Case Studies

Technology Case Study: Managed Services Channel Management

Client
An international Managed Services company.

The Client’s Problem
A large Managed Services company’s sales goals (set by their global headquarters) required increasing the number of channel resellers they had. Their internal sales efforts had resulted in strong account management, but new acquisitions had gone flat. Efforts to spark sales growth through marketing (driving inbound prospects) further compounded the problem – now the sales representatives were reliant on inbound leads and still behind their targets.

The Market
Small to medium-sized VAR’s (Value Added Resellers) acted as the end-user sales channel by buying from the client and selling to end-users. The market was competitive with much larger brands than the client’s, ranging from Microsoft to the major IT players garnering spotlight.

The Sales Partnerships Solution

  • Sales Partnerships evaluated the client’s internal program. Taking areas where the client had been successful and applying them to the Sales Partnerships methodologies, a strong blueprint on how to move the program successfully forward was created.

  • Working with the client, we profiled the characteristics of the best sales representatives for Sales Partnerships to bring aboard for the program, and recruited them within weeks. The program was ready for selling within the month.

  • The focus of Sales Partnerships’ efforts was to acquire new resellers for the client (requiring substantial payments by the resellers to be classified as “acquired”), while benchmarking their internal client program. Because the program focused heavily on cold calling, very little inbound marketing was used, and any new prospects received were used for further benchmarking.

  • Within 6 months, Sales Partnerships beat the sales targets, including out-performing the client’s internal team by 42% on a month-to-month basis. This included a 3:1 better closing ratio on the inbound prospects Sales Partnerships was given for benchmarking.

Results
Sales Partnerships was able to help the client beat their established sales targets while identifying problems and/or opportunities in their current environment. The client’s internal sales representatives were migrated to more account management roles, and marketing costs realized a better ROI than they had previously seen.