Your building materials partners’ sales people are, in a very real sense, the face of your brand. They’re the first, and sometimes only people your end customers interact with when purchasing your products. Their loyalty is critical.

Ensuring the channel content you provide on your dealer portal helps them do their jobs better, and ultimately will result in better sales. Here’s why.

Saves them time

Time is the most precious commodity any of us have, and that goes double for sales people. They need to spend as much time as they can researching and understanding their customers, solving their problems, building relationships, and taking their orders.

Any time spent searching for the right sales tools and product materials takes away from their main jobs. If you can personalize the content they receive through your channel management portal, you maximize the time they have to do what they do best.

Gives them information they can use right away

There’s nothing better than having the right tools, the moment you need them. That’s what personalizing your portal content does.

If a sales representative regularly uses training guides and spec sheets in certain formats, they need to be able to access them when they need them, not spend time sifting through a menu of available tools. That speeds up the sales process, helps create satisfied customers, and makes your channel sales people look good.

Helps them adapt to a changing marketplace

Smart sales people are not stuck in their ways. They are able to adapt to changing sales environments and respond to new scenarios. Especially if they have the right materials at their fingertips.

With content that’s customized to their needs and preferences, channel sales people can turn on a dime and use the right tools at the right time. And increase their opportunities and closing rates.

How to personalize your channel management portal content

Personalized content makes life easier for your channel sales people, but it may sound like it’s easier said than done. After all, your channel may have hundreds, even thousands of individuals, each with different needs and approaches.

But with the right channel management solution, it can be done.

Let sales people self-select

One of the first things you can do is allow sales people to tell you what they need. Provide options when they set up their account to let you know the types of materials they use most and how they use them. This will help you give them what they need, and also provide valuable insights into your channel sales force.

Provide options

Sales is not a one-size-fits-all process, and every sales representative has different preferences. To account for this, create multiple versions of your sales materials. Detailed and short versions. Digital and printable. Video and text. The more options you provide, the easier it will be for sales people to find the tools that work for them.

Get feedback and track usage

Finally, the best way to provide personalized content is to let the channel tell you what’s working and what’s not. If you solicit feedback, and act on it when you can, not only will you improve your materials, you’ll show your channel partners that their input is valued.

Of course, not everyone provides feedback, even when asked. So you should also track how your materials are used. Through this process, you will begin to notice patterns of how sales people operate and what materials work best. And that makes personalization easier.

Conclusion

Personalizing the content you provide through your channel management portal is an effective way of maximizing the effectiveness of your channel sales force. And better yet, it helps create brand loyalty.

It encourages your channel partners to use and engage with your portal because they perceive it has value. When more people use your portal, the greater return on investment you will realize.

But most importantly, it helps to create a true partnership with your channel partners because it fosters two-way communication. When your channel partners get the materials they can actually use, they feel like you’re paying attention to them and are trying your best to help them.

And that results in loyalty and dedication that can’t be achieved any other way.

Learn more about how ZiftONE and how it can help your building material manufacturing business drive revenue and stay competitive!

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