The COVID-19 pandemic changed competition and purchasing preferences long-term. As the landscape evolves, businesses are relying on their distribution partners to drive growth across their global organizations more than ever. Partners are now expected to provide selling solutions, value-added services, and run complex omnichannel networks. Our updated Capability-Based Channel Management report uses our global benchmarking survey results and our insights from working with hundreds of multinational corporations to provide executives with a framework to benchmark their global distribution management structure. We found that in the past five years, an increasing number of multinationals have sought to strengthen their incentive and training programs, but considerable gaps remain.
We have identified five key actions that you can take today to improve your channel outcomes. In a strong indirect management system, each of the five components should work in concert with the others.
- Consistent Process – Support channel managers with standard guidance, processes, and templates
- Channel Manager – Appoint a dedicated channel manager to manage distributors
- Capability Monitoring – Regularly discuss capability development in quarterly business reviews with partners
- Capability Training – Provide training resources tailored to priority capability development areas
- Status-Based Incentives – Introduce a status-based incentive program with different tiers of benefits and consequences
In our experience working with companies adopting capability-based channel management, we find that the ones that are able to drive consistent, meaningful results are those that implement not just one component of the five, but ideally the whole set of them. When all components of the system are deployed in concert, they reinforce each other and drive strong, motivated, and meaningful change in how distributors act and the way in which they generate results.
FrontierView has all the information you need about your market, industry, and company in real-time to power your business decisions. We offer a solution that puts the right information at the right time, at your fingertips. If you would like to speak with one of our analysts about how you can implement these five adjustments to better manage your channels and mitigate risk, start your free trial to speak with a dedicated Client Services Manager and receive complimentary access to our offering.