It’s a difficult yet crucial role, regardless of the industry. Yet, value-added resellers (VARs) and service providers that comprise the “channel” between software (and hardware) companies and the myriad enterprises they serve must fulfill it nonetheless.
Too often, channel resellers are tasked with not only implementing but also identifying the “ideal” solutions for their customers, forcing them to attain expertise in hundreds of different kinds of hardware and software applications. It’s not an easy task – in any industry.
After all, thousands of different applications exist to help businesses perform in their industries. Some are designed to enhance communications, others to streamline business processes, and some provide protection and security.
CallCabinet happens to fit all three categories. However, what makes the platform most appealing to enterprises in the channel is something much simpler than that.
What do channel customers want?
As most channel resellers know, channel sales are driven by the needs of client enterprises. While virtually ALL channel clients require telecommunications and IT systems integration, many have more specific needs, such as CRM platforms, accounting, or security management.
While it may be a safe bet for channel resellers to allow their customers to tell them what their requirements may be, the most successful resellers are often more proactive. They do their research, understand their clients’ businesses, and make recommendations that facts and data can support. In other words, they don’t assume their customers know exactly what they want – or what they may need. Instead of following, they lead.
Of course, not all businesses are open to the recommendations of channel providers. After all, it is the client’s business, not the reseller’s. One should expect a company to know what’s best for itself.
However, that “expertise” rarely extends beyond the core of the business itself. Channel clients may know their own business thoroughly but likely have little idea how other similar enterprises grapple with many of the same issues they face.
Thus, it falls to the channel providers to share their expertise in providing solutions that businesses may not even know they require. Channel providers need to leverage their OWN brand value as the experts in understanding client needs and equipping today’s enterprises.
Doing this effectively requires a relatively complete understanding of a company’s business operations – a.k.a.: “knowing your customer.”
How do channel resellers identify the right solutions to sell to customers?
Just as a reseller must understand their clients’ businesses, so too must they understand the market for the various solutions that they sell. While that should include gaining a deep understanding of the solutions themselves, there are simply far too many different providers and solutions in the market for most resellers to achieve mastery of them all.
Rather, channel resellers would do well to study individual solutions markets. This provides a high-level understanding of the competitive landscape per solution, and a sense of which direction each market is moving.
For example, within our own market for enterprise call recording, channel resellers might recognize that on-premise solutions are slowly moving toward extinction and that cloud-based SaaS solutions are increasingly favored.
We know this to be true. After all, on-premise recording solutions are extremely restrictive. They limit access to recorded data and prevent it from being shared across your enterprise. They also prevent businesses from joining the global transition to remote work opportunities.
Now, a client enterprise within the channel may not be planning on transitioning to remote work today, but growing competition for skilled employees will probably soon REQUIRE them to do so. As their expert business solutions consultant, the channel reseller needs to understand their industry enough to provide this essential guidance.
How do resellers know what features will speak most to their customers?
Generally, what businesses need most of all from their solutions is versatility. Today’s enterprises are learning the value of being very agile, especially when competing in tight markets.
For example, financial services industries are increasingly grappling with risk management in recognition of the changeable nature of their market. These businesses seek to stay ahead of market changes or at the very least to be prepared for whatever may come. This has increasingly come into focus in the wake of the global pandemic, which caught far too many businesses woefully unprepared.
Thus, versatility is arguably the easiest feature for channel resellers to sell to their clients, regardless of the solution or industry. It not only offers clients a variety of options for their solution and mitigates potential problems, but it also highlights the concern their solution provider has for their business. Should circumstances change for a client, they will likely be far more grateful to the channel provider that led them towards greater versatility.
Of course, some resellers may be concerned about how selling versatile solutions could adversely affect their ability to retain customers. After all, they are working to build their own businesses and are more interested in creating stable and consistent revenue streams than in providing flexibility for their customers.
What can channel resellers do to retain customers?
Platforms like CallCabinet’s reveal how solutions can be both reliable and versatile at the same time.
Our platform is incredibly easy for businesses to adopt, deploying rapidly and instantly scaling to any size required. It’s also designed to integrate seamlessly with popular UC platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex, along with virtually every PBX and business software platform used in the channel, regardless of industry.
But beyond this extreme ease of deployment is one of the industry’s most powerful business recording solutions – one that will quickly become indispensable to enterprises that adopt it.
Since CallCabinet’s ability to automatically and properly record calls is not only needed but REQUIRED by most businesses (for regulatory compliance), it is not the type of solution that channel customers can simply walk away from.
This is actually a key selling point. Businesses that require a call recording service for regulatory compliance can’t just decide that they don’t. Should they be unhappy with their solution, a regulated enterprise cannot remove it without replacing it with another.
Because CallCabinet’s solution is so easy and versatile, channel customers are far more likely to want to switch to it than from it.
In this way, CallCabinet’s compliance solution can become an anchor for a channel customer. It helps resellers retain their customers while growing their own revenue streams. Resellers can also help their customers grow within our platform by adding more agent seats or valuable features like quality assurance and AI-driven voice analytics.
What is the easiest way to grow channel reseller revenues?
Inevitably, it’s up to resellers to determine the best way to serve their customers. But, with so many thousands of solutions in the market, it’s going to take a lot of effort to really understand which solutions might be ideally suited for any given customer.
Versatility is the one consistently appealing feature that channel resellers can rely upon, and also the one that will reflect best upon their own businesses, aiding in client retention.
And, since retaining clients is key to growing reseller revenues, it helps to have solutions that will keep them anchored to the reseller’s business.
So, if you’ve read this far and you’re still looking for an easy answer, take a look at CallCabinet.