As more companies utilize value-added resellers (VARs) to distribute their products to end-users, it is crucial for organizations to enhance their partner programs. Sales teams and marketers are increasingly focused on creating a great customer experience, leading to the popularity of CRM software (73% of businesses use them). These tools have helped organizations maintain connections with their customers.
However, the landscape is evolving. To ensure the success of reseller programs, organizations must cultivate strong relationships with their resellers and incorporate VAR lead management into the tech stack. Given the options available, organizations should know what to look for before making a purchase. This guide covers everything about lead management software to help organizations make informed decisions.
What is Lead Management Software?
Partner lead management software enables organizations to monitor, track, and communicate seamlessly with their channel VARs. Organizations with any type of channel program—including retailers, distributors, value-added resellers, and other third-party partners—benefit from a centralized location that enhances relationships, provides resources, and evaluates performance.
Key Benefits:
- Ecosystem Close Rates: An enterprise client with an average product order value of $25,000 doubled its partner close rate in one year, resulting in remarkable ROI.
Features of VAR Lead Management Software
A management software system provides various functionalities to optimize partner relationships, including:
- Lead distribution and management
- Deal registration
- Sales enablement
- Performance management and insights
- Onboarding
- Contracts management
- Workflow management
- CRM integration
- Partner incentives
Why Use Lead Management Software for VARs?
Value-added reseller programs are integral to an organization’s overall sales strategy. While internal sales teams have limitations, leveraging indirect channels can extend reach without increasing headcount. However, to maximize the benefits of a channel strategy, organizations must promote positive partner engagement, which is where VAR lead management systems come into play.
These tools facilitate communication between organizations and their VARs, providing product education, support documents, training content, and sales enablement materials. This support increases the likelihood of partner success.
Some solutions allow organizations to oversee the entire partner sales cycle, helping to evaluate performance and identify areas for improvement. Accessible data enables optimization of effective strategies across the reseller network.
Benefits of VAR Lead Management Software
The software simplifies processes and creates opportunities to enhance lead management, attribution, activity monitoring, onboarding, and sales incentives.
- Improved Lead Management: A successful partner program relies on high-quality leads. Effective lead management—whether sourced by the organization or the partner—is crucial for conversion. Enterprise channel lead management simplifies the categorization and tracking of lead status, score, and assignments.
- Increased Visibility into Reseller Sales Activity: Organizations can track and monitor the entire partner network’s activity, gaining insights into sales tactics and performance. This data helps identify best practices and areas for improvement.
- Lead Quality Feedback to Marketing: A global enterprise leader in server and print technology saw a 3x increase in partner-provided lead quality and details in 2020.
- Easier Attribution: Partner lead management simplifies the tracking of marketing efforts across a diverse network, providing insights into the most and least successful marketing touchpoints.
- Simplified Reseller Onboarding: Effective onboarding processes can be complex, but lead management software streamlines this by establishing clear communication and monitoring partner progress.
- Better Reseller Incentives: Sales incentives boost results and foster healthy competition. VAR lead management enables organizations to create and monitor incentives across the network.
Challenges of VAR Lead Management
Partner lead management software operates primarily in two ways: as CRM-like systems or as partner portals. While both can enhance relationships, they come with challenges, particularly regarding lead distribution and management.
- Adoption: Getting partners to use new software can be challenging. Resistance to additional tools can hinder data collection.
- Rule-based Lead Routing: Manual lead routing can lead to inefficiencies and potential loss of sales if not managed properly.
- Login Necessities: Requiring VAR partners to log in to a platform can create bottlenecks, as sales representatives prefer to focus on selling rather than additional data entry.
- Reseller Portal Clutter: Frequent updates to partner portals can lead to confusion and frustration among partners.
Considerations When Choosing Lead Software
With a plethora of options in the VAR lead management software market, it’s essential to ask the right questions to identify the best fit for your organization.
Key Questions to Consider:
- How will the solution ensure fast response times? Look for solutions that provide alerts and notifications to speed up lead engagement.
- How will feedback on leads be collected? Effective systems facilitate easy feedback collection from channel partners to inform routing and management decisions.
- Will resellers need to log in to respond to leads? Minimizing the effort required from partners can help streamline processes and reduce confusion.
- How will leads be matched with resellers? The software should automate the lead-matching process to ensure efficient distribution.
Bottom Line
VAR lead management software should help organizations and their partners increase the quality of leads without causing administrative headaches. Many top solutions excel in one area but struggle in others. That’s where Bluebird can help.
Our AI-based lead scoring and routing system automatically distributes leads to the right partner, ensuring swift communication via SMS or email without requiring additional software adoption. With easy integration into existing CRMs, your team retains visibility and data without burdening partners.
