Every day, your channel partners interact with customers on your behalf and showcase your products. They play a huge role in the success of your organization. So, how much time do organizations spend considering their training requirements? The most common response is “not enough.”
Too often, channel training is overlooked. While channel partners like salespeople and franchisees may be performing crucial tasks, it is easy for them to go “out of sight, out of mind” when making critical business decisions.
Included in this might be the addition of new products and services, as well as significant alterations to your brand’s image and how the general public sees your products.
So, how can you ensure that you are taking advantage of partner training? How can you ensure that you produce optimum outcomes for your business?
Simple. Start by understanding how beneficial channel partner training can be for your business.
Benefits of Training Channel Partners
Training your channel partners will ultimately benefit your company’s growth. Here are the advantages that lead up to that ultimate benefit:
Better Communication And A Robust Network
Training opens communication channels and demonstrates to your firm and your partners that you are all in this together. They’ll have faith in your alliance, increasing their likelihood of sticking around. Additionally, with proper training, you can address potential problems with your goods, processes, or performance standards before they become more significant issues.
Lower Customer Churn Rate
You may lower your chances of losing clients by training your partners in customer support skills, including handling challenging questions and giving quick responses.
Remember that gaining new consumers is five times more expensive than keeping your current clientele. Additionally, you can save money by using fewer resources that would otherwise be required to support your partners through such difficulties.
Furthermore, your clients will be better informed as a result of your channel partners’ receiving better training. Clients are more likely to remain devoted when they know your company’s strengths.
Increase In Sales
The sales process benefits from channel partners’ training in terms of channel partners becoming more effective in communicating with customers. Customer satisfaction is crucial in the sales process; that satisfaction comes with effective communication.
Easier Partner Onboarding
New partners are regularly onboarded into your business network. So, a training program built on previously effective onboarding techniques can significantly increase the process’ efficiency, particularly once you begin scaling operations.
Protect Your Brand
In the age of social media and virality, a partner’s careless PR blunder might harm your brand by association. Channel partner training can help you relax, knowing that your partners represent your brand correctly.
Feedback
Feedback from your partners who participate in the course is necessary to evaluate its efficacy. You can use the findings from your surveys and the sentiments expressed in the comments to strengthen your partnership.
Tips On Creating A Channel Partner Training Strategy That Helps Your Business Grow
We hope you are convinced that training for channel partners is crucial. But now you might be uncertain of the appropriate strategy to use for this type of training. We can help. Ensure you follow the steps below to develop a channel partner training strategy that pays off.
Evaluate Channel Training Needs
Get a clear understanding of what your channel partners need first. Some partners, like franchisees, could require general training in promoting your products. At the same time, more hands-on and direct product training may be necessary for sales reps and distributors, such as instruction on using the product’s various capabilities.
You can discover the training that will best help your partners by conducting surveys to identify the most common issues.
Align Your Partner Training Goals with Your KPIs
Your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) monitor how the business is doing concerning particular performance objectives. Partners may grow distant from these KPIs or have out-of-date KPIs in mind due to insufficient training. You will get the most out of your training if you align your channel partner training with KPIs and make the program’s objectives clear and straightforward to understand. For instance, if one of your company’s KPIs for the year is to boost customer retention by 25%, ensure this is evident in your training on customer retention techniques.
Aligning your channel training with your company KPIs can also help you calculate the return on investment of your training program since you can measure performance improvement following the training.
Choose the Right Platform
If you have a few channel partners, in-person training or workshops may be a terrific way to promote camaraderie. However, what if your partners are dispersed throughout the world?
Utilizing an LMS can be highly beneficial in this case.
Channel partners can interact and engage with your training materials and evaluations using LMSs without traveling or taking time away from their regular jobs.
Your choice of an LMS for channel partner training will be influenced by several factors, including your budget and the functionality you require, such as quizzes and surveys. Analyze your needs and the cost-effectiveness of the available solutions. There’s a good chance you’ll find an LMS that provides the ideal mix.
Motivate Channel Partners
Maintaining partners’ motivation requires transparent expectations, a sense of reward, and belonging to the corporate culture. Once you have decided on your training objectives, divide them into manageable milestones your partners may complete throughout the program.
This creates chances to “top-up” motivation by appreciating your partners’ efforts and also makes training more bearable. For instance, you may provide certificates, badges, or other rewards to your partners for completing training modules.
Stage Your Training
Training at work is never a one-time thing, and channel partner training should be the same. Create stages for your training that partners must complete in the given order. It makes it simpler to keep them informed of the most recent developments without over-informing them.
Suppose multi-level training programs are delivered over a prolonged period. Your channel partners will remain interested in your service or product and be on track with your objectives.
Conclusion
If you effectively train your channel partners, they will increase sales and profit, and your company can expand and enter new areas with the assistance of knowledgeable and well-trained partners.
If you adhere to the advice mentioned in this article, you’ll be well on your way to having more driven partners, happier clients, and a booming business.
