As you can probably imagine, they weren’t happy when their business was undermined in this way.
Deal registration was designed to be an elegant solution to the problem, allowing resellers to notify vendors of new sales opportunities. In return, vendors offered additional margin points to “protect” these deals for the registering reseller. As a system it worked, and today, what was originally meant for major deals only has become standard practice in the industry.
But it’s still not perfect for the vendors themselves, and one of the issues is the focus on pricing protection that many programs have. While pricing protection is indeed a valuable aspect of deal registration, it’s only part of the equation in today’s competitive and evolving tech landscape. Pricing protection alone doesn’t justify the significant investments vendors make to streamline the process for VARs. Savvy vendors have come to realise that pipeline visibility is the real value for them from deal registration programs.
Breaking it down further, here are four key themes that can help vendors take their deal registration investment and turn it into a benefit as much for them as their partners:
1. Obviously, you need a scalable process
If your deal registration program can’t scale as your partner ecosystem does, you have a problem. This means clear communication is essential. Partners need to understand their status regarding deal registrations, training, enablement, and approvals. Without streamlined processes, challenges will inevitably arise, especially as the ecosystem grows. Implement a robust communication framework early, and ensure it scales with your program. This will prevent bottlenecks and allow partners to grow alongside your company.
2. Care even more about the funnel than you do at the moment
The critical pathway to success when refining your partner program is understanding that the metrics that you’re measuring are non-negotiable. This means paying close attention to Registrations per Partner, Submitted Registrations to Approvals, Approvals to Opportunities, and Opportunities to Closed/Won Deals. The more closely you analyze these conversion points regularly to identify weaknesses and prioritize improvements is the pathway to addressing bottlenecks.
3. Plan for exceptions as you automate as much as you can
Automation is critical, but it won’t solve every challenge. A good option is Vartopia’s multi-vendor deal registration solution, which can simplify adoption and adherence to registration processes, but even that can’t guarantee compliance.
The goal needs to be to make your program intuitive and user-friendly. VARs want to partner with vendors who make doing business seamless. For exceptions and anomalies, ensure your organization has clear processes and roles for managing inquiries. Build trust by addressing unique circumstances effectively. Tools should enable self-service capabilities for partners, while unresolved issues should be handled through clearly defined SLAs (Service Level Agreements).
4. Finally, when you encounter desired behaviour, reward it
To make this simple: regardless of whether you’re looking to incentivise registering deals, completing sales training, or adopting through-partner marketing tools, rewards should align closely with the desired behavior. However, delays and complexity in spiff payouts can undermine their effectiveness. For example, if VAR reps must navigate a cumbersome process to receive a reward—such as waiting six months, filling out forms, or chasing approvals—it discourages participation, no matter how good the incentives are.
Research from Harvard University in 2011 highlights this principle:
Consumers often fail to redeem mail-in rebates because they underestimate the challenges of redemption.
This truth applies in the B2B sales area as well. Delays or cumbersome processes to your incentives discourage sales reps from engaging.
Taken individually, these key focus areas seem almost token in how common sense they are. And yet, what actually happens in the channel highlights that it’s still useful wisdom to pay attention to. Now is a good time to re-evaluate your deal registration program and ensure that it aligned with the best practices approach.
