Webinar Overview
Best Practices in Channel Objectives, Measurements and Dashboards

Are you interested in learning how to:

• Improve the performance of your resellers and alliance partners?
• Align your corporate objectives with partner metrics and measurements?
• Set channel sales objectives that support line of business and departmental goals?
• Create and maintain systems to measure performance against those objectives?
• Manage integrated dashboards to measure the performance of an entire territory?

If so, please join us on Wednesday, June 20th at 1:00PM EDT, to learn more about Best practices in Channel Objectives, Measurements and Dashboards.

This webinar will provide you with some of the latest insights into how you can improve the performance of your channel operations and drive more predictable and sustainable revenue with your partners.

Register for Best Practices in Channel Objectives, Measurements and Dashboards

Webinar Overview
Professional Services – A Perfect Storm

Measuring what people do is the secret weapon for margin improvement. During this webinar presentation, we will discuss the implications of the perfect storm and how these factors can sweep away all but the strongest professional services organizations.

If you're interested in learning how to:

• Prioritize programs for improving productivity, costs and revenue
• Increase knowledge of industry best practices
• Increase awareness of your position in the marketplace
• Provide early warnings of competitive disadvantages
• Accelerate change to improve operational efficiencies

You won't want to miss Professional Services – A Perfect Storm, scheduled for Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 1:00PM EDT.

Register for Professional Services – A Perfect Storm

Survey Participant Message
Measuring Channel Success Survey

Consolidated survey results will be presented during the Best Practices in Channel Objectives, Measurements and Dashboards webinar scheduled for Wednesday, June 20th at 1:00 pm EDT.

Take Survey - Measuring Channel Success
Register For Webinar – Best Practices in Channel Objectives, Measurements and Dashboards

InfoMentis Adds New Team Member

Alpharetta, Georgia, June 15, 2007 – InfoMentis, Inc., a global consulting and performance improvement company announced today that Laurie Genevish has joined the InfoMentis team as Instructional Content Manager. “Laurie’s extensive experience will be extremely valuable in our ongoing effort to develop and deliver the best solutions for our clients,” said Steve Maul, Chief Learning and Strategy Officer. “Her experience and passion for excellence are well aligned to InfoMentis’ overall goal of enabling clients to always go to the NextLevel.”

Laurie Genevish is a skilled training professional with more than 12 years of training management and performance improvement experience. Her extensive expertise encompasses strategic development, design, implementation and facilitation of technical, employee and management development programs. Prior to joining InfoMentis, Ms. Genevish managed professional development for Manhattan Associates. In this role, she was responsible for strategy, design, implementation, and evaluation of all global training programs for over 1,700 employees. Ms. Genevish’s background includes extensive experience in developing and managing corporate training programs for large organizations such as Transamerica Insurance & Investments and Kinko’s. She began her career working at the March of Dimes as a Community Director and for North Carolina State University as the Assistant Director of the Parents’ Association and Annual Fund Development Coordinator. She’s also a member of the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD).

InfoMentis is a global consulting and performance improvement company providing configurable programs that help our clients enable cultural change. We teach our clients how to more effectively get, keep and satisfy their customers and help them achieve bottom-line results. Our configurable courseware, e-Learning modules, consulting services, and collaborative productivity tools are designed to be adapted for role-based behavioral change for those in marketing, sales, services, support and management around the entire customer lifecycle.

Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, InfoMentis has helped industry leading organizations around the world understand and embrace the value of determining predictable revenue streams. Through our unique offerings, they are able to recognize that an opportunity for growth is significant among organizations eager to differentiate.

Founded in 1996, InfoMentis has provided performance improvement strategy, consulting and coaching to over 30,000 professionals, in 46 countries and six continents.

For more information on InfoMentis and how it takes organizations to the NextLevel, please visit www.infomentis.com.

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InfoMentis Expands Team with New Additions

Alpharetta, Georgia, June 12, 2007 – InfoMentis, Inc., a global consulting and performance improvement company announced today that Georgia based Scott Fletcher and California based Mike Dubrall have accepted Practice Director positions with InfoMentis. “The addition of Scott Fletcher and Mike Dubrall will serve us well as our company continues to grow and expand into new markets.” said Gerard Frey, Vice President of Practice Management. Their combined experience will bring immense value to our company and our client base.”

Scott Fletcher’s career encompasses more than 20 years of experience with information technology solutions and new business programs for companies including PeopleSoft, Dun & Bradstreet Software, Evant, and i2 Technologies. He has an extensive history of building and leading professional services organizations in both small start-up companies as well as large multi-national corporations. Prior to joining InfoMentis, Mr. Fletcher founded The Buswell Group, a strategy consulting firm focused on professional services within technology companies that provides speaking and educational services. Additionally, Mr. Fletcher’s company partnered with PSVillage to provide a Professional Services Benchmark Survey focused exclusively on professional services within the software industry.

Mike Dubrall has over 24 years of technology marketing and sales experience, primarily working with vendors to design, create and optimize their channels of product distribution. In 1996, Mr. Dubrall founded the Technology Channels Group, specializing in consulting and training to improve partnering results for high-tech clients. In addition, he has extensively researched the development of productive channel relationships and has published numerous articles and reports, including the Partner Manager Census (Salary and Investment Report), Channel Loyalty Study, and the Technology Channels Group’s annual Internet and Channels Report. Additionally, Mr. Dubrall held channel-related positions with Sybase and NCR.

InfoMentis is a global consulting and performance improvement company providing configurable programs that help our clients enable cultural change. We teach our clients how to more effectively get, keep and satisfy their customers and help them achieve bottom-line results. Our configurable courseware, e-Learning modules, consulting services, and collaborative productivity tools are designed to be adapted for role-based behavioral change for those in marketing, sales, services, support and management around the entire customer lifecycle.

Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, InfoMentis has helped industry leaders around the world understand and embrace the value of determining predictable revenue streams. Through our unique offerings, they are able to recognize that an opportunity for growth is significant among organizations eager to differentiate.

Founded in 1996, InfoMentis has provided performance improvement strategy, consulting and coaching to over 30,000 professionals, in 46 countries and six continents.

For more information on InfoMentis, please visit www.infomentis.com.

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InfoMentis Continues to Grow With New Team Hires

Alpharetta, Georgia, May 9, 2007 – InfoMentis, Inc., a global consulting and performance improvement company, has expanded its team with the addition of Georgia-based Greg Barnett and California-based Julie Perino. “I am delighted that Greg and Julie have decided to join InfoMentis,” said Wendy Reed, CEO. “Their combined industry experience and reputation of client focus makes them ideal hires for InfoMentis.”

Greg Barnett, a successful technology entrepreneur brings InfoMentis over 20 years of sales and sales management experience. Most recently, Mr. Barnett was co-founder and president of LightYear Technology, a healthcare technology company providing marketing EMR Software, digital imaging, radiology and diagnostic software. In this role, he led the business from ground zero to $25M valuation in four years and was instrumental in securing the venture capital needed to infuse operating cash into the company. Prior to LightYear, Mr. Barnett’s experience also includes a range of sales management positions with organizations such as Provisions Systems, DEXX Laboratories and AVL Scientific where he was recognized on numerous occasions for his contributions.

Julie Perino brings 18 years of enterprise software industry sales, marketing, channels, product marketing, and product management experience to InfoMentis. Most recently, Ms. Perino was with Cognos Corporation, a leading provider of business intelligence and performance management solutions, where she was the director of channels marketing. In this role, she led OEM channel marketing and sales enablement initiatives for North America. Prior to Cognos, Ms. Perino held a variety of senior sales and marketing positions at Dun & Bradstreet Software (Geac), Catalyst International, and Global CommerceZone. Ms. Perino started her career with IBM’s U.S. Marketing and Services Division.

InfoMentis is a global consulting and performance improvement company providing configurable programs that help our clients enable cultural change. We teach our clients how to more effectively get, keep and satisfy their customers and help them achieve bottom-line results. Our configurable courseware, e-Learning modules, consulting services, and collaborative productivity tools are designed to be adapted for role-based behavioral change for those in marketing, sales, services, support and management around the entire customer lifecycle.

Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, InfoMentis has helped industry leaders around the world understand and embrace the value of determining predictable revenue streams. Through our unique offerings, they are able to recognize that an opportunity for growth is significant among organizations eager to differentiate.

Founded in 1996, InfoMentis has provided performance improvement strategy, consulting and coaching to over 30,000 professionals, in 46 countries and six continents.

For more information on InfoMentis, please visit www.infomentis.com.

   Download the Article
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Best Practices in Channel Objectives, Measurements, and Dashboards
By Mike Dubrall

Channels are a complicated business, filled with nuance, complications, and outright complexity. What works in one situation might be counterproductive in another – and the very best objectives for one channel partner might short circuit a relationship with a different reseller. As a result, an important job for a channel sales manager is to evaluate, adapt, and execute within a flexible relationship framework that allows multiple types of objectives and measurements. In this environment, setting relevant channel objectives is a difficult business and actually gathering the data to measure success can be downright impossible. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try!

Everyone knows that you get what you measure. Senior channel executives understand that their organization's measurement systems strongly affect the behavior of managers, channel sales people, and especially partners. However, only the most successful companies have effectively aligned their corporate metrics with the objectives they set to measure partner performance (and all the organizational levels in between). The best channel objectives cascade down through the organization and should be logically interconnected up and down the internal chain of command, ending with the partner. In other words, when the partner achieves objectives negotiated with the channel sales manager, there should be a direct impact on the success of each level in the chain.

Unfortunately, important links in the channel objectives chain are often missing or invisible to channel sales managers, making it difficult for them to measurably impact corporate results through their own actions. (What are the objectives of your line organization?) Making the situation worse is the ability of many channel sales managers to independently negotiate objectives with partners without any systems to ensure that the negotiated objectives directly support the achievement of interlocked territory, departmental, line of business, and corporate objectives. Many times, in fact, there is little or no correlation between objectives at the top and bottom of the command/influence structure.

Channel-related objectives come in all shapes and sizes, depending upon the product, the channel, the financial condition of the vendor, and the level within the value chain. The most successful channel vendors sort through their corporate strategies, set line of business objectives supported by departmental and sales objectives, and then bring most or all of their partner relationships into alignment. However, in an environment where the typical channel operation measures at least 10-12 elements of their operations, it is easy to ignore the last (and most critical) step of making sure that all objectives effectively support the achievement of line of business and corporate goals.

Setting objectives for partners also obligates the vendor to create and maintain systems to measure performance against those objectives. Increasingly, channel organizations are funding the creation of standardized territory-level dashboards (fed by corporate data systems) to measure progress against objectives on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. While there are many ad hoc efforts by channel sales managers to create and maintain their own individual dashboards, the larger channel organizations are funding the development of corporate channel sales dashboards to develop consistency across geographies and improve alignment with corporate goals. Integrated dashboards (measuring the performance of the entire territory) also allow vendors to see if they have improved in one area at the expense of another.

Since there is a huge correlation between a successful partner program and widely-understood channel goals and objectives at all levels of the value chain, vendors need to take the time to agree upon the best metrics and then invest in the systems required to effectively measure and manage. Channel operations typically measure many elements of their business and channel sales managers are typically compensated for the achievement of a variety of hard and soft objectives (dominated by revenue achievement). Beyond this, there are several intersecting levels of channel-related objective setting, which should all be in alignment:

Corporate Channel Objectives
Corporate objectives are an important early indicator of successful channel activities. They will inform any partner or channel manager about where partners fit into the hierarchy of importance. The most common corporate partner objectives are revenue based. For example, some variation of "partners will be responsible for 40% of the corporation's revenue by 2008" is considered a corporate objective by a large number of high tech vendors. Channels also factor into other kinds of corporate goals like reducing costs, increasing market penetration, and improving the customer experience. Some vendors do not mention partners at all in their highest corporate objectives, perhaps communicating a relative lack of importance. However, virtually all vendors with channels should be thinking about how all their corporate goals are impacted by their channel partners.

Department (Line Organization) Objectives
The Vice President of Channel Sales should establish clear directions for the improvement of their channel operations over time – as much to achieve revenue objectives as to create competitive barriers. They are strategic (become the primary vendor in our targeted channel), influential (increase partner close rate on our proposals), depressing (lower our average channel SG&A expenses to industry averages), or inspiring (improve partner or channel sales manager satisfaction). Improving the capabilities of channel sales managers so that they can become trusted advisors to our key partners is a popular departmental objective this year. Creating competitive barriers to ensure future stability is also a critical objective for some fast growing suppliers.

The systems to collect data are often improvised, and dashboards measure qualitative rather than quantitative results. For this reason, some line managers shy away from setting divisional goals associated with the channel. This creates a major disconnect when organizations attempt to align their channel objectives between the top (corporate) and bottom (partner) of the command/influence structure.

Channel Marketing Objectives
Channel Marketing is often an umbrella organization that can include a variety of important program responsibilities related to partnering improvement, among them: demand creation, technical support, training and certification, event management, communications, recruitment, partner portals, etc. Each of these programs could (and should) have its own measurements to ensure continuing relevance to the channel. Consequently, channel marketing people are often measured by the specific results of their programs and their impact on the success of channel sales people and partners.

In addition, many vendors overlay more general marketing objectives on this organization, including higher level objectives like revenue per partner (rising or declining), marketing dollars per partner, profitability per partner, market or channel share, lead generation, etc. Some of these are easier to measure than others, and time is often spent by channel marketing to construct their own dashboards populated by their own collected data. Disconnecting these objectives from corporate and departmental (sales) goals is a common mistake, which leads to the inevitable "us versus them" discussions between channel sales and channel marketing.

Channel Sales Objectives
Channel sales managers are primarily paid for achieving revenue objectives, although the definition of revenue has expanded in recent years and now includes variations like revenue growth, specific product revenue (buckets), geographical revenue, and average revenue partner in their territory. Revenue precursors are also popular and include such objectives as the number of partners who shipped products this quarter, number of partner sales people trained, number of proposals, or other measurable activities that usually lead to revenue.

Increasingly, channel sales managers are also being held accountable for specific activities relating to the development and management of a sales pipeline with important partners. This includes the generation of leads (sometimes the responsibility of channel marketing) to fill the pipeline, number of active deals, close rates, and forecasting accuracy. Consequently, channel sales managers increasingly require a unique blend of analytical and selling skills to successfully manage deals, pipelines, and their entire portfolios. Channel sales managers frequently use territory dashboards (often self created and managed) to measure their performance with some of the data coming from corporate systems.

Partner Objectives
There are two important reasons to establish specific partner measurements. The first is to focus the partners on performance in order to create a basis for measuring success or failure. The second is to bring partners into alignment with corporate goals in order to impact overall company performance.

Examples of measurements for high-tech partners include:

• Revenue
• Installations
• Attach rate
• Vendor generated leads closed
• Opportunities entering the pipeline
• Close rate
• Average deal size
• Competitive wins
• Gross margins
• Profitability
• Marketing dollars spent
• Receivables
• Maintenance capture rate (renewal rate)
• Number of technical people trained
• Certification tests administered or passed
• Technical support calls
• Customer satisfaction
  

The most successful high-tech vendors are pushing their corporate and/or departmental objectives down to their partners and are holding the partners accountable through a combination of carrots (performance payments) and sticks (reduced discounts). This is difficult when there are many partners in the portfolio. However, some vendors have identified a subset of partners for measurement. Called Premier Partners or Platinum Partners, this group is identified by revenue (often top 10% in sales), vertical market or geography. A higher level of sales and marketing resources is often assigned to these partners in return for accountability in meeting these objectives. (About 10% of high-tech vendors do not assign any objectives to their partners.)

Increasing the number of things being measured, especially if it is part of an effort to bring all levels of the organization into alignment, requires an ability to consistently gather and report data. This is being attempted through a wide variety of enhanced Partner Relationship Management (PRM) or Sales Force Automation (SFA) products, outsourced data scrubbing services, and misguided development efforts (one client spent more than $500,000 building a spreadsheet to measure territory performance only to discover that all the data had to be entered manually because of security concerns about accessing the corporate financial systems). The most common and usable dashboards are still developed and controlled by the territory sales manager and shared with his managers when needed. However, vendors are increasingly focused on channel sales productivity gains and standardized, workable, and disciplined dashboard usage cannot be far behind.

Rate Your Company on Objectives, Measure, and Dashboards
On a zero-to-10 scale, where 10 means a fantastic job rate your company's performance in setting objectives, measuring results, and properly compensating all levels of the value chain.

Total Score: ____ / 80
Get several people in your organization to provide their scores and then discuss the scoring with your manager to identify areas for company improvement.

About the Author
Mr. Dubrall has over 24 years of technology marketing and sales experience, primarily working with vendors to design, create and optimize their channels of product distribution.  In 1996, Mr. Dubrall founded the Technology Channels Group, specializing in consulting and training to improve partnering results for high-tech clients. In addition, he has extensively researched the development of productive channel relationships and has published numerous articles and reports, including the Partner Manager Census (Salary and Investment Report), Channel Loyalty Study, and the Technology Channels Group’s annual Internet and Channels Report.

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Measuring Success – An After Thought
By Mark Kopcha of Revegy Inc.

In a recent research brief by SiriusDecisions, they stated that “Measuring sales is easy; it’s measuring selling that presents a challenge.” With few tools available that truly measure selling, we often resort to measuring success after an opportunity is decided versus measuring it along the way when action can be taken.

As you are aware, selling is becoming increasingly difficult, and customers are demanding more and more from salespeople. Furthermore, research shows that one of the main reasons customers don’t buy is because they do not think those selling to them really understand their business.

If asked, how would you rate your sales team’s understanding of a potential customer’s business? More importantly, how would your potential customer rate your sales team?

Your sales team’s ability to understand and articulate your customer’s business will be what helps them reduce time to close, improve win rates and ultimately achieve more predictable revenue.

Today’s complex sales environment requires sales leaders to focus more closely on the act of selling rather than the end result. But first you must define sales productivity as something more than the measurement of revenue – this requires you to have a clear understanding of what it takes for your sales professionals to identify, execute and close an opportunity.

While knowledge, skills and process are critical to any sales opportunity, improving sales productivity and measuring success throughout the process can only take place when your sales professionals have been armed with the tools necessary to improve their customer-facing effectiveness and execution efficiency. Sales productivity tools can help you and your team:

• Demonstrate your understanding of your customer’s business
• Show linkage between your products and/or services and the customer’s business goals and issues
• Gain insight to the “health” and status of your opportunities
• Strengthen your customer relationship and elevate your status to trusted advisor

Remember, sales productivity requires focus. If you’re truly committed to improving sales productivity, you must measure the health and fitness of your opportunities along the way, so you can take action to ensure success versus measuring success after all is done.

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Research Brief
Events: Measuring Their Impact
By SiriusDecisions

Did you know:

• The average b-to-b organization spends more than 20 percent of its marketing budget on events
• Many of these organizations have not established standards for how the value of these events is quantified
• Organizations must apply a core group of metrics in different ways to the range of events at their disposal

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Funny Story: A Matter of Perspective

During an awards presentation dinner for a man recently honored as “Businessman of the Year,” a newspaper reporter asked him, "To what do you owe your great success and prosperity?"

"Five things contributed to my success," said the man.

• First, I always treated people fairly.
• Second, I always offered a fair price to my customers.
• Third, I was always honest.
• Fourth, I was always generous to my employees.
• And finally, my Aunt Edna died a few years back and left me ten million dollars.