How To Build a Channel Sales Team | SOCOM Sales Tips |Channel Sales

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Building a Channel Sales Team

22 December 2008 4 Comments

Building a Channel Sales team is not an easy job and getting one running is even more difficult. It is not an impossible task though. Many larger companies already have the infrastructure and just need to align them correctly. Smaller companies may need to bring on a few key people to bring the team up to speed quicker.

Channel Sales Managers

The Channel Sales Manager or CSM is the spearhead of the team. Broken into territories, these are field based sales people that know how to manage key accounts. Besides being a sales team, they are required to manage these accounts and help enable and active them to produce revenue. As the field sales people, they will be going on location to your partners and discussing opportunities and training the partners sales teams.

Channel Sales Representitives

Every good outside sales team has an inside component. The Channel Sales Rep covers a territory and is aligned directly to the CSM of the same territory. The CSR will be the point person for many requests by the partners and will cover a lot more of the administrative and process driven events.

Inside Sales Representative

If you have an inside sales component and do not what the CSRs managing revenue, the ISR is the solution. Some companies combine the inside sales and the channel sales representative roles. If you have sales with a volume of transactions, it’s better to have a set of ISRs to manage the multiple opportunities. Usually there are a larger number of ISRs covering state size geographies.

Channel Marketing

Channel Marketing is responsible for putting together all of the collateral and information for the partners. You don’t want all of your inside sales or channel sales representatives each creating their own email templates and marketing materials. Your channel marketing group should work with the sales groups on producing content that the partners are asking for. Events and Trade Shows fall into this category. Channel marketing should coordinate these events with new product releases or getting in front of new partners that need to be recruited.

Channel Sales Engineer

Ideally there should be an sales engineer for each territory. With each CSM traveling to partner locations, sharing these resources can be difficult. The channel sales engineer should be well versed in your product and come across as professional as the CSM. The dynamic duo of the CMS and the CSE is sure to close more opportunities.

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4 Comments »

Brian Berlin said:

A couple of additional thoughts:

Some companies find that their CSM cannot recruit and enable (ramp) resellers. In an ideal world, CSM is focused on building opportunities for and with resellers in the assigned territory. Recruitment should be outsourced to a 3rd party reseller recruitment firm or an overlay position should be created to focus on this activity.

An inside component is key and it’s good to note you’ve called out the difference between an actual inside sales component and a CSM support role. If the strategy is to groom the CSR as a potential CSM, then I would give the CSR the recruitment overflow. This gives them the chance to learn the ideal partner profile and manage partner relationships below the deck of the CSM.

If the volume merits it, I would focus the CSM on the 20% of the partners producing 80% of the volume and give the rest to the CSR to manage.

You hit the nail on the head regarding the CSE. I don’t think companies give enough weight to what a good SE can do in channel partner enablement. Reseller owners and principals may sign the partner agreement, but the partner technical lead is the person who knows the client’s infrastructure and pain points. I don’t know many reseller executives who will add a vendor without consulting their lead engineer. The CSE will have the most credibility with the partner SE and will validate the solution on technical, not sales terms.

# 23 December 2008 at 5:27 pm

SOCOM Sales (author) said:

As always Brian, you have great insights. Thanks for the comment and keep up the good work on your site. You have a lot to teach us growing professionals..

# 23 December 2008 at 6:03 pm