By Kirill Astrakhan, Head of Channel, Global Sales, Kaspersky
Strong partners and distributors are key business enablers for vendors focused on B2B sales. To help develop this much needed resource, vendors must equip partners with the right tools that will allow them to sell more product without added steps or complications.
At Kaspersky, our approach to building a strong channel focuses on three key pillars: profitability of the channel, ease of doing business for our partners and best-in-class business support. As a result, in 2020, our channel showed double-digit growth in revenue, and key partners grew two and a half times faster than the market average, highlighting the success of our strategy.
So, how can all businesses best help their partners to become more effective? Here are a few steps that we have tried and tested with notable success:
1. Be flexible
Flexibility towards partners means meeting their requests, even if they are not part of the usual offering. This may include discounts, special conditions, or even special product bundles for a specific project. To make this possible, vendors need to be agile at the HQ level and provide some degree of freedom of action to regional offices. Although it demands extra effort, these measures will result in mutual business benefits and faster growth for vendors and partners.
2. Communicate clearly and professionally
According to recent research, channel partners named business support from a vendor as the top benefit when choosing who to work with. This can be achieved by having a professional partner account manager on the vendor’s side who quickly solves any problems or answers the partner’s questions. But most importantly, this person should also be able to help in business development: understand how the partner’s business works, how it earns and spends money and its profit and loss statement principles. This leads to setting realistic goals and relevant business development plans, evaluating progress, and developing effective marketing campaigns which drive return on investment.
It’s important for partners to know what to expect from the vendor. There should be an established way to communicate company strategy to the channel, so partners can better plan their actions in the market or sort out any challenges. Strategy updates, webinars and in-person meetings with key partners should be held every quarter or several times a year. Networking through informal chats during events is also a good way to help strengthen business ties. Senior management should not refuse to communicate with partners, while partners should also not need to break through several levels of management to gain access to the person who can help.
3. Save partners’ time
Partners should not have to adapt to a vendor’s business processes. By freeing partners from routine actions and difficulties, you can allow them to focus on their business and not waste time on tedious tasks.
For example, the routine process of ordering licenses can take hours, or even days, for emails, calls, discussions about products and bundles, approvals pending, and so on. Vendors can free up this time and let partners spend it on something more meaningful.
4. Focus on the partner experience
Simplicity of a partner program and tools to make the partner experience better are essential building blocks to drive sales. For example, if a partner plans marketing activities once a semester, but the vendor requires quarterly plans and doesn’t allow planning for future periods, it will be very difficult to align with one another. So, if the partner was to submit their plan late, it might not be able to receive marketing support for the entire quarter meaning it will have to wait for the next quarter.
Big vendors have plenty of products, tiers, services, and solutions totaling hundreds of items in the pricelist. Of course, partners should understand a vendor’s product portfolio but giving them an online tool for quick and easy product selection for ordering is crucial. Such a configurator helps partners build the most effective set of products for particular customers and highlights low-hanging upsell opportunities.
5. Provide expertise and technical support
Selling complex solutions requires special technical expertise, which vendors should provide to partners in the form of sales and technical education and access to pre-sales resources. It is important to support partners in this way, but vendors’ expertise should complement their knowledge. Vendors can take care of the proof of concept, allocate sales and pre-sales experts to the partner, or even help in launching marketing campaigns in the regions. This also works for new offerings, as partners need help to be confident with the technical background of a new product.
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Each step requires effort, resources and investment from vendors, but it will ultimately lead to better trust, efficiencies and ultimately higher channel sales. The closer the partner and vendor work together, the better they can delve into the technical details of the product, the vendor’s brand values and strategy, and as a result unlock more sales opportunities by understanding customer needs.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kirill Astrakhan, VP, Corporate Business Development, Kaspersky
Kirill Astrakhan is leading Corporate Business Development at Kaspersky. He has over 15 years’ experience in IT, helping Partners succeed by seizing the enormous market opportunities available in the cybersecurity industry.
Before his appointment he was leading the development of channel sales on a global level – setting and executing Kaspersky’s channel strategy, key programs and processes to grow the company’s partner ecosystem worldwide. Throughout a challenging 2020, Kirill focused his team on providing Partners with knowledge and skills on the full range of Kaspersky products and solutions, to empower them to engage with customers of any size throughout the sales cycle. Kaspersky ended an unpredictable year #1 in the Canalys EMEA annual rating, according to Partner feedback – improving by 12 points over 2019.
Prior to joining Kaspersky, Kirill held several senior partner-focused positions at Microsoft, before becoming Head of Channel Sales for Middle East, Turkey & Africa in 2016, where he was responsible for managing and growing the Kaspersky channel and accelerating Enterprise business in over 60 countries across the region.
Kirill is passionate about providing Partners with the best experiences and ensuring Kaspersky is the easiest, and most rewarding, vendor to work with; “Partners are our growth lever, and if we continue to help them be profitable with Kaspersky, this collaboration will remain fruitful for both parties.”
