{"id":3165,"date":"2017-12-12T14:42:20","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T22:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=3165"},"modified":"2017-12-12T14:42:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T22:42:20","slug":"channel-partner-connect-partner-program-connect-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/channel-partner-connect-partner-program-connect-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Make Your Customers Happy While Boosting the Bottom Line: Provide Your Channel Partners with Ongoing Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your business is like most, your team includes people outside of your own company\u2019s walls. And because of that, you can only achieve your corporate goals if your channel partner ecosystem meets theirs, too.<\/p>\n

The importance of your channel partners\u2019 success shows up most clearly with resellers. As your revenue targets increase year over year, your company counts on its existing channel partners to scale their output as well.<\/p>\n

What are some ways we can ensure this happens? One of the most effective ways is through high-quality training.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0recent article<\/u><\/a>\u00a0in SearchITChannel.com,\u00a0Greg Richey<\/u><\/a>, North American lead for the professional and training services organization at\u00a0Ingram Micro<\/u><\/a>, said vendors are coming to understand that by enforcing and creating a stringent education program, partners are more adept at selling their products.<\/p>\n

At Plantronics, we launched Connect University within our Connect Partner Program in 2013.\u00a0Plantronics\u2019 Connect Partner Program<\/u><\/a>\u00a0supports partners throughout their business activities, providing them with planning and revenue-generating support, and certification for applicable programs. It\u2019s how we help our partners successfully sell our products!<\/p>\n

Since then, many partners have told us in conversations that the training they\u2019ve received from this program has empowered them to sell more. We knew this would be the case, but it led us to ask, \u201cHow\u00a0much<\/em>\u00a0more?\u201d and \u201cHow can we translate this ongoing training into a best practice for our other channel partners so they can also reap the benefits?\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically, we wanted to discover whether there was an improvement in sales performance after partners became specialized in one or more of the Connect University certifications. So, we did some research.<\/p>\n

To perform our analysis, we built a control group of more than 2400 untrained partners and a trained group comprising more than 80 partners.<\/p>\n

The analysis showed that those receiving training increased their sales on average by nine percent more than those who had no training. Not only that, but the top ten performers experienced an impressive 406 percent higher growth rate than the control group!<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say, providing and implementing a well-laid-out certification program can lead to tangible benefits for everyone involved on an ongoing basis. The vendor and partner can see a repeatable increase in the bottom line, and the customer buys from a highly knowledgeable, trusted source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If your business is like most, your team includes people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[517],"tags":[1399,1400,1391,1401,1402,1403,1397,383,13,1394,889,1135,1404],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}