First time selling indirect, need advice!
I am slowly starting to sell our software through resellers and distributors (one man shops all to way to major Software distributors.)
Given my lack of experience, I am wondering what details are important to track and measure when a sale is closed by our resellers?
For instance, besides knowing the name of the company and its location etc.. Is it necessary to know the name of the contact(s) who purchased our software? By asking this information from our resellers, will that not create trust issues?
Please let me know, based on your experience, what information is CRUCIAL to Have from your distributors in order to run a healthy and successful indirect sales channel.
Thank you!
-Danny
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Please consider making the CRM question a separate one, so answers to that are not mixed with your "main" question. Easier for everyone to find relevant info ;-). Great question, by the way. – Tomeduarte 13 years ago
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Thanks Tom, good point, I removed the CRM part and will start a new question around that. Do you have any ideas as to my original question? – Danny 13 years ago
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No, I have no experience in that field. I just commented because I'm interested in great answers too :) – Tomeduarte 13 years ago
3 Answers
The relationship you have with the customers you acquire through resellers should be spelled out in your agreement with the reseller. Who is responsible for support, who gets paid for support, who gets to sell follow on products or services are just some things you'll want to sort out up front.
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Jim, thanks for your response. Our model is SaaS, we charge $75 USD per seat, per year, and remote support is factored in to that price. We provide our resellers 20% margin if they sell the product and we support the customer, and 30% margin if they also provide the support. My problem is I am not sure what information I should be tracking in my CRM, when my reseller is actually servicing the customer. At the end of the day, if you take the %30 scheme, the customer belongs to him not me, so should I still be aware and capture the contact information of my resellers customer?? – Danny 13 years ago
The minimum you should ask for is the customer's name and what industry/nature of business they are in.
Both are crucial, the first in case the re-seller sudden decides to close shop and stop providing support, having the company name and possibly contact lets you take over with less issues. It's particularly important if the re-seller is a one man operation which might not be able to provide year round service.
The second is also important because it will let you know which sectors you are successfully penetrating, giving you a platform for you to do further research. Maybe find out why those type of businesses like your app and see if you should make that a bigger part of your marketing plan in the future.
Hands down salesforce.com for any CRM requirements. Whether you buy the scaled down minimum or their more advanced options their system and support is incredible.
In any of their models you can add feature through objects. I'm not very savvy when it comes to database coding, but their system allowed me to create and meet all of my initial needs with the bare bones version.
