Despite channel partners generating half of all B2B revenue, a 2022 study found that a staggering 80% of B2B executives reported challenges with their partner programs. What obstacles are preventing you from maximizing your opportunities with manufacturing partners? Common issues include isolated systems, disjointed processes, inconsistent programs, and poor communication channels.
Fortunately, effective strategies exist to tackle these challenges. Here are three focus areas to enhance your manufacturing partner relationships and boost sales.
1. Simplify Business Interactions with Channel Partners
Traditionally, manufacturers have concentrated on product-centric improvements, such as efficient product development, cost reduction, and supply chain optimization. In today’s market, differentiation hinges on the quality of customer and partner experiences.
Many manufacturers understand that providing an excellent customer experience is vital for standing out. This approach should extend from the manufacturer to the channel partner to the end customer, necessitating visibility into customer data shared between you and your partners. Transparent data and efficient processes enable better collaboration and a customer-centric approach that benefits all parties involved.
How can you achieve this? By investing in technology that simplifies interactions for your manufacturing partners and their customers. A customer relationship management (CRM) platform can consolidate data from legacy systems into a unified platform, offering your team comprehensive visibility into the entire relationship. This information can then be extended through the CRM directly to your channel partners, including:
- Leads
- Order Status
- Pricing and quoting capabilities
- Customer service cases
- Service issues and complaints
- Knowledge articles
- Warranty claims
A CRM platform boosts partner efficiency, shortens cycle times, and elevates customer experience. It also serves as a foundation for accurate, joint forecasting—a crucial capability for 81% of manufacturers—incorporating inventory, demand, and competitive intelligence.
Watch our demo on Master Manufacturing with Salesforce: Sales Agreements & Account-Based Forecasting
2. Accelerate Partner Sales Processes
Collaborating on sales efforts with your partners can unlock new markets, increase revenue, and enhance efficiency, ultimately improving your manufacturer-partner relationship.
Using a community page for collaboration allows partners to configure, price, and quote (CPQ) independently, gain visibility into their order status, manage service cases, and utilize new marketing materials and templates. According to a Forrester report, partner enablement platforms can double sales.
Watch our webinar on Mastering Case Management in Manufacturing
Such platforms provide access to customer purchase history and real-time product information, guiding partner sales teams with cues and next steps. Sharing transparent forecasts enables partners to close more deals quickly. Automation supports the entire channel sales process, from automatically delivering leads to partners to guiding them through the quoting process with readily available resources. Additionally, showing partners how close they are to reaching the next rebate threshold can motivate increased orders.
Artificial intelligence (AI) helps partners focus on the best leads and opportunities, offering the best product and marketing information at each stage of the sales cycle. AI can recommend products based on completed actions or customer purchase histories.
Using automation and AI through a partner enablement platform results in a great return on investment. Tracking partner deals and sharing access to inventory and delivery data helps partners close deals faster. Partner enablement platforms can lead to 1.4 times higher revenue growth.
3. Enhance Customer and Partner Service to Boost Revenue
Many manufacturers look to services to create new revenue streams and increase customer engagement throughout the product lifecycle. Over 89% of manufacturers consider services essential elements of their value proposition. Partners, often tasked with executing service for you and representing your brand, benefit from the right information and guidance.
Self-service capabilities empower partners and customers by reducing friction and lowering cost-to-serve. Features can include AI-surfaced knowledge articles, FAQs, order tracking, status updates, scheduling, e-commerce, warranty workflows, and more. Manufacturing partners should be able to create and track customer interactions and escalate issues when necessary.
Services such as diagnostics and predictive maintenance, enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT), provide continuous information about inventory status, resource availability, and product health. This data impacts parts and service delivery and can be channelled to dealers to schedule repairs and maintenance with customers proactively. Remote assistance allows service technicians to solve complex issues quickly with live, virtual collaboration with senior technicians.
Providing partners with support from any device, anytime, on their terms enhances the customer experience and builds brand loyalty. Service collaboration is a key part of a partner engagement strategy, helping both partners and manufacturers achieve common goals. With real-time data on a shared platform, it’s easier to react to changing customer expectations and implement feedback to improve products.
How Areya Technologies Can Help?
Areya Technologies specializes in helping manufacturing industries streamline their partner engagement strategies. As experts in Salesforce solutions, we provide comprehensive advisory, implementation, and managed services to enhance your CRM capabilities. Our experience in the manufacturing sector ensures that we understand your unique challenges and can offer tailored solutions to drive your sales growth.
