Question

Topic: Strategy

Lead Management Strategy With 3rd Party Dealers?

Posted by Anonymous on 4/14/2010 at 1:10 PM ET 125 Points
Hello all and thank you in advance for your assistance.

I am trying to implement a lead management process in an effort to align marketing with the sales process. We are using Salesforce CRM. Domestically, my sales org consists of 3 regional sales managers (East, West, & Central) each working with up to five third-party dealers.

My challenge is this: I want to be able to track from lead to sale for comprehensive reporting. Unfortunately, however, with our dealers all being on their own separate CRM systems and reporting to other principles besides ourselves, the prospect of ramping them all up on Salesforce is too much. They refuse to do this.

In addition, to ask the reps to update the status of all leads during their busy schedule is also not a viable option.

Are there any best practices out there with regards to lead management in sales organizations with dealer networks?

Thank you for your time,

~Danielle~
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by telemoxie on 4/14/2010 at 4:28 PM Member
    I'm curious, if I were one of your resellers, what incentives would you provide me to perform all this extra work? Would I get more leads? Would I get better leads? Would I get a better discount schedule? Would I receive more advertising co-op dollars? Would I get free or low-cost sales collateral materials? Would I get additional technical support assistance, and additional presales support? What's in it for me?
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 4/14/2010 at 11:11 PM Accepted
    In most high tech distributor organizations, lead and sales data is passed from channel to suppliers via a formated spread sheet that can be imported into the manufacturers system.
    A few industry segments, Associations for High Tech Distribution, Power Transmission, Fluid Power and Electrical Automation have published a common methodology. This makes is cheaper and simpler for their distributor partners to design one formated output.

    My practice centers around channel sales in technical fields, if I can answer any quick questions - contact me via my profile. Frank Hurtte
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