Communicating the Old-Fashioned Way

For all the right reasons, collaboration as a strategy has taken the industry, both vendors and solution providers, by storm. Whole product categories today are marketed as collaborative, while business and work structures are increasingly based on collaborative communications platforms. That’s true even more so with the explosion of social networking media and affordable pricing trends for technologies such as videoconferencing.

Collaboration can foster fruitful outcomes, but only when done right. Case in point: Vendor-partner relationships. Collaboration between vendors and their partners has always been about effective communication and this is where the rails fall off sometimes: The two parties first must agree on how best to talk to one another before anything meaningful comes out of the discussion. Sure, vendors tout the latest speedy, automated PRM tools and pride themselves on routine satisfaction and feedback surveys as a way to give their partners a voice. But are these the most effective ways to talk to partners?

Apparently not. Channel Insider and Amazon Consulting recently questioned partners in a wide-ranging survey on the use of social networking tools and uncovered some startling results with respect to how partners view the state of vendor-to-partner collaboration. Bottom line? The principle vehicles vendors employ to communicate with partners are not the ones partners find the most useful. Let’s take a look by the numbers:

When asked about the main ways in which vendors communicated with them, 80 percent of partners cited the partner portal, while 78 percent said vendors used their partner-facing field staff. Those were Nos. 1-2 in the ranking. However, when asked which vehicles were most effective in generating collaboration between the two parties, partners cited neither portals nor field relationships. Instead nearly half of them said small, regional face-to-face meetings drove the best collaboration, while more than a third cited formal partner advisory council meetings and user groups, respectively.

Clearly, partners crave the human touch – and not just that of their field account managers. Collaboration also involves other partners to cultivate networks that can bounce ideas off one another and their vendors. Strength in numbers, so to speak, works best to generate effective changes, enhancements and initiatives to partner programs, business plans, enablement schedules, etc.

For now, partners seem to believe this kind of collaboration is best achieved in live interactions. Consider that fewer than 20 percent of partners found portals to be an effective collaboration tool and none -- yes, NONE -- said that a vendor's use of social media was useful to them. This goes to the heart of what collaboration is supposed to be: a two-way street. From a vendor perspective, portals make sense as an effective way to disseminate tons of information, but too often they blast a fire hose of stuff at partners who are looking for a place to bounce an idea for discussion or frankly, to vent.

As we look at head to this year, collaboration is going to gain even more momentum. What would you like to see done differently as you navigate your vendor relationships and seek to get your voice heard? 

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