Channel Acquisition Master Class Workshop

A successful Channel Acquisition Strategy is founded on the confidence of a prospective Partner that your solution will be more profitable than an existing activity and your demonstrable ability to deliver on that expectation detailed with your Partner Program.

(Purpose built facilities with full café services immediately outside Euston Station) 

We do not disclose the corporate identity of Workshop attendees to the other delegates. This approach fosters a more open discussion on specific issues and challenges, to the benefit of all.

Introduction: A successful Channel Acquisition Strategy is founded on offering a compelling long term Business Proposition to a prospective Partner, where the solution is only part of the story. In this workshop you will investigate and learn all the components that make up a competitive and compelling business case that will ensure your solution AND your Partner Strategy is highly competitive and clearly communicated.

Workshop Purpose: To enable senior business management to short cut the learning curve, identify and address the missing components of your existing channel acquisition strategy / methodology, whilst building a long term strategic channel road map that effectively leverages and engages your own internal resources that deliver on the company’s promises.

Benefits to your organisation: Channel Acquisition can be an expensive process. It is not just the cost of a lost negotiation; it is also the cost of winning a new Partner that never sells. The workshop is designed to help in the process of defining your market, identifying the ideal Partners, recognising and understanding the Partners buying requirements and the delivery of a complete and compelling Business Proposition.

The Channel Acquisition workshop is founded on proven methodologies that have been successful used to build market leading channel in the UK, USA and the rest of the world – through first hand experience of the Course Leader over the past 20 years.

The comprehensive documentation that is provided at the course (and subsequently through continually updated on-line information on the Channel Wisdom Client portal) is designed to enable your organisation to immediately identify and prioritise your resource to address the biggest opportunities to improve your channel business to deliver the fastest returns.  The documentation enables the development of a long term Channel Strategy that can be built over time as resources and funds permit.

Channel Induction Workshop: The workshop will enable you to gain a strong understanding of the requirements necessary to be competitive and credible in winning channel. Your channel strategy should be founded on a detailed understanding of your business proposition and how it will compare to the dozens of alternative offerings available to the Partner.  

The workshop and documentation delivers immediate results and enables you to develop a strategic roadmap based on proven methodology. 

• You will learn how to
  
   
  • Understand the reseller perspective
    • Understanding the resellers needs and requirements
    • Identifying the best and worst resellers pre close
    • Setting expectations that reflect a True Partnership
    • Discovering your best sales tool is often not your solution
  • Fully understand the market and channel opportunity
    • Quantify the simplicity / complexity of your solution proposition
    • Define your market “sweet spot”
    • Investigate and quantify the size of the market opportunity
    • Undertake detailed competitive analysis
    • Define and understand the real cost of sales engagement
  • Define your solution profile
    • Recognise the strengths and weaknesses of your solution profile
    • Identification and leverage of synergistic solutions
    • Review the solution delivery options
    • Solution positioning – the niche vendor proposition
    • Apply best practise in refining your channel strategy
    • Build Partner ROI analysis
    • Define the ideal Partner profile
    • How to identify and approach prospective Partners
  • Quantify the Business Proposition
    • Define Partnership offerings
    • Quantify the perceived risks and address them
    • Quantify the potential costs and how best to share them
    • Quantify Partner tiers
    • Review pricing strategy, Partner margins and services
    • Quantification of Partner commission structures and their importance
    • Review education and training options and methodologies
    • Develop  an acceptable Channel Conflict Policy
  • Build a compelling and competitive Partner Business Proposition
    
    
  • Improve your Channel Partner wins

Workshop Format: The workshop will walk you through the issues and considerations required to build a successful channel business and the rational behind them. We will use real life examples to help you to understand the Partner perspective, the commercial implications and the importance / relevance of the key issues. We also will use workshop discussions to re-enforce the key learning points and help you to be able to apply them successfully to your own business.

Workshop “Take Away” and Documentation: However good a workshop may be, no one is going to remember everything discussed. The Workshop gives you access for one year to the Channel Wisdom Client Portal for the specific Workshop.  

Every Workshop is supported by detailed documentation covering every issue discussed, the PowerPoint presentations, handouts and working examples. Each topic is supported by a brief explanation and quantification of a suitable “deliverable”. 

This information remains the copyright and intellectual property of Channel Wisdom Limited and may not be circulated, distributed or published outside your organisation for any reason whatsoever.

Who should attend: The workshop anticipates a good understanding of general business and commercial acumen. It is suitable for Managing Directors, Business Development Directors, Sales Directors and Marketing Directors or senior level management in larger organisations. 

Dress Code: Smart / Casual  

(Plus mileage / subsistence / accommodation if required)

The channel Acquisition Master Class and the Channel Induction Master Class are both held on the same day in morning and afternoon sessions. Delegates that book both courses on a single day will be provided lunch within the fee. 

Organisations that purchase both the Acquisition and Induction Master Classes at their own venue will be charged our standard rate of £1,750 for the day. 

Synopsis of Course Leader: Neil Robertson

Neil has worked both sides of the channel fence. Starting Team Systems Group in the early 80’s, the company grew rapidly to become the market leading reseller for Multisoft and Tetra accounting solutions in the UK and provided a clear understanding of the gulf between what a Partner required and what a vendor offered.  

Having sold Team to Misys in 1989, Neil became MD, and group CEO of a number of Misys organisations including BOS Software and TIS Software – both ISV’s with global channel and started putting his knowledge on reseller needs to good effect, growing the channel sales in both organisations in the middle of the early 90’s recession. 

In 1995, Neil joined Kewill Plc to head up their Omicron software distribution business and launch a new USA Windows based software product, Great Plains Dynamics. Within a year, Great Plains re-purchased the UK distribution rights from Kewill and Neil founded their first offshore subsidiary in the UK.

From day one, Great Plains only sold through Channel and Neil made full use his experience of channel and the emergence of the new technologies (email and the internet) to build the business. In 1999 Great Plains took on the distribution of Siebel “mid market edition” adding CRM to the product offering. 

Under Neil’s guidance, Great Plains grew its channel to become the dominate player in the UK. Neil took the UK methodology and shared with other new Great Plains subsidiaries to great effect, writing three books on leveraging eBusiness methodologies to grow profit.

Having left Great Plain just prior to the Microsoft acquisition ($1.1b), Neil founded 3030 Vision, a consultancy business specialising in CRM solutions – with a particular focus on how to make clients investment in this technology work. The company was sold 18 months later after an unexpected approach from Philips. 

Neil joined the Neverfail Group in September 2002, a UK VC backed Disaster Recovery consultancy and services organisation that was in the process of delivering a new software solution that delivered Continuous Availability for Microsoft servers.  

Neverfail’s channel strategy was innovative from the outset, built around the philosophy of a 100% eBusiness channel model – everything could and should be done on-line. The company culture was “to do everything once, document and publish” – making all the knowledge of the business available to the virtual staff within the Partner 24 x7.

Developing and refining the strategy and processes over the next 4 years, Neverfail grew their operation in the USA to over 750 resellers, with a further 200 Partners in the UK, Europe and ROW. The success of the channel strategy delivered 45% compound growth quarter of quarter for over 2 years. 

The knowledge and first hand experience of building successful and profitable channel models led to the formation of Channel Wisdom. 

As Neil says – “there is no magic and there is no single silver bullet to building a world beating channel model – it requires a level of discipline and methodology that far exceeds that of a direct sales operation. But then the rewards for success are also far greater.

It is a 3 level winning formula, the customer wins, the Partner wins and the bi-product is the success of your channel business”.