Emerging Technology Trends for Channel Sales and Partner Marketing
Since launching in the US, I have been overwhelmed by the energy, excitement and enthusiasm evident amongst channel sales and marketing professionals for harnessing the potential of their indirect sales channels to help them overcome the challenging economic climate. Certainly the channel is ready, willing and able to capitalize on any new market opportunities and vendors seizing this opportunity to build closer, more collaborative and interactive relationships with channel partners will reap long term benefits.
In the economic downturn that followed the Dot.com bust, many vendors slashed funding and resources for indirect channels instead focussing whatever they had on executing on their Customer Relationship Management strategies. This strategy probably prolonged an already slow recovery as channel sales and marketing organizations struggled to regain momentum after years of under-investment and channel disenfranchisement. Things are different this time. PRM has been around for a decade but 2010 marks the beginning of a renaissance. In a discussion he and I had recently, Bob Thompson of CustomerThink called this new wave “PRM 2.0″. In addition to the core capabilities of PRM so essential for any company with an indirect go-to-market strategy, a host of innovative software vendors have created next generation PRM tools which should feature in any channel sales or marketing executive’s partner management infrastructure.
This week we will announce the RelayWare Integrated Application Suite and the first of our technology partners. On Thursday we will sponsor and participate in two excellent events. The first; the Sales Edge Thought Leader Summit: Engaging Customer 2.0 features thought leadership from industry experts and explores new ways of engaging with customers and partners alike. The second; Emerging Technology Trends for Channel Sales and Partner Marketing showcases the newest and most innovative technology trends targeted to channel, partner, and strategic alliance communities. It kicks off with a keynote from Forrester’s Tim Harmon discussing channel partners’ plans, goals, frustrations, problems and enablers with respect to cloud computing.
Find out more and feel free to register on our events page. I’m looking forward to both events and hope to see you there.