Channel Management, Membership And Motivation

Some of the things you must consider when relying on channel marketing to present your product to the public are channel membership, channel motivation and channel management. Membership is an important aspect of channel sales and marketing because it decides who will be reselling your product and what other products will be sold alongside. Some channels are more appropriate than others.

Channel marketing will be difficult if you choose to sell your product in a discount store, for example, when you have a high-end product. Motivation is also extremely important for channel sales, because if your partners are not motivated to market and sell your product, it will just sit there. Motivating the organizations in a distribution chain and ensuring that they will work with you towards your channel marketing goals requires great effort. Some suppliers try to offer a higher profit margin than their competitors to encourage higher channel sales, which can be effective, but also costly. Some suppliers choose to motivate their partners with tighter channel management, by training their partners as intensely as they would their own in-house sales force. When it comes to channel management, there is no way of stressing how important it is for the supplier.

You can't just supply your product to the reseller and assume they will do exactly what you want to do without putting some effort into managing their activities. In practice, many organizations use a mix of different channel sales partners; these channels complement a direct sales force, calling on the larger accounts, with agents covering the smaller customers and prospects. The goals of a channel management program should be the same as the goals for an internal sales force, and the same amount of management and care should be taken. By considering channel membership, channel motivation and channel management very carefully, you should be able to market your product effectively even when you have many different partners in your distribution channel.

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