ZINFI Technologies, Inc.

The process of selling has changed, because the process of buying has changed. No longer do we wait for our phone to ring and to be interrupted by a pushy telesales or telemarketing person, or expect to find out about a product through advertising; today we proactively search for what want to buy. This change in the selling process has given social syndication a key role in helping organizations to get the word out through a network of followers rather than randomly hoping to gain results from interrupting someone. This is the new age of social selling, which requires a new and differentiated approach using social syndication capabilities.

It’s worth spending a few minutes defining what social syndication is before discussing how you can deploy it across your organization to drive more sales.

When social media erupted onto our desktops about a decade ago, most of us thought of it at most as a way to share family photos and amusing videos of cats. However, organizations like LinkedIn, SlideShare and a few others had a different goal in mind: serving business users in a very different way. While groups in Yahoo and other sites were already in existence, allowing professionals to exchange ideas, thoughts and peer reviews, there was no single unified platform available to promote the YOU brand - the brand that most deeply matters to most of us.

Sharing a cool cat photo is entertaining, but sharing a high impact article with the potential to influence many people’s professional development is a more important opportunity to grow awareness. Social syndication plays to this intrinsic desire for professional growth by its core proposition of tribal or community enhancement: sharing of content that is relevant to individuals sharing common goals. The reason I use the word “tribe” is because the majority of social anthropologists are in agreement that many of our behaviors in social media - the need to share, self reflect, boast or display humility to a group - are a true reflection of who we are as humans, whose ability to feel alive and satisfied with our lives rides on our intrinsic need to connect and communicate.

This innate human need creates a unique opportunity for sales people to move from an intrusive or interruptive telemarketing process, which is an innately negative experience, to a more needs-fulfillment based approach. This takes the fundamental premise that a buyer only buys what he or she (knows) they need. It follows that, before steps are taken to procure anything, the natural first part of any buying process is research, in the quest to understand what would solve someone’s needs = problems. Content marketing plays a huge part in meeting this need to understand before purchase, and a well-constructed social syndication engine can work wonders in satiating this need and, therefore driving sales.

How do today’s social syndication capabilities work? The ability to distribute relevant content, to anticipate and answer questions from potential prospects, and scale to a national or global level, can be met by a scalable and flexible social syndication engine. To meet these criteria, the core components of any social syndication engine should be as follows:

Connection to existing social content- Most organizations today have multiple social channels through which they distribute content to their target audiences. However, the ability to auto connect to an existing stream of content, and then to amplify it via a distributed network, is a critical part of building your audience. It is not practical for all sales channels (direct or indirect) to create original, primary content, but with access to social syndication streams both direct sales teams and channel partners can distribute content easily and effectively.

Access to a social syndication network- Any organization may have a few thousand followers through corporate social networks, but when you multiply those by tapping into the networks of direct or indirect sales teams, the reach and the power of communication amplifies exponentially. Surprisingly few companies are using this capability effectively today. For far-sighted marketers, this is an exciting opportunity for differentiation and growth.

Prioritizing content streams- Social syndication first and foremost needs to focus on providing reader value and interest, and then prioritizing content that enhances the relationship between the organization and its buyers. The objective of social syndication is not to stream irrelevant information just for the sake of publishing something. Each stream must be thoughtful, add value and enhance the brand experience.

Tracking metrics and ROI- The primary benefit of social syndication is to expand the distribution and reach of valuable content that already exists within an organization. But you need to have a good idea about how much you can expand your distribution, how your reach is growing and what content has most impact within which channel (direct or indirect). Metrics and ROI are often the last but always the most important steps of any good social syndication platform as they allow an organization to focus its communication strategy around what readers are responding to - and get rid of what is not working.

Content marketing is evolving rapidly and is now a critical enabling factor in the sales process. As a result, the deployment of social syndication is growing rapidly and offers high potential to deliver competitive advantage for all organizations who want to engage early with their buyers through a relationship network, spread their message quickly and, most importantly, maintain superior mind-share at the very early stages of the buying process.

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The process of selling has changed, because the process of buying has changed. No longer do we wait for our phone to ring and to be interrupted by a pushy telesales or telemarketing person, or expect to find out about a product through advertising; today we proactively search for what want to buy. This change in the selling process has given social syndication a key role in helping organizations to get the word out through a network of followers rather than randomly hoping to gain results from interrupting someone. This is the new age of social selling, which requires a new and differentiated approach using social syndication capabilities.It’s worth spending a few minutes defining what social syndication is before discussing how you can deploy it across your organization to drive more sales.When social media erupted onto our desktops about a decade ago, most of us thought of it at most as a way to share family photos and amusing videos of cats. However, organizations like LinkedIn, SlideShare and a few others had a different goal in mind: serving business users in a very different way. While groups in Yahoo and other sites were already in existence, allowing professionals to exchange ideas, thoughts and peer reviews, there was no single unified platform available to promote the YOU brand – the brand that most deeply matters to most of us.Sharing a cool cat photo is entertaining, but sharing a high impact article with the potential to influence many people’s professional development is a more important opportunity to grow awareness. Social syndication plays to this intrinsic desire for professional growth by its core proposition of tribal or community enhancement: sharing of content that is relevant to individuals sharing common goals. The reason I use the word “tribe” is because the majority of social anthropologists are in agreement that many of our behaviors in social media – the need to share, self reflect, boast or display humility to a group – are a true reflection of who we are as humans, whose ability to feel alive and satisfied with our lives rides on our intrinsic need to connect and communicate.This innate human need creates a unique opportunity for sales people to move from an intrusive or interruptive telemarketing process, which is an innately negative experience, to a more needs-fulfillment based approach. This takes the fundamental premise that a buyer only buys what he or she (knows) they need. It follows that, before steps are taken to procure anything, the natural first part of any buying process is research, in the quest to understand what would solve someone’s needs = problems. Content marketing plays a huge part in meeting this need to understand before purchase, and a well-constructed social syndication engine can work wonders in satiating this need and, therefore driving sales.How do today’s social syndication capabilities work? The ability to distribute relevant content, to anticipate and answer questions from potential prospects, and scale to a national or global level, can be met by a scalable and flexible social syndication engine. To meet these criteria, the core components of any social syndication engine should be as follows:* Connection to existing social content– Most organizations today have multiple social channels through which they distribute content to their target audiences. However, the ability to auto connect to an existing stream of content, and then to amplify it via a distributed network, is a critical part of building your audience. It is not practical for all sales channels (direct or indirect) to create original, primary content, but with access to social syndication streams both direct sales teams and channel partners can d...

The process of selling has changed, because the process of buying has changed. No longer do we wait for our phone to ring and to be interrupted by a pushy telesales or telemarketing person, or expect to find out about a product through advertising; today we proactively search for what want to buy. This change in the selling process has given social syndication a key role in helping organizations to get the word out through a network of followers rather than randomly hoping to gain results from interrupting someone. This is the new age of social selling, which requires a new and differentiated approach using social syndication capabilities.

It’s worth spending a few minutes defining what social syndication is before discussing how you can deploy it across your organization to drive more sales.

When social media erupted onto our desktops about a decade ago, most of us thought of it at most as a way to share family photos and amusing videos of cats. However, organizations like LinkedIn, SlideShare and a few others had a different goal in mind: serving business users in a very different way. While groups in Yahoo and other sites were already in existence, allowing professionals to exchange ideas, thoughts and peer reviews, there was no single unified platform available to promote the YOU brand - the brand that most deeply matters to most of us.

Sharing a cool cat photo is entertaining, but sharing a high impact article with the potential to influence many people’s professional development is a more important opportunity to grow awareness. Social syndication plays to this intrinsic desire for professional growth by its core proposition of tribal or community enhancement: sharing of content that is relevant to individuals sharing common goals. The reason I use the word “tribe” is because the majority of social anthropologists are in agreement that many of our behaviors in social media - the need to share, self reflect, boast or display humility to a group - are a true reflection of who we are as humans, whose ability to feel alive and satisfied with our lives rides on our intrinsic need to connect and communicate.

This innate human need creates a unique opportunity for sales people to move from an intrusive or interruptive telemarketing process, which is an innately negative experience, to a more needs-fulfillment based approach. This takes the fundamental premise that a buyer only buys what he or she (knows) they need. It follows that, before steps are taken to procure anything, the natural first part of any buying process is research, in the quest to understand what would solve someone’s needs = problems. Content marketing plays a huge part in meeting this need to understand before purchase, and a well-constructed social syndication engine can work wonders in satiating this need and, therefore driving sales.

How do today’s social syndication capabilities work? The ability to distribute relevant content, to anticipate and answer questions from potential prospects, and scale to a national or global level, can be met by a scalable and flexible social syndication engine. To meet these criteria, the core components of any social syndication engine should be as follows:

* Connection to existing social content- Most organizations today have multiple social channels through which they distribute content to their target audiences. However, the ability to auto connect to an existing stream of content, and then to amplify it via a distributed network, is a critical part of building your audience. It is not practical for all sales channels (direct or indirect) to create original, primary content, but with access to social syndication streams both direct sales teams and channel partners can distribute content easily and effectively.

Over the past few years, we have gained some fascinating insights into shifts in channel dynamics using our Unified Channel Partner Management Software and Concierge Services to run a number of partner profiling programs for our technology clients. And as we compare this data with the information we’ve gleaned from the dozens of worldwide studies that we have done, we have uncovered an amazing set of characteristics that distinguish the partners who tend to sell the most (and most profitably) and why they do so.

These statistics are referenced from a different perspective in our previous articles, including 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business and 7 Risks Your IT Channel Partner Must Manage To Stay In Business, but in today’s article we want to focus on the successful channel partner. In every case, what we see is a true commitment to:

1. Relentless focus on customer value - In the technology solutions space, we consistently see that the most predominant success characteristic for channel partners, whether they are system integrators or management service providers or with deep vertical expertise, is their clarity of insight regarding their target customer segments, how they can meet customer needs, and the imperative to stay ahead of the competition by providing better solutions.

The technology space is always in flux, but even within the space the pace of evolution varies profoundly. Traditionally, enterprise has been the early adopter of cutting edge technologies, but the fundamental shifts in the technology channel business environment (as discussed in 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business) today mean that partners who do not constantly evaluate their competitive position and customer value proposition are most likely to be the first to lose their momentum and edge.

2. Deep domain expertise - In the technology channel, success is derived from not just deciding what to do, but rather what not to do. As technology becomes more and more complex, and cloud services drive a tectonic shift in the channel service delivery model, partners who do not focus on a manageable set of areas in favor of pursuing horizontal opportunities across many verticals tend to risk losing the potential to build on core capabilities that are essential to maintaining relevance with their customers. In 1930 there were 1800 car companies in the US. Today we have five US car companies and about 30 international companies. The technology space is following this pattern very closely.

Following that analogy, if you are setting up service shops to service cars, you have to pick which automotive companies you will support, as each car is built differently and cars today are more like computers on wheels than mechanical constructs. In the same way, building strategic domain expertise is far from a frivolous choice for a partner makes. The strategic selection of the right technology vendor can make or break a solution provider’s future survivability. This is a really hard choice for a partner, and mistakes are easily made despite the best intentions, but without a thoughtful approach to vendor selection the partner’s risk is massive.

3. Complex service capabilities - Having settle on the right ecosystem of technology vendors, partners’ next success factor hangs on developing deeper technology competencies. One of the most telling examples would be that of partners who formerly managed and maybe also sold servers and storage components to their end customers, but who have transitioned to delivering cloud-based products and services and gradually built up competencies in those areas. Their revenue mixes have shifted, dropping dramatically for transactional components like hardware, software or warranties, but substantially increasing for higher margin service businesses.

If something is harder to do, yet you have mastered it and all the underlying service and support elements, the chances are you will experience far less competition as you continue to build differentiation through expertise. Partners in this happy situation also tend to have higher retention of key personnel. And, even if there is employee turnover, since the deeper nature of the engagement with the end client does encourage poaching, partners with a talent development process in place can bridge this loss relatively quickly.

4. High vendor engagement rate – Every day, it seems we all have less and less time and more and more to do. Channel partners are in the same boat. Our research consistently throws up compelling statistics demonstrating that partners who are strategically rather than tactically engaged with their vendor resources, including sales, marketing, technical support and product teams, tend to outperform partners with purely transactional relationships with their vendors. The evidence points to the fact that selecting a strategic technology or vendor cluster and building deeper expertise and differentiation is critical for solution providers to make the most of these core relationships, as vendors tend to showcase their more successful channel partners to their broader market place, which of course drives further profitable growth and engagement from the client base. A positive endorsement of a channel partner by a technology vendor has a huge credibility impact with the end customer. Those partners who manage their vendor relationships strategically tend to outperform their peers exponentially.

5. Commitment to personnel development - Service delivery is in essence a matter of process and organizational structure. Yes, people develop and deliver services, but in a complex technology delivery and support environment, having a properly documented process and decision hierarchy is critical, as is an organization’s ability to prove to customers that their employee skill sets are adequate to the task. In a successful partner organization, as in any other, commitment to goals, standards and deliverables rules the day. Defined processes for service delivery (ITIL or ITSM) have been in place for a while now, and talented technical staffs tend to migrate towards organizations where they have the opportunity of maintaining a career path. Translated into everyday activity, this usually means achieving certification on relevant aspects of their scope of work. It follows that channel partner organizations that have a programmatic approach encouraging vendor certification - especially from strategic vendors - tend to grow their talent pool much faster, build competitive advantage and also retain talent. This evolves into a core competitive advantage both for delivering better value and for sourcing talent without paying high premiums, and also growing that talent to encourage long term retention.

6. Commitment to Automation - First things first: when it comes to service delivery, automation is always a priority focus for a successful channel partner. A plethora of tools is in use today - from higher-end management suites such as those available from HP, BMC and Dell to entry-level products like Connectwise, Autotask, and other Professional Service Automation (PSA) platforms. What’s important here is to ensure visibility, predictability, security and accuracy in service delivery. Again, our research shows that the partners who take a longer-term approach and embrace marketing automation by leveraging both their internal tools and their technology vendors’ Partner Relationship Management or Partner Marketing Management platforms, tend to outperform the rest consistently.

7. Strategic Financial Management - Last but not least, the channel partner organizations that take a holistic approach towards a market segment, and understand what is cost and what is investment for the future, tend to have higher profitability and a better survival rate than those who focus more narrowly quarter-to-quarter, chasing short term rebates, rewards and programs.

This is again where professional vendor relationship management must be applied. Strategic, future focused partners with access to channel marketing automation platforms and market development funds tend to leverage the vendor marketing and sales engine more effectively to drive new deals in both existing and new segments. Just a few points’ reduction in marketing costs deriving from access to vendor marketing development funds or channel programs can drive noticeable bottom line profitability not just in the short term, but also in the long term.

Through our research and surveys, we are aware that building and sustaining a business in a hyper-competitive space isn’t easy and can't be achieved through formulaic processes. There are multiple other factors in addition to these seven commitments that are relevant to driving business success, but we are confident, based on the past few years of real data gathering, that if a partner follows these seven rules are the best place to start from. We would love to hear from you - whether you are a technology vendor or channel partner - about what you believe the success of IT channel partner business depends on, and what other primary success factors we should add to these seven.

Over the past few years, we have gained some fascinating insights into shifts in channel dynamics using our Unified Channel Partner Management Software and Concierge Services to run a number of partner profiling programs for our technology clients. And as we compare this data with the information we’ve gleaned from the dozens of worldwide studies that we have done, we have uncovered an amazing set of characteristics that distinguish the partners who tend to sell the most (and most profitably) and why they do so.These statistics are referenced from a different perspective in our previous articles, including 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business and 7 Risks Your IT Channel Partner Must Manage To Stay In Business, but in today’s article we want to focus on the successful channel partner. In every case, what we see is a true commitment to:1. Relentless focus on customer value – In the technology solutions space, we consistently see that the most predominant success characteristic for channel partners, whether they are system integrators or management service providers or with deep vertical expertise, is their clarity of insight regarding their target customer segments, how they can meet customer needs, and the imperative to stay ahead of the competition by providing better solutions.The technology space is always in flux, but even within the space the pace of evolution varies profoundly. Traditionally, enterprise has been the early adopter of cutting edge technologies, but the fundamental shifts in the technology channel business environment (as discussed in 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business) today mean that partners who do not constantly evaluate their competitive position and customer value proposition are most likely to be the first to lose their momentum and edge.2. Deep domain expertise – In the technology channel, success is derived from not just deciding what to do, but rather what not to do. As technology becomes more and more complex, and cloud services drive a tectonic shift in the channel service delivery model, partners who do not focus on a manageable set of areas in favor of pursuing horizontal opportunities across many verticals tend to risk losing the potential to build on core capabilities that are essential to maintaining relevance with their customers. In 1930 there were 1800 car companies in the US. Today we have five US car companies and about 30 international companies. The technology space is following this pattern very closely.Following that analogy, if you are setting up service shops to service cars, you have to pick which automotive companies you will support, as each car is built differently and cars today are more like computers on wheels than mechanical constructs. In the same way, building strategic domain expertise is far from a frivolous choice for a partner makes. The strategic selection of the right technology vendor can make or break a solution provider’s future survivability. This is a really hard choice for a partner, and mistakes are easily made despite the best intentions, but without a thoughtful approach to vendor selection the partner’s risk is massive.3. Complex service capabilities – Having settle on the right ecosystem of technology vendors,

Over the past few years, we have gained some fascinating insights into shifts in channel dynamics using our Unified Channel Partner Management Software and Concierge Services to run a number of partner profiling programs for our technology clients. And as we compare this data with the information we’ve gleaned from the dozens of worldwide studies that we have done, we have uncovered an amazing set of characteristics that distinguish the partners who tend to sell the most (and most profitably) and why they do so.

These statistics are referenced from a different perspective in our previous articles, including 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business and 7 Risks Your IT Channel Partner Must Manage To Stay In Business, but in today’s article we want to focus on the successful channel partner. In every case, what we see is a true commitment to:

1. Relentless focus on customer value - In the technology solutions space, we consistently see that the most predominant success characteristic for channel partners, whether they are system integrators or management service providers or with deep vertical expertise, is their clarity of insight regarding their target customer segments, how they can meet customer needs, and the imperative to stay ahead of the competition by providing better solutions.

The technology space is always in flux, but even within the space the pace of evolution varies profoundly. Traditionally, enterprise has been the early adopter of cutting edge technologies, but the fundamental shifts in the technology channel business environment (as discussed in 3 Macro Trends That May Put Your IT Channel Partner Out of Business) today mean that partners who do not constantly evaluate their competitive position and customer value proposition are most likely to be the first to lose their momentum and edge.

2. Deep domain expertise - In the technology channel, success is derived from not just deciding what to do, but rather what not to do. As technology becomes more and more complex, and cloud services drive a tectonic shift in the channel service delivery model, partners who do not focus on a manageable set of areas in favor of pursuing horizontal opportunities across many verticals tend to risk losing the potential to build on core capabilities that are essential to maintaining relevance with their customers. In 1930 there were 1800 car companies in the US. Today we have five US car companies and about 30 international companies. The technology space is following this pattern very closely.

Following that analogy, if you are setting up service shops to service cars, you have to pick which automotive companies you will support, as each car is built differently and cars today are more like computers on wheels than mechanical constructs. In the same way, building strategic domain expertise is far from a frivolous choice for a partner makes. The strategic selection of the right technology vendor can make or break a solution provider’s future survivability. This is a really hard choice for a partner, and mistakes are easily made despite the best intentions,

At ZINFI, we work for major global brands and every day help thousands of their channel partners improve productivity. This is not as straightforward as it might be. One of the main complaints we hear constantly from channel partners is how hard it is to use most vendors’ partner portals. Yes, a few are great, but most partner portals are complex to understand. When we ask partners what they would like to see in an ideal partner portal, the five things we consistently hear are not surprising, but somehow only rarely delivered:

Ease of navigation - Far too frequently, vendors use cool marketing lingo that is utterly confusing. Why use non-specific terms like “engage” or “excite” about your channel process steps when you can use simple, unmistakable words like “welcome”, “join”, “on-board” or “train”. Calling a spade a spade is the first step in simplifying navigation in your partner portal. Also, categorizing your partner portal by straightforward functional areas like sales, marketing, technical or incentives is logical and doesn’t require an effort to understand. Being too cool isn’t clever. Ease of navigation starts with making things easy to grasp.

Mobile access- More than two-thirds of the partners consistently access a partner portal while they are away from their desk. So, while it is easy to make your portal mobile-compatible, don’t forget to make the rest of your portal smartphone- or tablet- You don’t have to go all the way in building apps for your portal. Many vendors have gone far down the app route, and it has turned out to be a pretty wasted investment, as very few partners click through all the apps. So, while apps can work as a Band-Aid to push out some news streams, events, training, etc., don’t get bogged down: focusing on the broader issue of easy mobile access is the key.

Personalization - Your partners must be able to pick and chose the content they want to see in your partner portal. To start with, the portal should allow partners to filter out content that is not relevant - by region, country, or partner tier type using content tagging, but partner portals should also provide focused content to specific groups of partners by function, g. sales, marketing, or technical. The more streamlined the information in your portal, the easier it will be for your partners to use. At ZINFI we see that more than 70% of vendors are still using a flat, or non-targeted content profile in their partner portals, which is overwhelming for most partners.

Simplifying promotions - Vendors with multiple product lines are constantly running a wide variety of promotions via their partner portal. However, if the partner doesn’t see a logical connection to the vendor initiatives, and furthermore if the promotions are not related to the differing maturity stages of the partner, then you are anesthetizing the channel with an avalanche of information that has nothing to do with them.

Tracking metrics - We are now in the age of content marketing. This means that it is the value your partner portal brings to the channel is dependent on your understanding of what content is useful to specific groups of partners, and what isn’t. Yes, you need a dynamic partner portal content management capability, without which you cannot serve up the right content to the right partner. For a vendor with global reach, this may require an incremental investment of a few thousand dollars per month, but within a few months you are going to reap significant benefit from your partner base by stimulating them to self-educate, improve their knowledge and manage better – all because you will be able to identify how to help them based on data, rather than on opinions or anecdotal feedback.

The great news is that you now have a choice of best-in-class partner portal content management systems that you can deploy to migrate your partner portal piece by piece. This doesn’t need to be a multi-year program, nor does it need to be one mammoth effort. If you take a structured approach, consecutively by functional area, you can migrate your portal gradually. Quarter by quarter, you can take one function of your organization, undertake training and move all of the relevant content over. If you do that over a period of a year you can migrate pretty much your entire portal without undue complexity. As you do this, you are guaranteed to see substantial improvements in partner engagement and satisfaction with your partner portal, which in the end will drive more revenue at a lower cost.

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At ZINFI, we work for major global brands and every day help thousands of their channel partners improve productivity. This is not as straightforward as it might be. One of the main complaints we hear constantly from channel partners is how hard it is to use most vendors’ partner portals. Yes, a few are great, but most partner portals are complex to understand. When we ask partners what they would like to see in an ideal partner portal, the five things we consistently hear are not surprising, but somehow only rarely delivered:* Ease of navigation – Far too frequently, vendors use cool marketing lingo that is utterly confusing. Why use non-specific terms like “engage” or “excite” about your channel process steps when you can use simple, unmistakable words like “welcome”, “join”, “on-board” or “train”. Calling a spade a spade is the first step in simplifying navigation in your partner portal. Also, categorizing your partner portal by straightforward functional areas like sales, marketing, technical or incentives is logical and doesn’t require an effort to understand. Being too cool isn’t clever. Ease of navigation starts with making things easy to grasp.* Mobile access– More than two-thirds of the partners consistently access a partner portal while they are away from their desk. So, while it is easy to make your portal mobile-compatible, don’t forget to make the rest of your portal smartphone- or tablet- You don’t have to go all the way in building apps for your portal. Many vendors have gone far down the app route, and it has turned out to be a pretty wasted investment, as very few partners click through all the apps. So, while apps can work as a Band-Aid to push out some news streams, events, training, etc., don’t get bogged down: focusing on the broader issue of easy mobile access is the key.* Personalization – Your partners must be able to pick and chose the content they want to see in your partner portal. To start with, the portal should allow partners to filter out content that is not relevant – by region, country, or partner tier type using content tagging, but partner portals should also provide focused content to specific groups of partners by function, g. sales, marketing, or technical. The more streamlined the information in your portal, the easier it will be for your partners to use. At ZINFI we see that more than 70% of vendors are still using a flat, or non-targeted content profile in their partner portals, which is overwhelming for most partners.* Simplifying promotions – Vendors with multiple product lines are constantly running a wide variety of promotions via their partner portal. However, if the partner doesn’t see a logical connection to the vendor initiatives, and furthermore if the promotions are not related to the differing maturity stages of the partner, then you are anesthetizing the channel with an avalanche of information that has nothing to do with them.* Tracking metrics – We are now in the age of content marketing. This means that it is the value your partner portal brings to the channel is dependent on your understanding of what content is useful to specific groups of partners, and what isn’t. Yes, you need a dynamic partner portal content management capability, without which you cannot serve up the right content to the right partner. For a vendor with global reach,

At ZINFI, we work for major global brands and every day help thousands of their channel partners improve productivity. This is not as straightforward as it might be. One of the main complaints we hear constantly from channel partners is how hard it is to use most vendors’ partner portals. Yes, a few are great, but most partner portals are complex to understand. When we ask partners what they would like to see in an ideal partner portal, the five things we consistently hear are not surprising, but somehow only rarely delivered:

* Ease of navigation - Far too frequently, vendors use cool marketing lingo that is utterly confusing. Why use non-specific terms like “engage” or “excite” about your channel process steps when you can use simple, unmistakable words like “welcome”, “join”, “on-board” or “train”. Calling a spade a spade is the first step in simplifying navigation in your partner portal. Also, categorizing your partner portal by straightforward functional areas like sales, marketing, technical or incentives is logical and doesn’t require an effort to understand. Being too cool isn’t clever. Ease of navigation starts with making things easy to grasp.

* Mobile access- More than two-thirds of the partners consistently access a partner portal while they are away from their desk. So, while it is easy to make your portal mobile-compatible, don’t forget to make the rest of your portal smartphone- or tablet- You don’t have to go all the way in building apps for your portal. Many vendors have gone far down the app route, and it has turned out to be a pretty wasted investment, as very few partners click through all the apps. So, while apps can work as a Band-Aid to push out some news streams, events, training, etc., don’t get bogged down: focusing on the broader issue of easy mobile access is the key.

* Personalization - Your partners must be able to pick and chose the content they want to see in your partner portal. To start with, the portal should allow partners to filter out content that is not relevant - by region, country, or partner tier type using content tagging, but partner portals should also provide focused content to specific groups of partners by function, g. sales, marketing, or technical. The more streamlined the information in your portal, the easier it will be for your partners to use. At ZINFI we see that more than 70% of vendors are still using a flat, or non-targeted content profile in their partner portals, which is overwhelming for most partners.

* Simplifying promotions - Vendors with multiple product lines are constantly running a wide variety of promotions via their partner portal. However, if the partner doesn’t see a logical connection to the vendor initiatives, and furthermore if the promotions are not related to the differing maturity stages of the partner, then you are anesthetizing the channel with an avalanche of information that has nothing to do with them.

* Tracking metrics - We are now in the age of content marketing. This means that it is the value your partner portal brings to the channel is dependent on your understanding of what content is useful to specific groups of partners, and what isn’t. Yes, you need a dynamic partner portal content management capability, without which you cannot serve up the right content to the right partner.

Vendor organizations that sell through a network of channel partners (resellers, VARS, affiliates and agents) know that most of their partners do not have dedicated marketing resources to keep their respective websites updated with fresh content from their vendors. This is where content syndication can play a significant role, allowing vendors and their channel partners to significantly enhance brand presence, control and engagement with end prospects. To make this work, an organization will need to focus on seven core areas:

Deciding what to syndicate- The objective of content syndication is not to replicate a vendor’s website. On the contrary, the goal is to do two just things right: provide a set of core content that is relevant to a specific partner’s customer base, and make sure the content stays fresh and up to date. This is not the easiest of tasks, since many vendors have hundreds or even thousands of pages of content that can potentially be syndicated. Prioritizing is key.

Setting up showcases- Once you have determined what pages to use for your web content syndication program, the next step is to determine how many content syndication showcases to set up. Again, the goal here is not to push your entire web site through your partner’s site, but to select relevant groups of content, either by vertical market (healthcare, real estate, education, etc.) or by industry segment (small business, mid-market, enterprise, and so on).

Allowing customization- If all of your partners do not sell all of your product lines, you will need to provide your partners with the means to customize your content syndication showcases. This customization capability is critical to ensure partners can show the specific set of products, pages, collateral and other content that is relevant to their business.

Capturing leads- While protecting your brand message and getting the right content out to multiple end-users via your channel network are both critical, it is also important to make sure you and your partners can track leads. For this, you need to have in place a channel marketing automation platform that not only allows you to deliver dynamic content syndication, but also to track the leads that are being captured from different showcases.

Promoting showcases - With relevant showcases being syndicated via the partner website, the next most important task is that the partner is provided with the ability to promote those showcases via digital networks such as social or search. To make this happen, you should pick a channel marketing automation platform that allows you to provide marketing elements such as web banners, buttons and connectors to promote the showcases. Also, the content syndication capability should include an integrated email marketing capability to drive outbound campaigns to a partner’s installed base of customers and prospect

Running reports - No matter what content syndication platform you chose, you need to make sure the dynamic reporting engine gives you a complete sense of what is really going on with content marketing campaigns. The important thing is, once a partner is syndicating content, you need to be able to run analysis to see what showcases generate the most leads and what changes can make to render this investment even more effective. For this, you need powerful content syndication reporting capabilities.

Refining your approach - As you begin tracking your partners content syndication activities, you will come up with your own ideas on how to improve the layout of your showcases, what product to include or exclude, which market segments to emphasize, and how best to align your content development strategy - beyond what‘s on your corporate website - with how you leverage a distributed content network to maximize partner success.

The main benefits for content syndication activity are threefold - control or expansion of your brand via a distributed network, extension of your reach to end-prospects and users via your channel, and improving your message based on dynamic analytics to achieve more ROI from your content. If you take a structured approach towards content syndication, you and your organization - including your channel partners - can greatly benefit from this investment in channel marketing automation.

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