A
few days ago, I happened upon a gag gift that my wife
and I received for an anniversary early in our marriage.
As I recall, this gift was intended to bring humor and
teamwork to our lives (likely given to us by one of
our single friends). This ridiculous game requires each
player to wear a colorful cap covered in Velcro. Players
take turns throwing foam balls at one another's heads
in an attempt to get them to stick. While I cannot speak
from personal experience, it turns out it's not very
easy to hit a bobbing head with a foam ball. As when
throwing spaghetti against the wall, sometimes you have
to throw a lot of pasta before something sticks.
So
it may be no surprise that spaghetti thrown against
the wall reminded me of partner marketing funds. Companies
allocate a staggering amount of marketing dollars (be
it market development funds [MDF] or Co-op) each year
to help their channel partners market, promote, and
sell their products and services. Unfortunately,
some 25 percent of those funds (that's billions
of dollars) go unused. Flash to the head-scratching
finance person (sans Velcro cap) trying to rationalize
the return on the 75 percent that is utilized,
and it's all just a little confounding.
More
often than not, when asked why they leave that "free
money" on the table, business partners cite lack
of time and resources to put those funds to good use.
When you dig a little deeper, they often confess that
it's not worth the effort to comply with vendor restrictions
or tedious claim processes. Translation: too much
work; too little pay-off.
While
re-engineering the MDF approval/claim process is outside
the scope of this newsletter (not to mention a real
yawner), we offer the following practical ideas for
maximizing the dollars you've dutifully set aside for
partner marketing. (You have set aside dollars,
haven't you?):
1) Take it from the top. Build a snapshot of your company's top
initiatives for the
year. When will you be announcing
and releasing new products and services?
What new markets will you pursue?
When will important corporate marketing
and demand generation initiatives
hit throughout the year? What marketing
themes, if any, will your company
promote?
2) Identify how partners
fit (or not). From this picture, identify if and
how your
different partner types plug
into these objectives. What, if anything, can you
package up and extend to partners
in a "low-touch" manner? What opportunities
are there for partners to participate
in direct mail, advertising, and seminars
(including web-based and social-networking
media), effectively extending your
reach into their customer bases?
3)
Share the plan. Create a brief deck of slides
to articulate these opportunities
for your partners (10 slides max!).
This creates a foundation for planning and
starts the creative juices
flowing. Presenting a picture of where you're going
and how you see them fitting into
your initiatives goes a long way toward
helping partners understand their
role in the equation.
4)
Identify the gaps. Once partners understand where
you're headed, listen
to their objectives and jointly
identify the gaps. At this point, you can decide
if their marketing
initiatives make sense in context of your plan, and
entertain
funding those as well.
5)
Enjoy a beautiful thing. The appeal of this approach
is the
ease with which both parties can
rationalize direction, choose
their participation, and get
the most from their respective
investments. It also eliminates
the mystery around what you
are likely to approve and hastens
the process because you've
agreed to a plan ahead of time.
Finally, make sure your channel account managers
have the tools and skills needed to drive partner
marketing planning. Oftentimes, channel account
managers are focused on other operational and selling
tasks, and don't have the time
or DNA for marketing.
Companies
that master delivery of coordinated partner marketing
treat their partner marketing funds as a strategic
asset. They arm their channel marketing teams
with the tools and information to optimize each dollar,
and hold them accountable. If they lack channel marketing
resources, they outsource the function (shameless
plug here) to ensure every dollar is spent wisely…keeping
them, of course, ahead of the curve.
email:
jwilkinson@thoughtwav.com