“Beware, for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” — Spoken by the monster in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic sci-fi novel Frankenstein.
Frankenstein’s monster is known for many characteristics: his creation, neck bolts, and fear of fire come to mind. He’s also been known to incite a bit of chaos.
Take your channel program, for instance.
You started with a small piece, maybe launching a partner portal. Next came the addition of a learning management tool. Then, perhaps, it was a channel incentives program. After that, you may have bolted on a channel marketing solution. These point solutions may work wonders individually, but collectively… What you end up with is a channel technology monster with a lot of mismatched and unconnected pieces that don’t work well together. Just like Frankenstein’s monster — your disjointed channel IT infrastructure is wreaking havoc on your channel program and partners. Far from a fearless, powerful program that can go the distance, chaos stymies your channel plans at every turn.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways Frank may be appearing in your program.
Kiss Partner Engagement Goodbye
Frank’s got a lot of qualities you may find off-putting — and if you find them off-putting, partners find them downright unmanageable. Partners should be welcomed to your partner portal and able to locate everything they need with ease. Remember: they have options for where they can spend their time and resources for sales and marketing. Stacking the deck in your favor with a beautiful, easy-to-use portal just makes sense.
And that’s where Frank often fails. When your ChanTech solutions are all over the place, partners turn and run to something that requires less effort to use.
Data Scattered to the Winds
When the different parts of your channel program don’t talk to each other easily, data visibility is a distant dream — and Frank makes gathering data a nightmare. Without clear access to all your data, it’s impossible to keep track of how campaigns are performing or what partners are using the most. You can’t rely on data that isn’t accurate, or, even worse, that you can’t find at all.
Frank’s Too Spooky to Share Skills
Partners often don’t have time to waste on hunting out resources on different parts of your partner portal. How can they become subject matter experts on your brand if it’s impossible to figure out your messaging or product lines? And how will you be able to report on their abilities when learning management tools are spread out across multiple platforms? Frank stretches skill-learning systems until they’re much harder to use than they have to be.
And that’s really the point: Frank makes a lot of channel management much harder than it has to be.
Now that you know how Frank can crush your careful channel plans, we’re sure you’d like to kick him out of your program for good. Frank is why we created ZiftONE. It’s a monster-slaying, channel-changing platform, and with it, we help channel leaders put Frank to rest.
Find out more about Frank’s channel antics in our brand new eBook, The Misadventures of Frank the ChanTech Monster. You’ll see all the ways he manifests and how to find channel success post-Frank with improved visibility and communication. There’s a new day dawning for your channel program, no pitchforks necessary.
