What is ‘enablement’? And why has it become one of the top B2B marketing tools?
Live and Learn
How can you give resellers and business partners in your distribution channel a competitive edge and persuade them to sell your products rather than those of a rival vendor?
The answer is ‘enablement’ – in other words, you need to give your resellers the skills and product knowledge to sell your solution or services effectively to their end customer.
Pioneers of Learn and Earn
At Motivforce, one of our main areas of expertise is the design and implementation of e-learning within B2B loyalty programs. In fact, we pioneered the ‘Lean & Earn’ approach in our channel incentive programs for IBM and Lenovo, which target and engage business partners with interactive education and ‘enable’ them to sell more effectively.
Learning means earning! How is that for a value proposition to reward your business partners? It’s win-win. Your resellers are rewarded with points for product training – which they can redeem for gift cards and gadgets – whilst upskilling their sales knowledge, enabling them to close more deals, and generate more revenue for your company.
When we integrate e-learning within our B2B loyalty program, our clients see extraordinary results. In 2019, for example, participants in the Lenovo LEAP channel incentive program, who undertook Learn activities, sold 13.6 times more products/solutions covered by the training modules (compared with like-for-like non participating firms) and each generated an average $50K additional revenue.
How do you convince stakeholders to invest in enablement?
How can you convince the stakeholders in your business to invest in introducing e-learning and enablement to your B2B loyalty program? Here are a few pointers for making the business case:
Training optimises sales – without proper education, business partners will apply a variation of sales tactics, potentially wasting time and money, which won’t necessarily win the end customer’s business
Learning promotes consistency – B2B selling often happens in teams. If one team member has not been trained appropriately or if everyone in the team is selling their way, this leads to inconsistent messaging, customer confusion and less effective selling.
Learning gives channel partners the confidence they need to market and sell your product range. There’s nothing worse than not knowing what to say or do in conversations with clients. A confident business partner who knows how to do his or her job will be more satisfied with the relationship and committed to selling products from their ‘preferred’ supplier.
Once you have convinced your stakeholders, then talk to us about the best way to analyse your training needs and deploy a learn and earn strategy that delivers ROI. Enablement comes in many forms and we can advise you on the optimum solution that leads to loyalty.
