Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Sales Channel Development APP Sign Up Today!

3 Steps to Develop a Successful Channel Partner Program with DataPACT

See how DataPACT APP can help you develop a sales channel strategy. Looking for distributors in Germany, France or elsewhere in Europe? Qupact will find them for you! Get 10 channels for free! Qupact has launched an app to help companies find different types of sales channel partners to develop routes to market. Register for a FREE trial today and find Export Sales Partners and develop a Distribution Management Strategy. Signup today! Visit http://www.qupact.com

Sales Channel Development APP Sign Up Today!

Monday, October 24, 2016

3 Steps to a Successful Channel Partner Program

When successful businesses look to the future, they plan. Weeks of management time go into costing and revenue budgets, development spending, capital expenditure, market and many other functions. But it is surprising how often new exporters or companies trading in a traditional model neglect to adequately plan their route-to-market strategy. Warehouses all around the world are filled with great products that never made it to their target customers simply because the manufacturers failed to build the right route-to-market. So, how do you avoid this pitfall?

Here are the 3 Steps to a Successful Channel Partner Program

Step 1: Develop a deep understanding of who will use your product or service and who will pay for it. Who makes the ultimate purchase decision and how will you influence that? Is this something you have to do yourself, can you entrust it entirely to your channel partner or do you need a multi-faceted plan to get decision-makers to choose your solution?

Step 2: Research the market to establish which channel partners - for both competing and complementary products - are already influencing your target decision-makers. Keep a wide-open mind when you're doing this; you'll often find the best channel partners in the most unlikely places. Who would have believed you ten years ago if you'd told them that an on-line book-seller would rank amongst the world's biggest retailers within a decade?

for more information on Channel Partner programs please visit http://www.qupact.com

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

How to Build Relationships with Overseas Companies

Products, technology or price don’t buy mindshare – it’s all in the relationship. For exporters looking to nurture relationships with overseas companies, the Canons of Channel Management can transform the approach to channel management, writes Brian English of Qupact International.

A number of years ago we were helping a company in Cork to assess why its sales channels were not performing and what needed to be done to derive more revenue from them. One channel, in particular, was something of a mystery as the product fit was perfect and the customers it was dealing with were the exact targets that the Irish exporter was looking for. It was based in Norway and the deeper we probed, the greater the mystery became. Finally, we asked the obvious question – when was the last time you visited this partner? And the answer floored us – between seven and eight years ago!

If there’s one thing that 25 years of channel management has taught us, it’s that it’s all in the relationship. Products, technology or price don’t buy mindshare; this is something only a solid and enduring business relationship can capture, and the biggest challenge for the typical mono-lingual, island-dwelling exporter is cultivating and nurturing a long-term relationship with an overseas partner.

Over the years, we have honed a set of principles, which we call the Canons of Channel Management. We stick them on exporters’ walls and drill them into sales managers and CEOs up and down the country. Together, the Canons crystallise an attitude to a company’s channel partners that has to be shared by everyone in the exporting organisation. When they are fully embraced and used to inform day-to-day decisions, a company’s whole orientation towards its external sales partners – its feet on the street in overseas markets – is transformed.

1. Resources: Place your channels at the centre of your universe and organise your resources around them

An exporter needs to recognise that its channels are a legitimate part of its sales organisation and not an external add-on. Only when it embraces this philosophy will it be able to adequately resource the channel sales support organisation. This includes everyone from materials planning to after-sales service.

2. Reward: Know who in the channel is ultimately responsible for sales of your products and identify everyone who is rewarded for selling them.

In every channel partner, you need a champion. He/she is the person who has a vested interest in your products or services succeeding. His reward may be monetary or it may come in the form of kudos, peer recognition or the satisfaction of his customers.

3. Risk: Never expect the channel to take a risk with its business that you would not take with your own

Too many manufacturers expect their channels to take risks – with creditors, inventory, regulations and margins – that they would never take with their own businesses. This is a real acid test of the exporter’s level of understanding of the partner’s business.

4. Relations: Remember that the end-customer relationships are the channel’s, not yours – that’s why you’re using the channel in the first place

In the complex, global economy we live in, customers very often trust and rely upon their local suppliers on whom they have depended for many years and who have given them loyal service in good times and bad. Exporters often forget why they engaged the channel in the first place – because it owns these relationships. Continuing to remember that and respecting the channel’s value in the supply chain is vital to build long-lasting relationships.

5. Face Time: Maximise face time

Once in seven years is not enough! As an exporter, you need to plan to see your channel partners on a quarterly basis for the first year or two and after that, at least twice a year. Break bread together and make small talk, whatever it takes to build a person-to-person connection and see them whenever you can.

6. Loyalty: At all times, demonstrate unswerving loyalty and long-term commitment

We often compare channels to life partners and, when it comes to loyalty, there is no better analogy. Once trust is betrayed, it is very difficult – or impossible – to rebuild. Years of hard work can be undone with a single, bad decision driven by a lack of communication, greed or misunderstanding of a situation. In the final analysis, the relationship is not between companies, but between people, and it is therefore built on trust and loyalty.

7. Honesty: Be honest and transparent in all your dealings

It’s certainly possible to deceive all of the people some of the time or vice versa, but it’s never possible to build a lasting business relationship unless there is openness and honesty between the partners. Dealing with a channel conflict openly, with full disclosure, is more likely to strengthen a relationship than to damage it.

Qupact International is a Dutch-based consultancy with a company in Dublin, that specialised in sales channel development. Its CEO, Brian English, is Irish-born and educated and has been living in the Netherlands for more than 20 years.

Written by: Brian English, CEO, Qupact International – consultancy specialising in sales channel development

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Channel Development Pricing Agreements

Legal Issues – Channel Development Pricing Agreements

The creation of the single market has brought many advantages to companies throughout Europe who can export with ease to customers throughout the EU – something that was impossible just 50 years ago. However, as in every walk of life, freedom brings with it tremendous responsibility. In this case, the responsibilities that companies have to exploit the free movement of goods, capital and labour without compromising consumers’ freedom to put their suppliers into competition with one another.

The EU hates price controls, cartels and restrictive practices aimed at artificially maintaining price levels, either through price-maintenance agreements or by restricting supply in order to drive prices up. The continent is littered with examples of companies that have felt the wrath of the regulator in this regard.

So, bear in mind when you’re putting together your pricing or discount structures for Europe, that restrictive practices (like agreeing minimum resell pricing with your distributor) are likely to land you in the worst can of trouble.

Differential pricing can also be a major problem because, as a supplier you are not allowed to create advantages or disadvantages for competing distributors through your pricing strategy. Does this mean that all EU distributors have to be able to buy at the same price? Basically, if they can theoretically compete with one another, yes!

Now you could certainly argue that a Tesco store in Spain doesn’t compete with a Tesco store in Wolverhampton and that you can therefore offer them different pricing. This argument is reasonable and probably wouldn’t cause you any difficulties. You can also allow your pricing to reflect transport costs if your ship DDP or sales volumes. But if you sell a product that can easily be sources across national borders, then you need to be very careful.

For example, if you’re selling machine parts to OEMs in Germany that could buy them as easily from a distributor in France as in Sweden. Then you have to make sure that neither the German, French or Swedish distributor has a competitive advantage over the others that is based on price.

If you’re in doubt, get professional advice before you start setting prices and creating precedents. It’s a hotly monitored area in EU practices and you’re responsible for knowing what you’re doing within the freedoms created by the single market. For more information visit http://www.qupact.com

Channel Partner Management

The Importance of Channel Partner Management

Partner management, also called channel management or relationship management, is one of the most important activities companies have to have under control. If third party channels are going to be your preferred Route to Market, place them at the centre of your business universe and place your processes and resources around them.

At Qupact we see channel management not as something that is “additional” to your company, but as the life-blood of your business. Companies should be engaged in a support process for the channel partner, rather than in a managing role by lecturing the channel partner on how to do better.

You can add as many processes as you like to this diagram; the main point is that channel partners should always be at the centre of the business if they are your Route to Market. It can be the case that your channel partner is performing poorly. It is then important to understand the reasons why. Is it the margins? Or the training? Or maybe the cash flow? Together with your channel partner, you should attack the problems and try to solve them. Fixing is almost always preferable to starting over.
For more information visit http://www.qupact.com/