Your sales team can only handle so many prospects in a day. Sometimes that means turning to outside help to keep your pipeline stocked with qualified leads.
Don’t worry, we’re not talking about contracting a third-party agency — at that point, you might as well just hire more salespeople. What we’re talking about is a completely different sales model, one that relies on partnerships and ecosystems to help your business grow and thrive.
Today, we’re going to briefly touch on what a channel sales model involves, then list a few valuable tools to make establishing and managing your partnership program a great deal easier.
Channel Partner Sales: A Brief Overview
Put simply, a channel partner sales program establishes partnerships with other vendors to sell and market your software on your behalf. There are a few different types of channel sales partners. They include, but are not limited to:
- Distributors. Middlemen between manufacturers and partners.
- Original Equipment Manufacturers. Manufacture products that other companies can brand, modify, and resell.
- Systems Integrators. Integrates components from multiple manufacturers into a saleable product.
- Value-Added Reseller. Enriches a product with its own features or offerings before selling.
- IT Consultants. Provide expert guidance related to information technology and help companies integrate new solutions.
- Managed Service Providers. Deploy, manage, and maintain a software solution for customers on another company’s behalf.
5 of the Best Channel Sales Software Solutions
1. CloudShare
Effortless, High-Impact Virtual Training
Management is only one half of channel sales enablement. You also need to train your channel partners. And that’s exactly where CloudShare shines.
With our platform, your partner managers can spin up virtual IT labs for just about anything in a matter of minutes. Whether you need to certify a partner’s technical skills with your software or onboard a new salesperson, we’ve got you covered. Better yet, our platform is easy to integrate with your existing software ecosystem — including the other solutions on this list.
2. Allbound PRM
Prioritizing the Partner Experience
Allbound provides businesses with a comprehensive partner portal that allows them to automate many of the day-to-day activities of partner management while also providing extensive options for customization. The platform’s biggest selling point, however, is that it prioritizes the partner experience. Through an intuitive dashboard, your channel partners can access everything they need to excel.
Allbound also allows managers to tag partners with identifiers such as region, company size, and industry and deliver unique content based on each partner’s tags. It also features multi-tiered learning tracks and the ability to unlock new portal permissions with progression.
3. PartnerTap
Empower Your Partners — And Yourself
Automation is PartnerTap’s big claim to fame. The partner ecosystem platform is designed to help companies automate some of the most labor-intensive and repetitive tasks involved in maintaining a partner ecosystem, including pipeline sharing, account mapping, and deal identification. Better yet, PartnerTap is part of the HubSpot ecosystem, designed to integrate seamlessly with the leading CRM.
The best thing about PartnerTap, however, is that unlimited account mapping is available to partner teams completely free of charge.
4. Crossbeam
Like LinkedIn for Partnerships
Crossbeam positions itself as a collaborative data platform rather than a channel sales tool. Crossbeam is all about providing you with the necessary data to build a robust, resilient partner ecosystem.
Notable features include instant account mapping, cross-partner lead generation, real-time forecasting, and integration with leading CRMs, data warehouses, and CSVs. When you join Crossbeam, you also gain access to its network of over 29,000 companies from various industries and sectors.
5. Channeltivity
Everything You Need for a Successful Partner Program
As one of the leading channel sales management tools on the market, Channeltivity is both intuitive and incredibly feature-rich. The all-in-one partner relationship management (PRM) platform includes just about everything you could ever need to manage your channel partnerships. The cloud-based solution handles more than just sales, too — it also includes modules for partner enablement, channel marketing, and more.
Some of Channeltivity’s notable features include a partner portal, distributor management, training materials, commission management, lead distribution, and deal registration. It also supports plug-and-play integration with point solutions such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier.
Better yet, all of the functionality mentioned above is all available more or less out of the box.
Learn More About the Importance of Channel Sales Training
Now that you’ve explored a few channel sales tools, let’s talk more about training. If you need a refresher on what channel sales training involves, we’ve written a glossary entry you can check out. You can also read 5 Tips for Accelerating Channel Partner Training Success.
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