We’ve talked before about what a successful deal registration program should look like. But how do you identify the key data points to measure that success? Or better yet, why is measuring and tracking the success of your deal reg program so important?
This was one of the topics on discussion on our recent webinar, “What Modern Deal Registration Programs Look Like”. Channel Mechanics’ Head of Business Development, John Bird was joined by John McArdle, Channel Mechanics’ VP of Sales, A.J. Tedesco, VP Channels, Securly and Kate Price, Channel Operations Manager, Extreme Networks.
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“How do you identify the key data points to measure success and continue to drive the execution of your deal registration program?” asked John Bird. “And how do you do that with the least amount of friction in your engagement with your partners?”
Channel Data
As across every other organization, data is at the heart of providing valuable business insight. Price said it was important to have all partner data easily accessible to track deal registration across Extreme’s systems.
Today vendors can track metrics such as number of and value of registrations; how many deals close; the opportunities tied to registrations per partner; plus new versus existing business. You can even track whether the deal registration led to a competitor takeout! Price said Extreme also slices the data by country or partner levels, which is all integrated into its CRM.
“This ability and KPIs are really key for measuring the success of deal registration. So for us, we track everything in our CRM. Channel Mechanics and our deal reg tool is so tightly integrated with everything, that it’s very easy for us to track everything via reports and dashboards in our CRM,” she said.
Driving Automation
Tedesco said one of the things Securely tracks closely is the partner contribution versus its own in a deal. This is relevant when a customer approaches Securely but wants a partner attached to the deal.
“We will give them deal registration in that situation but we track the difference between the partner bringing it to us directly” he explained.
Additionally, he said the firm looks very closely at the ROI on certain incentive programs around deal registration to iteratively improve them.
“If one of them doesn’t really provide an ROI, we won’t move forward with that in the next quarter. Or we will treat it accordingly. So that is one of the biggest values in the tracking capability.”
All this data is driving automation of programs like deal registration, as vendors seek executive, partner insights and partner account team insights.
“You need different flavors of that same data set,” said McArdle, who added that this was evident over the past 18 months during the pandemic.
“Anybody that had a smart deal registration program in certain sectors, could pivot their business very quickly. If we look at telecommunications as a sector, the small home office markets certainly exploded as a place to procure equipment for working from home, for instance. If you had early visibility of that trend with your deal reg program, you were well positioned to build up your stock through your distributors. This in turn would have enabled you to have stock in the right geos,” he said.
Key Learnings
“The last 18 months has told people to be prepared for change, have visibility of what’s happening when a major economic or political endemic change happens. Deal registration can help enormously when your business is going through an unexpected adjustment, driven by something unforeseen.”
Ultimately, measuring and tracking the success of your Deal Reg program is imperative. As a vendor, if you are unable to analyze your data in a meaningful way to help partners pivot, then you’re going to be left behind the curve. But the success of a deal registration program isn’t about the data itself; it’s about understanding what’s changing in the world, and how you can provide insights to your partners to help them grow a successful business.
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