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Some of your partners are still selling a product you discontinued
Updates travel as forwarded PDFs and messages. Some regions hear late, some never hear, and every distributor ends up describing a slightly different company.
Fix your channel communication See the country desks
- Duration
- 6 to 8 weeks to build
- Then
- A fixed monthly rhythm
- Owner
- Marketing, not regional sales
- Most missed
- The withdrawal notice
What breaks in an overseas channel
Distance multiplies every one of these.
- Information reaches partners unevenly. Depending on which regional manager is diligent, which reproduces exactly the inconsistency you are trying to remove.
- Partners write their own messaging. Because nothing approved exists in a form they can use, so your brand becomes whatever they invented.
- Discontinued products keep being quoted. There is no withdrawal step, and almost nobody builds one.
- New salespeople at the distributor are never trained. They join constantly and nobody re-trains them, so a year-three partner sells your year-one story.
- Co-marketing money goes nowhere. Funded against activity rather than outcome, and before the messaging was consistent.
The system
Built so your marketing executive can run it, not so it needs a consultant.
A central asset library
One location, always current, reachable without asking anybody. Removing the request step is most of the value.
A scheduled update
Same format, same day. What is new, what changed, what is being withdrawn, what is coming.
Approved messaging in usable form
What partners may claim, in their language, so they stop inventing versions.
Launch kits for the channel
The direct kit adapted for a partner who carries forty other lines. Launch kits.
Recorded training
Short and repeatable, because partner staff turnover is constant.
A withdrawal process
With a confirmation step. This is the piece that stops old products appearing in quotations two years later.
Co-marketing rules
Defined activity, agreed outcome, and only once the messaging is consistent.
The cycle that keeps a network current
Five components on a repeating monthly rhythm. Predictability is what makes partners read it, which is why the date matters more than the design.
Ownership belongs with marketing rather than regional sales. Left to sales it becomes whichever manager is most diligent.
For an overseas network this is frequently the highest-return marketing investment available, and it is almost never the one companies ask for.
Questions overseas teams ask
Our distributors are small and not very digital.
Then the system meets them where they are. A monthly broadcast with a link to one current sheet is a system. The failure is the absence of schedule and single source, not the channel.
Should material be in local languages?
For anything the partner shows a customer, usually yes. For internal updates, English is generally fine. Translation is briefed against a glossary you own.
How do we stop them using old material?
Make current material easier to get than old material is to find, and date-stamp everything. Partners use old decks because the old deck is on their laptop.
Who runs it after you leave?
Your marketing executive. The system is built to be run with a calendar and a checklist. If it needs a consultant to keep running, it was designed wrong.
Ask three distributors to describe your newest product
If you get three different answers, or two blanks, there is a contained piece of work here with a fast return.
Fix your channel communication See case studies
Kunal Waghmare · Padmavati Hills, Mokai Vasti, Bavdhan, Pune, Maharashtra 411021, India
office@quiamo.com · +91 90216 02686 · English