attract partners to keep looking at you, and make information easy to consume, most of the dollars spent in sponsorships, events, and face to face contact will be wasted.Because Convey runs an online portal network connecting partners to vendors through our master agent portals, we have the opportunity to evaluate how effective vendors are at their online strategy. Here are some ideas to elevate your game.

In this episode, we are going to focus our time on vendors that are new to the channel, pointing out some of the misperceptions they have about developing a channel program that will likely cost them time, money, and results.What used to be the traditional telecom channel has grown by leaps and bounds over the years transforming the type of services that are being offered attracting vendors that focus on cloud services, security, the internet of things, mobility and a host of other offerings that were not around 5 years ago.If you are one of those new vendors, it’s easy to get sucked into the idea that engaging the tens of thousands of sales partners in the channel will give you an immediate pathway to revenue. It almost never happens as quickly as you think it should, it’s much more difficult to get traction than you planned for, it costs more than you budgeted for and it's much harder for the new guy on the block to succeed.Well then how does a new vendor break in without breaking the bank and leverage those thousands of revenue producers calling on customers that could buy your services? Let’s take a look at some of the common misperceptions and mistakes that vendors make that will derail their chances of having a solid channel program.