Get Started with Partner Visit Management
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the value of visits in building relationships with partners.
- Explain real-life examples of visits across industries.
- Explain how Partner Visit Management helps managers and field reps.
Nurture Relationships with Partners
In value-chain ecosystems, it’s critical to build trust and strengthen the alignment between automotive and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), suppliers, distributors, partners, and dealers. Partner visits improve relations, reinforce the partner’s trust, help troubleshoot issues, and lead to effective sales management. And the training that field reps get, along with the feedback from partners regarding their visits, eventually leads to a long-term, mutually beneficial connection.
A visit is more than just a meet-and-greet; its goal is to achieve impactful objectives, and is done across different industries. Let’s check out some real-life examples of visits across industries.
So, visits are crucial to maintaining business relationships. And to manage these visits, you have Salesforce’s Partner Visit Management.
Delve into Partner Visit Management
Partner Visit Management streamlines visit planning in the manufacturing and automotive industries. It enables businesses to collaborate with partners on sales and marketing activities, track partner performance, provide partner training and support, and much more. Here’s what you can accomplish with it.
Task |
Description |
|---|---|
Manage visits and assign visitors |
Schedule visits, specify visit locations, provide special instructions, and assign field reps to visits. |
Define tasks and key performance indicators |
Make visits more productive for field reps by assigning clear tasks such as discussing quarterly targets, checking warranty renewals, or auditing inventory. Track key metrics during visits, such as spare parts count, scrap percentage, or safety training dates, to gain insights into partner performance and compliance. |
Contextualize visit tasks with customer activity |
Associate records of customer activity with the tasks to be done so that field or dealership reps can find the right information at the right time. For example, you can associate a Warranty Term record to a warranty renewal task, or an Asset record to a task for inspecting damage. |
Create reusable templates for recurring visits |
To consolidate tasks for recurring visits, create a reusable template and add tasks to it. The template can be reused and applied to multiple visits, saving time and effort. |
Plan ad-hoc visits |
Plan and conduct an ad-hoc visit to check urgent issues. For example, an automotive manufacturer conducts an ad-hoc visit due to reports of a faulty engine in a particular car model. |
Complete tasks and capture metrics during a visit |
Field reps can complete the assigned task and capture the metrics on their mobile phones. The metrics involved can be captured in boolean, percentage, decimals, integer, date time, and text format. |
Track visit data in your Salesforce org |
Compare the expected value with the actual value. All this information is collected in a single place and helps achieve effective results. |
Raftavium Motors is a high-profile OEM and a well-known brand in the world of car manufacturers. In this module, find out the challenges that the company’s facing with partner visits, and how it uses Partner Visit Management to address them.
Raftavium Motors’ Challenges
As an OEM, Raftavium Motors banks on suppliers for a steady supply of car parts such as brakes, suspensions, gear boxes, and axles. The company is also heavily dependent on its dealers for revenue streams. It must ensure that dealers are selling their cars in high volumes and providing superior service facilities. Raftavium Motors conducts quarterly and ad-hoc visits to partner locations to negotiate sales agreement renewals, discuss discounts, and more. But recently, it has been struggling with partner visits.
There’s a lack of clarity on who’s going where and what to do after they have reached the location. Additionally, there’s uncertainty on how to record and assess the task information gathered during a visit. Data is scattered everywhere and it’s a challenge to find specific information. Some inspections are conducted repeatedly and others are entirely ignored, leading to a disorganized partner visit management function for Raftavium Motors. Robin Roy, a manager at the company, decides to try Partner Visit Management to manage and track partner visits better.
In the next unit, discover how the team can use the app. And follow along as Robin plans the visits.