adplus-dvertising
Connect with us

Business

Pitfalls Of Channel Partner Training To Avoid

Published

 on

Pitfalls Of Channel Partner Training To Avoid

This article outlines everything from what is channel partner training to the four significant pitfalls of channel partner training that organizations must avoid. It also explains how the best LMS for partner training can help overcome potential difficulties by identifying the trouble spots and making your partner training program successful.

Without further ado, let’s get started. 

 

What Is Channel Partner Training?

Your channel partners could be franchises, wholesalers, distributors, or resellers. 

The term “channel partner training” refers to training companies and individuals involved in the resale of your product offerings. One must design partner skill-building initiatives to help partners close more sales by assisting them in introducing your products to customers in the best possible light. 

It is essential to train your partner network to provide customers with the best service possible, which helps build brand loyalty. 

Partner training includes everything from orientation and training partners to training programs. By instructing your channel partners, you give them the knowledge they need to work effectively across your existing system. 

Every aspect of your business, from sales and market reach to growth potential, will benefit from training partners and increasing their knowledge about your products or services.

 

Benefits Of Channel Partner Training

Partner training offers various advantages for your company. Here are a few of those benefits.

 

  • Creates and safeguards your company’s brand.

Various partners may imply multiple voices shaping the story about your product. Training your channel partners ensures that your brand remains constant with each of its narrators.

  • Spend less on support

You don’t have to constantly reskill a partner when things go wrong if you train them properly from the beginning of your interaction. They’ll know how to avoid issues and deal with them when they arise.

 

  • Increase retention of customers

Increased partner responsiveness to customer issues also results from improved partner performance—this responsiveness results in higher customer retention rates.

 

  • Enhance performance

Partners have access to the best messaging to spread awareness of your product and promote widespread adoption. Your products remain on top by regularly adding new training content.

 

  • Manage expectations. 

When you are not meeting expectations, there is less room for surprise, whereas when clearly stated, expectations must be met on both your and the partner’s end.

Channel partner training has undeniable advantages. But partner training has its difficulties when it’s poorly implemented. Below are some challenges organizations face with channel partner training. 

 

Challenges Of Channel Partner Training

Obtaining Organizational Support On The Inside

Partner training can be difficult because most businesses find it challenging to accept it and fail to see its value. The importance of offering training programs to boost your partner channel’s efficiency is underappreciated and frequently forgotten.

Solution: To win their support, you’ll need to persuade your organization’s members and make them aware of the benefits training can have on your business and partner relations. Explain to them how educating your business partners about your goods and services will benefit them in maintaining brand consistency and loyalty. 

If budget concerns you, you can promote delivering partner training using an LMS. With the help of the tool, partners can easily access training materials in their language, which helps improve the completion rates and, consequently, the ROI of your efforts. It makes using an LMS a cost-effective decision.  

 

Channel Partner Engagement 

Once you have convinced your stakeholders, then comes the main challenge – partner engagement. Keeping channel partners engaged with the courses is necessary to ensure the success of your training efforts. 

Solution: The best way to deal with this is to bring the team members with the relevant experience on board. No one would know your channel partners more than your sales team, so it’s highly recommended you take their opinion and use their expertise when creating a training session. 

In addition, you won’t know what will work unless you discuss your options with your partners. Thus you must consult with your partners about what information they would like, what kind of support they need, and how they would like to receive it from the beginning.

Moreover, it would be best if you also leveraged eLearning technologies. 

A learning management system is an excellent tool to help keep your partners engaged. This tool often comes with features like gamification and certifications and has multi-lingual abilities, which may improve the engagement rate. 

 

Finance And Funding

No matter the project, funding will always be a major obstacle for most organizations. HR departments are often responsible for budgeting across departments, and convincing them to allocate resources to train external partners is certainly challenging. After all, it is about more than just offering training to partners. It also involves creating the course, ensuring its relevance, finding the right medium to deliver it, and analyzing the results.  

Solution: Using an LMS that easily integrates with authoring tools is all you need to convince your HRs or those who manage budgets in your organization. Using this integration and subject matter experts in your organization helps you create a relevant and engaging course. 

As we discussed, engaging in training courses helps bring improved completion rates and ROI. Furthermore, the knowledge your partners will gain from the training sessions will ensure brand consistency and customer satisfaction. 

All this combined makes investing in an LMS and in partner training a cost-effective decision. 

 

Data Collection 

One challenge that most organizations face is collecting partner training data. Today, data is extremely valuable. You can direct your training efforts toward success when you have the relevant insights and reports. 

Organizations that still use traditional training methods are often faced with such challenges. 

Solution: This is another challenge a learning management system can easily help tackle. 

Most LMS offers reporting as a feature. You can use this feature to not only personalize your training course for each partner but also to identify completion rates, certifications, and relevance of your course. Most organizations use such data to rework their training program and make them more apt for their partners.  

 

Bottom Line

While highly beneficial for your organization and network, training your channel partners does present some difficulties. Businesses that are about to start preparing their channel partners—through formal eLearning or a blended learning approach—will run into problems that need immediate fixing. However, the best LMS will assist you in coordinating, planning, and implementing the training that equips your partners to perform excellent work and simplify the entire process. 

 

Business

Telus prioritizing ‘most important customers,’ avoiding ‘unprofitable’ offers: CFO

Published

 on

 

Telus Corp. says it is avoiding offering “unprofitable” discounts as fierce competition in the Canadian telecommunications sector shows no sign of slowing down.

The company said Friday it had fewer net new customers during its third quarter compared with the same time last year, as it copes with increasingly “aggressive marketing and promotional pricing” that is prompting more customers to switch providers.

Telus said it added 347,000 net new customers, down around 14.5 per cent compared with last year. The figure includes 130,000 mobile phone subscribers and 34,000 internet customers, down 30,000 and 3,000, respectively, year-over-year.

The company reported its mobile phone churn rate — a metric measuring subscribers who cancelled their services — was 1.09 per cent in the third quarter, up from 1.03 per cent in the third quarter of 2023. That included a postpaid mobile phone churn rate of 0.90 per cent in its latest quarter.

Telus said its focus is on customer retention through its “industry-leading service and network quality, along with successful promotions and bundled offerings.”

“The customers we have are the most important customers we can get,” said chief financial officer Doug French in an interview.

“We’ve, again, just continued to focus on what matters most to our customers, from a product and customer service perspective, while not loading unprofitable customers.”

Meanwhile, Telus reported its net income attributable to common shares more than doubled during its third quarter.

The telecommunications company said it earned $280 million, up 105.9 per cent from the same three-month period in 2023. Earnings per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was 19 cents compared with nine cents a year earlier.

It reported adjusted net income was $413 million, up 10.7 per cent year-over-year from $373 million in the same quarter last year. Operating revenue and other income for the quarter was $5.1 billion, up 1.8 per cent from the previous year.

Mobile phone average revenue per user was $58.85 in the third quarter, a decrease of $2.09 or 3.4 per cent from a year ago. Telus said the drop was attributable to customers signing up for base rate plans with lower prices, along with a decline in overage and roaming revenues.

It said customers are increasingly adopting unlimited data and Canada-U.S. plans which provide higher and more stable ARPU on a monthly basis.

“In a tough operating environment and relative to peers, we view Q3 results that were in line to slightly better than forecast as the best of the bunch,” said RBC analyst Drew McReynolds in a note.

Scotiabank analyst Maher Yaghi added that “the telecom industry in Canada remains very challenging for all players, however, Telus has been able to face these pressures” and still deliver growth.

The Big 3 telecom providers — which also include Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. — have frequently stressed that the market has grown more competitive in recent years, especially after the closing of Quebecor Inc.’s purchase of Freedom Mobile in April 2023.

Hailed as a fourth national carrier, Quebecor has invested in enhancements to Freedom’s network while offering more affordable plans as part of a set of commitments it was mandated by Ottawa to agree to.

The cost of telephone services in September was down eight per cent compared with a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent inflation report last month.

“I think competition has been and continues to be, I’d say, quite intense in Canada, and we’ve obviously had to just manage our business the way we see fit,” said French.

Asked how long that environment could last, he said that’s out of Telus’ hands.

“What I can control, though, is how we go to market and how we lead with our products,” he said.

“I think the conditions within the market will have to adjust accordingly over time. We’ve continued to focus on digitization, continued to bring our cost structure down to compete, irrespective of the price and the current market conditions.”

Still, Canada’s telecom regulator continues to warn providers about customers facing more charges on their cellphone and internet bills.

On Tuesday, CRTC vice-president of consumer, analytics and strategy Scott Hutton called on providers to ensure they clearly inform their customers of charges such as early cancellation fees.

That followed statements from the regulator in recent weeks cautioning against rising international roaming fees and “surprise” price increases being found on their bills.

Hutton said the CRTC plans to launch public consultations in the coming weeks that will focus “on ensuring that information is clear and consistent, making it easier to compare offers and switch services or providers.”

“The CRTC is concerned with recent trends, which suggest that Canadians may not be benefiting from the full protections of our codes,” he said.

“We will continue to monitor developments and will take further action if our codes are not being followed.”

French said any initiative to boost transparency is a step in the right direction.

“I can’t say we are perfect across the board, but what I can say is we are absolutely taking it under consideration and trying to be the best at communicating with our customers,” he said.

“I think everyone looking in the mirror would say there’s room for improvement.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:T)

Source link

Continue Reading

Business

TC Energy cuts cost estimate for Southeast Gateway pipeline project in Mexico

Published

 on

 

CALGARY – TC Energy Corp. has lowered the estimated cost of its Southeast Gateway pipeline project in Mexico.

It says it now expects the project to cost between US$3.9 billion and US$4.1 billion compared with its original estimate of US$4.5 billion.

The change came as the company reported a third-quarter profit attributable to common shareholders of C$1.46 billion or $1.40 per share compared with a loss of C$197 million or 19 cents per share in the same quarter last year.

Revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 totalled C$4.08 billion, up from C$3.94 billion in the third quarter of 2023.

TC Energy says its comparable earnings for its latest quarter amounted to C$1.03 per share compared with C$1.00 per share a year earlier.

The average analyst estimate had been for a profit of 95 cents per share, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TRP)

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Business

BCE reports Q3 loss on asset impairment charge, cuts revenue guidance

Published

 on

 

BCE Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter as it recorded $2.11 billion in asset impairment charges, mainly related to Bell Media’s TV and radio properties.

The company says its net loss attributable to common shareholders amounted to $1.24 billion or $1.36 per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with a profit of $640 million or 70 cents per share a year earlier.

On an adjusted basis, BCE says it earned 75 cents per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of 81 cents per share in the same quarter last year.

“Bell’s results for the third quarter demonstrate that we are disciplined in our pursuit of profitable growth in an intensely competitive environment,” BCE chief executive Mirko Bibic said in a statement.

“Our focus this quarter, and throughout 2024, has been to attract higher-margin subscribers and reduce costs to help offset short-term revenue impacts from sustained competitive pricing pressures, slow economic growth and a media advertising market that is in transition.”

Operating revenue for the quarter totalled $5.97 billion, down from $6.08 billion in its third quarter of 2023.

BCE also said it now expects its revenue for 2024 to fall about 1.5 per cent compared with earlier guidance for an increase of zero to four per cent.

The company says the change comes as it faces lower-than-anticipated wireless product revenue and sustained pressure on wireless prices.

BCE added 33,111 net postpaid mobile phone subscribers, down 76.8 per cent from the same period last year, which was the company’s second-best performance on the metric since 2010.

It says the drop was driven by higher customer churn — a measure of subscribers who cancelled their service — amid greater competitive activity and promotional offer intensity. BCE’s monthly churn rate for the category was 1.28 per cent, up from 1.1 per cent during its previous third quarter.

The company also saw 11.6 per cent fewer gross subscriber activations “due to more targeted promotional offers and mobile device discounting compared to last year.”

Bell’s wireless mobile phone average revenue per user was $58.26, down 3.4 per cent from $60.28 in the third quarter of the prior year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BCE)

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending