How to Create a Channel Business Plan That Will Get Executive Buy-In

There are many things to consider for this — channel marketing leaders want to ensure that any channel business plan pitched is worth the time and money invested, providing a roadmap to success. You’ll need to include information about your channel’s potential impact on the company and the data supporting this potential.

According to Forrester, channel marketing strategies and programs need to be curated in such a way as to allow for the best customer and partner value. With current trends in mind, a channel business plan must subscribe to evolving partner ecosystem needs that align with company goals — ensuring executive buy-in.

Here are some tips on how to create a channel business plan that will get executive support:

1. Understand your organization’s business objectives and goals

Before you start drafting your channel business plan, make sure you understand the bigger picture. Why does your organization want to build a channel program? Is it because they want more sales and market share or to expand their reach? Once you identify what matters to your leadership, you need to work on aligning these goals with partner recruitment, your onboarding strategy, and the company growth plan.

Streamlining your goals will make it easier for your team to hone in on what matters most and set up a more straightforward path for what needs to be accomplished with actionable steps to follow.

2. Focus on key metrics

Don’t try to include every metric in your business plan; instead, focus on the ones that matter most and show how they relate to your overall company goals. These metrics should be relevant and easy to understand at a glance. For example, if you’re partnering with distributors with many sales representatives across multiple countries, consider including the total sales volume by country as one of your metrics for success.

This way, executives can see precisely how much revenue has been generated through this channel and compare it with other channels at their disposal (e.g., direct sales). It’ll be helpful to allow executives to view how channel marketing results are collected, so they know what to expect. Having a clear view will give them the confidence that the investment is worthwhile and allow them to make more informed decisions about where Market Development Funds (MDFs) should be allocated.

Learn how you can use Business Planning to track both partner progress and KPIs to gain actionable insight into overall channel performance.

3. Implement seamless automation

You may be marketing different products and services through varied channels and partners. This is a challenge because it would consume a lot of time and effort, plus human resources to monitor these channels manually. That’s why it’s crucial to have a low-touch or no-touch approach so higher management can focus on more value-driven strategies.

Consider using an automation platform that allows you to manage all your processes from one place. With an optimized workflow, partners can integrate seamlessly into your partner program and easily access step-by-step instructions, product information, and tools. This eliminates uncertainty and performance variance, so partners can focus on driving channel revenue.

Find out more: Use Journey Builder to curate an automated and scalable partner lifecycle to easily guide them in delivering successful results.

4. Set your partners up to succeed

With some organizations having thousands or tens of thousands of partners in the channel, it isn’t easy to monitor how each partner chooses to market your product or service. You may risk having partners using messaging and marketing strategies that aren’t in line with what you want to present to consumers — leading to confusion among customers and an overall lack of trust in the brand.

To avoid this problem, you can prepare the right marketing message that partners can quickly adopt and endorse using effective Through-Channel Marketing Automation (TCMA) solutions. This ensures reliable lead generation to amplify and promote your marketing message, not to mention in an easier, more automated, and more scalable way for you to facilitate your partners’ journeys.

Explore how Impartner TCMA can improve partner adoption with an optimal user experience, giving partners the essentials to get started on automated lead generation.

5. Make financial projections

Having a comprehensive overview of revenue reporting and analytics will place you in a better position to project how your company can grow. This will help executives determine which products and services will generate more revenue, allowing smarter investments into areas that gain more traction while spending less on others.

If you lay this out in detail, it inspires trust and confidence in your channel business plan that it is future-proof and scalable no matter the shift in the direction of marketing strategies.

Find out more: Use Impartner Analytics for Partner Performance Management for personalized visuals and reports on partner performance so executives can constantly stay informed.

Obtaining Executive Buy-In is Just the Beginning

It’s imperative you set yourself up for the best chance at success at the starting line. With systematic planning backed up with research, it’ll be easier to obtain executive support for your channel business plan. Using an efficient partner relationship management (PRM) solution will provide a more transparent overview of the steps and functions necessary to run an effective channel program.

Better yet, let us do the job for you every step of the way — discover Impartner PRM for yourself. 

Learn more about how the Impartner PRM solution can help get your channel ecosystem scale ready. Request a demo.