As technology vendors have both developed and refined their channel marketing strategies over the past few years the need for a refined yet bespoke marketing approach has emerged as top priority. The vendor who manages to encourage, educate and inspire their partners to create and execute joint marketing activities will be the big winner with increased brand awareness plus channel based return in the marketing funnel. Accelerate is a 100% fully funded, managed program of packaged marketing activities and collateral that focuses upon delivering joint sales opportunities. ShoreTel’s Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series was developed upon the premise of educating channel marketing professionals with the very latest industry ideas, concepts and practises. ShoreTel’s approach is based on developing marketing skills and learning’s from one event to the next with two driving factors; ensuring partners attend all events to aid personal development, and building a community that is both competitive but also able to differentiate themselves (from a marketing perspective) in order to address more of the market. The events were run in November 2010 and April 2011, the agenda being developed collaboratively with some of the best industry marketers e.g. Chris Wilson, Richard Robinson, Ed Weatherall, Lisa Hutt and Richard Bush.

Objectives:

This program had two specific goals: to increase the marketing skill levels of ShoreTel partners while also increasing awareness, consideration and marketing pipeline for ShoreTel via an increased number of joint marketing campaigns.

Target Audience:

ShoreTel’s Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series was aimed at those people within ShoreTel’s partner community who influence or perform a marketing function. The agenda topics and speakers were designed to appeal to Managing Directors, Sales Directors, Marketing Directors, Marketing Managers and Executives. The agenda items, timings and presenters were deliberately designed to be both compelling and action orientated.

For channel marketers to gain access to the knowledge and learn from the experience of these industry leaders is unprecedented for a technology vendor to offer at no cost to their partners. This important element helped to create a successful set of events simply with the calibre of presenters who also attended free of charge

Results:

ShoreTel had just launched the Accelerate Partner Program in the UK when development of the ShoreTel Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series began in September 2010. It was always Tom Perry’s vision to create a partner community under the Accelerate banner and provide bi-annual knowledge and action events to drive increased marketing activity through his channel partners. The initial event objective was to get 35 attendees, 25 partner registrations per event plus 10 other participants (Presenters or ShoreTel employees). We received 19 and 21 partner attendees respectively to the November and April events.

As a result of the calibre of presenters, content and the exclusive offer made at the November event, ShoreTel agreed to fund and develop 7 new joint marketing campaigns. In addition to these activities ShoreTel identified and agreed to fund another 15 joint campaigns after the recent April event. Therefore ShoreTel have over 25 joint marketing campaigns agreed and underway in the UK channel as a direct result of the ShoreTel Accelerate Marketing Knowledge series

The ShoreTel Accelerate Marketing Knowledge series gives the partner the knowledge and the courage combined with a generous 100% funding offer to take a chance and create a ShoreTel joint marketing campaign that demonstrates the true value of partnership.

A couple of courses into the schedule and I am amazed at how many channel sales / marketing people that I have talked to recently who do not have a marketing plan in their business, or at least a plan that is written down and agreed with management. I would hazard a guess that most business leaders / owners would not dream of not creating a business plan or a sales plan, so why not have at least a very basic marketing plan. Furthermore I discovered through a few carefully guided questions, if the partners do say that they have a plan it is very organic in the sense of it is understood but not written down so they can change it regularly. I would call that more tactical than strategic.

Planning is crucial to the success of any business or even marketing activity or endeavour. It is also a part of the course where I have been most surprised, in the sense that I thought it was a given that in order to justify spending budget as a marketing department you would need to create a plan, with at the very least targets and ROI objectives.  This plan with marketing goals would then need to be presented and approved by management before any spending commenced.

With this in mind I just wanted to reinforce the need for Strategic Marketing Planning and one of the best ways that I have summed it recently is with the aid of The Direct Marketing Guide © 1998, published back in 1998 by the recently rebranded The Institute of Direct Marketing www.theidm.com

The nine major benefits of a good strategic marketing plan

Once you have digested the first part and then come to write the plan please use these six simple steps.

The six qualities of a good strategic marketing plan

If you work in a channel partner and have influence in the marketing function for your business please remember these simple words; planning prevents, poor performance. 

A roundtable can be as basic as conducting a meeting around a table. There is also those that are facilitated either usually by an independent party like a journalist or marketing consultant. Many marketing event and publishing companies offer them as part of an editorial package or they can be organised with the help of more independent parties who can be employed by the vendor to ensure the session flows on time, everyone gets a say and all the relevant covers points are covered. There is nothing worth than a partner taking time out of their business to come and sit around a table and either be preached at by the vendor for the most part or be beaten to the punch by louder and more obnoxious partner.

There are many different formats that a roundtable can take and it is really up to the organiser to choose what is most appropriate for the desired outcome. There is the ‘Simple Agenda’ approach whereby the facilitator moderates the conversation to ensure the group keeps to the agenda and time to ensure all points and covered, minuted and action assigned. ‘Game of Two Halves’ whereby the facilitator will spend one or two hours with the partners only, to understand any grievances, issues plus examples of both. After a break the vendor representatives are invited back into the room to face a series of the partners questions, guided by the facilitator and also listen to the horror stories and then hopefully offer a response or action to the get those issues fixed for the next meeting. I must point out these sessions also offer up the opportunity for the partners to provide positive feedback to the vendors, especially about account management or other heroes within the business, it is not just a bloodletting session for the partner to walk away feeling a sense of release. The other format is ‘Open Season’ whereby the facilitator has both the partners and the vendor in the room with an outline of possible discussion items. The advantage of this format is that the partners can get an instant face to face answers to their points as opposed to the previous format whereby they have to wait until the second half of the session to get answers and explanations from the vendor.

Currently I facilitate partner roundtables for Avaya in the UK for Platinum & Medal Partners in London, Manchester & Edinburgh. The sessions have ranged from audiences of 40 to 10 Avayians and Partners depending on the time or location. Already both Avaya and the partners have seen improvements from these sessions.