WHAT DOES A CHANNEL PARTNER MANAGER DO?
The Channel Partner Manager prospects, qualifies, and onboards partners to drive consistent business growth, alongside forecasting sales and achieving predefined targets. This role requires collaboration with sales and account managers to support partners, create strategic plans, and conduct both in-person and webinar-based presentations and training. The manager also maintains strong relationships with partners, manages performance reporting, and ensures partners are well-versed in best sales practices and product knowledge.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Channel Partner Manager
1. Channel Partner Manager Tasks
- Partner Strategy Development: Support in defining partner strategy for the market.
- Market Gap Analysis: Identify gaps in market coverage and strategic partners to address those gaps, and meet revenue growth targets through partners.
- Partner Acquisition and Management: Gaining new partners and building on the collaboration with existing partners to maximize partner revenue.
- Partner Education Enhancement: Increase educating partners' know-how through technical and commercial training.
- Sales Process Support: Accompanying the partners in the sales process from lead generation to joint appointments with the customer, right through to quoting and subsequent cross- and upselling.
- Customer Pipeline Management: Tracking and actively promoting the evolution of the customer pipeline with partners.
- Partner Campaign Development: Develop partner campaigns and events in cooperation with the partners and marketing department.
- Channel Partner Management: Support the regional sales team on the daily management of channel partners.
- Performance Review Coordination: Drive channel partner performance reviews from multi-dimensions regularly by coordination with Regional Sales, Customer Care, Finance, etc.
- Proactive Sales Initiative: Carry out agreed sales plans & activities to proactively seek out new accounts and business opportunities with a focus on Channel Partners and major accounts.
2. Senior Channel Partner Manager Roles
- Strategic Partnership Execution: Assist in the execution of a strategic partnership plan aligned with Global Fraud Solutions's intent for both near-term and long-term growth strategy.
- Product Adoption Maximization: Maximize adoption of full TruValidate suite.
- Revenue Growth through Global Partnerships: Leverage global partnerships to increase revenue.
- Technical Synergy Identification: Identify technical synergies with Technology Service Providers (TSP) to advance TU's position and attractiveness to their offering/suite.
- Strategic Account Leadership: Identify, pursue, and lead partner account development with a focus on strategic accounts.
- Partnership and Alliance Management: Design, create and manage effective partnership and alliance collaboration across sales verticals and product horizontals.
- Competitive Analysis: Assess competitors and highlight competitive differentiators through partner integrations.
- Market Trend Analysis: Provide the Global Partner Team with market and buyer trends gleaned through partnerships.
- Collaborative Market Strategy: Collaborate with the platform team on future states to win market share in each vertical.
- Cross-functional Team Collaboration: Collaborate with Verticals, Product, and Customer Success teams.
- Product Development Input: Provide input to future product development, pricing structure, and onboarding TSPs.
3. Channel Partner Manager Essential Functions
- Local Ecosystem Management: Accommodating customers' wants and needs to have a local presence in terms of sales, delivery, and support through local Channel Ecosystem.
- Partner Recruitment: Identifying, qualifying, and recruiting the right partners for Featurespace across the Territory.
- Executive Relationship Building: Building relationships and establishing communications at the highest executive levels with partners to understand their needs and priorities to build a joint pipeline.
- Strategic Planning: Defining and agreeing on a strategic go-to-market plan with top-tier Partners.
- Platform Evangelism: Evangelizing the platform to confirm and communicate the differentiated value of Featurespace to partners and their customers at both the technical and business levels.
- Sales Acceleration through Channels: Understanding the formal and informal buying process in the customer’s environment and how to best leverage the Channel Ecosystem to accelerate sales.
- Sales Partnership Facilitation: Helping Sales to work with partners to find, drive, and close opportunities with their customers, including negotiations and procurement activities.
- Team Collaboration: Consistently communicating and brainstorming with management and the extended team.
- Partner Performance Review: Reviewing Partner opportunities with management and the extended team weekly and in QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews).
- Partner Management: Recruiting, onboarding, enabling, and managing partners in the territories managed.
4. Channel Partner Manager Role Purpose
- Lead Management: Develop and help manage partner-generated leads and opportunities.
- Relationship Building: Build and develop long-lasting relationships with partners.
- Contract Negotiation: Assist with partner contract negotiation.
- Training Coordination: Coordinate ongoing training for partners aligned with joint go-to-market strategy.
- Customer Engagement: Engage with various business aspects to meet customer needs through partners and develop specific plans for each partner.
- Performance Reporting: Measure, monitor, and report on partner activity to management, highlighting key activities and results.
- Quality Communication: Ensure all communication with partners is of high quality, including documents and presentations.
- Campaign Management: Coordinate and manage joint marketing campaigns with partners.
- Value Proposition Communication: Understand and articulate Feature Space's solutions and value proposition to partners and customers.
5. Channel Partner Manager Roles and Details
- Partner Prospecting: Prospecting, qualifying, and onboarding channel partners to drive monthly business growth.
- Sales Forecasting: Forecasting monthly sales revenue to achieve set sales goals and KPIs.
- Partner Collaboration: Collaborating with Sales and Account Managers to support partners and create yearly and quarterly channel plans.
- Partner Engagement: Traveling to meet channel partners, conducting presentations, and demonstrating products live.
- Partner Training: Training Scan-Optics partners on effective selling techniques, using the partner portal, and product usage.
- Relationship Building: Building excellent relationships with channel partners with a focus on retaining sophisticated partners.
- Sales Coaching: Coaching inexperienced Scan-Optics partners on the best sales practices.
- Sales Reporting: Creating monthly sales reports and coordinating with the finance department to communicate partners' monthly commissions.
- Channel Management: Managing channel partner relations.
- Performance Reporting: Providing consistent and comprehensive reports on partner performance against targets to management.
- Webinar Conduction: Conducting webinars to attract new partners and training sessions on new products and services.