Episode 2 - Crafting the Right Online Experience for Your Channel Program

Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s Microcast audio series.

We’d like to welcome our listeners to our Channel Partners microcast audio series from Convey Services, a technology specialist that runs a content and marketing portal network in the channel used by over 23K sales partners. Today’s series is all about crafting the right online experience for your channel program.

Without fail, most of us begin our buying experience online. We google the product we want to buy, read reviews, compare prices and often complete the transaction without leaving the comfort of our living room. Most of us look at that experience as easy, quick and convenient.

However, when it comes to helping our sales partners with an online experience to find services they want to represent, compare options and complete the transactions, vendors in the telecom and cloud marketplace may not be have elevated their strategy enough to make it easy for sales partners to go online and get what they need to sell services.

If your company is highly active in face to face interactions by sponsoring partner events, going to trade shows and traveling to meet partners, a key fact that you must remember is that your message fades quickly once you are back on the airplane going home. Here are some interesting statisticsfrom the training industry:

After only one hour, people retain less than half of the information presented.After one day, that drops to 70%.After six days, people forget 75 percent of the information has gone out the door

Without a good online strategy to reinforce your message, attract partners to keep looking at you, and make information easy to consume, most of the dollars spent in sponsorships, events, and face to face contact will be wasted.

Because Convey runs an online portal network connecting partners to vendors through our master agent portals, we have the opportunity to evaluate how effective vendors are at their online strategy. Here are some ideas to elevate your game.