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8 KPIs to Track Channel Partner Management

As a channel partner, you don’t have much time to spend with your CRM system. At a minimum, it needs to deliver the data you need when you need it and in an easy-to-consume format. At TopRight, we’ve identified key areas where channel partner management (CPM) is most effective when using the right key performance indicators…

As a channel partner, you don’t have much time to spend with your CRM system. At a minimum, it needs to deliver the data you need when you need it and in an easy-to-consume format. At TopRight, we’ve identified key areas where channel partner management (CPM) is most effective when using the right key performance indicators (KPIs) to track performance.

  1. Average Deal Size (By Transaction Revenue) – This KPI gives you insight into how your deals are being structured so that you can move toward a more profitable model. For example, if the average deal size for patent licensing is $5 million, but you’ve grown to service customers in every vertical across many different markets, it might be time to consider developing a portfolio model that can increase your average revenue per customer by selling more to each one over time. Average deal size is also a great way to benchmark against your competitors.
  2. Deal Count – Getting many new deals is always great, but it’s more important to represent the value creation from those deals over time accurately. The deal count will be an essential component of channel partner enablement. The deal count represents more than revenue-they also represent your opportunity to create long-term value for both you and your partners.
  3. Opportunity Pipeline – Opportunities in your deal pipeline are a KPI that gets at the heart of what drives CPM. It tells you how much time you have to win new business before your client engages with another vendor or negotiates an in-house development strategy. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to monitor the entire opportunity pipeline by keeping your CRM or ERP system up to date on all your current deals.
  4. Marketing Channels – Many channel marketing teams will divide their efforts into paid, owned, and earned channels. Each of those components is measured separately, but they’re all part of the same program. This KPI helps you understand how well your multi-channel marketing strategy is performing as a whole, allowing you to focus on areas that need more attention and refine areas where you’re doing a great job.
  5. Close Rate – This KPI tells you whether you are closing new business at the right pace. It also lets you know what might be holding potential customers back from purchasing your product. If the close rate of the deals in your pipeline is low, you might need to work on how well prospects understand your value proposition or what they see as their return on investment for using your solution.
  6. Deal Velocity – Deal velocity is the time it takes from when you close a deal until it’s paid or invoiced. High velocity means you won’t have much revenue to report, but it also means you can expect more deals to close over time. If you do what it takes to improve channel partner relationships, you can get a higher close rate and potentially bring in more deals, increasing deal velocity.
  7. Quality Score – A quality score combines the number of deals you’ve won with how much value they’re generating. It’s a great way to learn from past wins and losses, giving you an opportunity to understand your previous successes and adjust for future victories. You’ll also be able to tell which partners are producing the best quality scores, providing you with an opportunity to work more closely with them.
  8. Deal Success – Over time, profitable deals will make up a large percentage of your revenue. Good marketing and sales professionals understand the importance of getting qualified leads at the top of this funnel. This key performance indicator will tell you whether or not your team is doing an adequate job identifying high potential opportunities that are likely to lead to successful close rates.

Using key performance indicators to help you measure your efforts will help you grow as a market leader. As internal team dynamics change, it’s crucial to adjust your focus and priorities quickly to keep moving forward. Using KPIs can help you do that by providing clear insight into how your teams are performing and what they need to do to improve. If you want more tips on how to measure and optimize your channel partner relationships, follow @TopRightPartner on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedInsubscribe to my blog, and buy a copy of my latest book published by Harvard Business Review, Strategic Analytics.

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