Use Sales Analytics to Make Smart Moves
Learning Objectives
After completing this module, you’ll be able to:
- Know which challenges partner relationship management (PRM) can solve.
- Explain the difference between customer relationship management (CRM) and PRM.
- List three ways Sales Cloud PRM helps you optimize the partner lifecycle.
You + Partners = Soaring Sales
So, you have an awesome product, your sales team is totally crushing it, and the market can’t get enough. Awesome! But to stay on this trajectory, you need to hire more sales reps and that’s going to take time and money. Yikes! Fortunately, your company decides to bring in partners who are experts at expanding into global markets and new industries. In fact, channel partners now sell one-third of all deals worldwide, so you’re in good company.
Partner relationship management (PRM) is a business strategy for improving communication between you and your channel partners. It helps you create an empowered partner ecosystem with the information, tools, and resources your partners need.
Manufacturers and high-tech companies are famous for using partners, but partners benefit many other industries. And of course, they all have unique needs: Brokers need leads and policy pricing so they can accurately quote a small group insurance plan. Franchisees need marketing tools to build a customer base in their local area.
No matter what industry you’re in, consider your partners an extension of your team—and you want your customers to know that. So, treat your partners like you treat a new sales rep: Recruit the right partners, teach them how to drive new business, train them to sell smart, and empower them to revolutionize the customer experience.
What’s the Difference Between CRM and PRM?
Customer relationship management and partner relationship management both center around the idea of relationship management. PRM then goes beyond to solve specific partner needs, like educating, preventing channel conflict, and creating visibility for you and your partners.
CRM applications, like Sales Cloud, are built for direct sales (think: your sales reps). They help your internal teams manage interactions with potential and current customers. They compile data from every department, store it on a centralized customer record, and drive customer retention and future sales.
PRM applications are built for indirect sales (think: partners). They extend your CRM to help you manage partners and make sure the customer has the same great experience whether they talk to your sales team or your partner. Plus, they help properly train partners and have the customer data and tools partners require to drive retention and future sales.
PRM extends CRM functionality to your partners, then adds lots of partner-specific functions on top.
Optimize the Partner Lifecycle with Sales Cloud PRM
If you want your partner relationship to thrive and your partners motivated to sell, then optimize the partner lifecycle. Sales Cloud PRM quickly and easily extends Salesforce to your partners so they can intelligently drive deals forward on their own or in a co-selling motion alongside you. It’s built on the Salesforce Platform, and it’s easy to connect to third-party systems. So companies of all sizes can power partners with the leads, analytics, content, and support they need. You can help accelerate their sales in a personalized, mobile, responsive experience.
Sales Cloud PRM empowers you to:
- Create a modern, compelling user experience for partners: It’s easy to customize your partners’ experience with a simple Guided Setup Wizard. You can configure who gets which leads, how deals are registered, how marketing funds are divided up, and determine tiers for different partners. You can even customize it to fit your brand’s look and feel with a simple drag-and-drop application.
- 360-degree view of partners: Sales Cloud PRM comes with real-time dashboards so you see what every partner is doing—where they’re excelling and where they need help. This makes it easier for channel managers to advance deals and understand where to invest their resources.
- Get the right information to the right partner: Sales Cloud PRM uses Salesforce’s world-class sharing model, so you can easily control what deal information partners see. Plus, Einstein Content Recommendations use machine learning to surface relevant files.
- Make every partner their own marketer: Channel Marketing Automation lets partners build, track, and analyze email campaigns to deliver 1:1 customer journeys.
Using partners is a sophisticated way to extend your team and boost your sales. And Sales Cloud PRM is an excellent way to extend Salesforce to those partners, all while fostering strong relationships and boosting sales.
