The world is changing fast. It was not long ago that the only people who got published were journalists and authors. Publishing a book meant significant investment (and risk) on the part of somebody, either the publisher or the author. Now anyone can get published by setting up a blog with free blogging software like WordPress, and they can generate significant traffic and success.
When I created this blog, it took me about 15 minutes to set it up and write the first post. I chose the features I wanted from a set of applets, uploaded a custom image and invited the first people to read it. Total investment = zero. Return on investment as yet unknown.
We wonder why it is that running a channel sales program is therefore so prohibitively expensive. You need dedicated channel sales people on salary and customized software from a leading CRM tool. You might have one or more private portals created from scratch by a web designer, and the expense of maintaining and promoting these sites. The worse news yet, is that research shows that these significant investments in partnering, activation and recruitment yield typical results that are very mediocre. I have yet to meet a channel sales leader who is satisifed with the performance of their channel partners.
We think that social networking has the best chance to activate channel partners for these reasons:
- business is about relationships, social networking is about connecting people
- communication is improved
- a unified community is dynamic and interesting
Finally, we think that setting up your channel sales ecosystem with Web 2.0 tools should be no more difficult than setting up a blog. You should be able to do it in 15 minutes, and it should be free until it can demonstrate to you that its improving your bottom line.
This is our vision for AccountMaven – Push-Button Partnering.
