OneGTM commissioned The Leadership Foundation to carry out primary research to gain insight into the attitudes of sales channels towards their vendors to understand what makes channels successful.
The survey asked 250 participants, working across a mix of managerial and front-line sales roles in the technology and telecoms industries, a range of activities including training, market insight, lead generation, sales tools and brand awareness. Some of these findings may challenge existing perceptions about what it is that sales professionals value.
Our full results report is now available for you to download for free. Here are a few of the key findings to give you an idea:
Channel salespeople place great importance of brand. Greater investment in brand awareness was regarded as the most important thing that vendors could do to drive increase sales. Brand was also identified as the most significant factor when a salesperson was deciding between two vendors with broadly comparable products.
Sales channels want to be provided with more insight on the latest market trends, competitor activity and customer needs in order to equip them to engage with today’s demanding B2B buyer.
Of the support being provided today, ‘Product technology and training’ and ‘sales leads’ are the two aspects that were most highly valued. However the majority of participants felt that better product training would still have a significant impact on sales performance, suggesting room for improvement in this area.
The top three frustrations facing channel sales are inflexible approaches to product pricing from vendors, lack of vendor support for individual sales and insufficient training and education for sales teams on products and technology.
Channel salespeople want regular communications from vendors but not overload. The preferred frequency is monthly and the preferred format, by a large majority, is e-mail. Social media is the least favoured method. To view the full results, just click here.
