What is channel sales?
Channel sales is selling products or services through third-party distributors. Some examples include wholesellers, affiliates, distributors, and marketplaces. In all cases, customers will not deal directly with the producer or manufacturer during the sale. Channel sales is important because it allows producers to scale more efficiently. They can focus less on customer acquisition, and more on producing high quality, high margin products and services.
What is a sales channel?
In contrast, a sales channel is an arrangement between producers of a product and the outlets that consumers purchase the product from. Channels can be physical (stores, malls, and product displays) or digital (eBay and Amazon).
What are the types of channel sales?
There are several types of channel sales, each appropriate depending on what you sell.
Here’s a list of the types of channel sales:
- Business to business (B2B)
- Business to consumer (B2C)
- Retail
- Wholesale
What are B2B channel sales?
B2B channel sales are where a business finds a channel partner that can help gain exposure and sales from business clients. An example of such a partner could be an agency with strong business connections. Since they have strong business relationships, a channel partner could get direct access to business customers. This would result in a strong, warm connection to possible clients. A B2B channel partnership would benefit software companies, suppliers, and other producers.
What are B2C channel sales?
B2C or “direct-to-consumer” channel sales are a partnership between an entity that has access to consumers and a company that has consumer-based products. An example of B2C channel partners could be popular bloggers, retail outlet stores, and digital marketplaces. Access to B2C channel sales partners can accelerate the growth of consumer product companies and provide a consistent stream of sales.
What is retail channel sales?
Retail channel sales is where a producer partners with a retail store to sell their products to new customers. This is typically smaller scale, and a useful strategy for companies testing the popularity of a new product.
What is wholesale channel sales?
Wholesale channel sales is where a producer provides discounted rates for large quantities of product. This lets a reseller mark the product’s price up when selling it to clients or customers. For the producer, the benefit is that production to sales is simpler, with fewer, higher paying customers instead of many.
What is the benefit of channel sales?
Channel sales help teams scale more quickly without sacrificing sales conversion rates. Compared to standard marketing-led sales, channel sales helps provide a stream of more qualified leads and direct sales. Channel partners
What is the downside of channel sales?
The downside of channel sales mostly has to do with quality control. When a product or service is sold by a third party, the quality of customer experience is less within your control.
What are examples of channel sales?
An example of channel sales is domestic retail sales. This involves selling a product at a local store, such as Walmart, Target, or Walgreens. A company such as Nike would sell their products through a channel such as catalogs, and online portals with those retail stores.
What is channel sales strategy?
Channel sales strategy is determining which channels are optimal for your business. It’s possible to identify potential good-fit channel partners in both the physical and digital space, regardless of what you sell. The most important part is to consider where your best customers will likely be. If they congregate on certain websites, it could be worth reaching out to the website owners. If you’re a local business, it could be worth reaching out to neighboring businesses, or community centers.
What is channel sales process?
Channel sales process can be two things:
- The steps your sales team follows for identifying, reaching out to, qualifying and establishing channel partners. Or,
- The steps your sales team follows after your channel partner develops a new lead.
What is channel sales prospecting?
Channel sales prospecting is when salespeople attempt first contact with potential channel sales partners. It’s a high-volume activity, often with dedicated team members working full time on establishing contact. The benefit of channel sales prospecting is that it can be hard to identify where potential partners are on the internet. As such, it can be substantially more productive to individually identify prospects and reach out to them directly.
What is channel sales playbook?
Channel sales playbook is the SOPs, strategies, and templates your team can use for identifying, establishing and retaining channel partners. The benefit of creating a playbook is that it helps your team get consistent results at scale. The result is faster training times, higher conversion rates, and more sales.
What are the channel sales methods?
Channel sales methods are essentially the process of prospecting, reaching out to potential customers, and making the sale. Channel sales methods are also responsible for your sales funnel and what it looks like. Sales funnel is essentially the process that leads to the sale and how you generate awareness and interest for your product among prospective customers. It comes down to how you market and how efficiently you funnel prospective clients into your sales funnel and close the sale to them.
What are the principles of channel sales?
Channel sales principles are the guidelines sales teams follow when they encounter ambiguous situations. In general, they ensure integrity in the sales process and help the team make better decisions. Usually, they are the same as a team’s general principles.
Here’s a list of examples channel sales principles:
- Be curious
- Listen closely and identify their needs
- Follow-up religiously
- Don’t let your ego get in the way
- Not all sales are worth it
What is channel sales rep?
A channel sales rep is a specialist sales role focused on establishing new channel partners. The sales cycle will typically be longer, but the pay-off will also be greater. For example, a traditional sales rep might have hundreds of prospects and tens of leads. For a channel sales rep, they might only have tens of prospects and a handful of qualified leads.
What does a channel sales rep do?
Channel sales reps are responsible for finding, qualifying and closing new channel partners. An integral part of the process is understanding the potential partner’s needs and ensuring they are met.
What are the channel sales skills?
Channel sales skills help a sales rep find, qualify and close channel sales partners.
Here’s a list of the top skills:
- Persistence
- Active listening
- Problem-solving
- Strong attention to detail
- Good organization
What are the channel sales KPIs?
Channel sales key performance indicators (KPIs) help sales teams stay on track and consistently reach their targets. Typically, they will be trackable numbers. For example, sales reps should track the number of prospects they reach out to, response rate, and how many of those turn into conversations. Furthermore, they should track how many conversations turn into presentations or demos, and ultimately sales.
How do you create channel sales?
You create channel sales by identifying good potential partners, reaching out to them, and establishing favorable terms.
Here are the steps for creating channel sales:
- Know your offer – make it appealing to the potential channel partner.
- Create a list of prospects
- Reach out to them via phone, email, social media, or in-person.
- Explain why your product is a good fit for them.
- Formalize agreements with channel partner contracts.
What are the channel sales tools?
Channel sales tools help teams form more agreements with prospective channel partners. The tools can be physical or digital, and range in their uses and benefits. For example, it could be a physical or digital planner, sales software, or helpful automation. The benefit is keeping sales teams more organized and productive, with fewer missed deals.
What is channel sales software?
Channel sales software is any software that helps acquire or retain new channel sales partners. This could include customer relationship management (CRM) software, or any software that helps you to find, track, and convert website visitors into sales leads.
What is channel sales automation?
Channel sales automation is eliminating repetitive sales tasks with software. This can be useful for teams that have to do a lot of low-value digital work. It’s important to only automate what’s necessary, as automating too much can become apparent to prospects and reduce your team’s conversion rates.
What is the relationship between channel and direct sales?
The relationship between channel and direct sales is that they both result in the sale of a supplier’s product. In direct sales, the supplier will generate leads and sell to them directly. In channel sales, the channel partner will either sell on behalf of the supplier, or redirect customers to said supplier.
What is channel sales model?
Channel sales model is a sales and marketing concept that helps teams understand where channel sales can fit into their strategy and operations.
What is the difference between sales channel and channel sales?
The difference between “sales channel” and “channel sales” is the following:
- Sales channel is any pathway (physical or digital) for potential customers to become actual customers.
- Channel sales is a strategy focusing on strategic partnerships to increase a company’s volume of sales indirectly.