A lot of channel account managers find it difficult to stay on top of the minds of their partners. After all, it’s not easy to build relationships and keep in touch with your clients. We know that we should follow up but many tasks throughout the day prevent us from doing so. The good news is staying on top of mind doesn’t always involve long calls and very personalized emails. Instead, you can pique their interest with insightful and productive discussions. Not sure what you need to do? In this blog post, we’ll discuss three ways you can stay on top of mind with your partners:
1. Context
The first step is to set the topic of the conversation or meeting. One trick is to set an agenda to help you ensure that your discussions will be set in the right context. Hubspot designed a simple meeting agenda - that works for any type of meeting. It consists of three columns - topic, preparation, and structure.
Let’s discuss each part in-depth: Topic As its name suggests, the topic column is what you’ll be discussing during the meeting. Ask yourself the topics that need to be discussed with your sales partner. You can also ask your partner if he has other topics he wishes to discuss beforehand and why.
Preparation
If you tell your partners how they can prepare for a meeting, it shows how much you value their time. You’ll also get to have meaningful conversations and not waste time on misunderstandings or catching up because they’re already prepared.
Structure
The structure involves listing down the concrete action steps needed to address the issue. This helps both you and your partner understand what will be accomplished and how will it be done in a short timeframe. Your partner will also be happy to know that their time won’t be wasted.
2. Contrast
Ever heard of the saying, “Dare to be different”?Well, it holds true for both life and business. If you want to create a dent in the market, you have to be different from your competition. You have to offer a product that’s better or stands out from everyone else’s. After all, when you become loyal to a brand, were you loyal because their products are “normal”? Chances are there are a few things that make them stand out from the rest.
That said, you should also strive to be different from your competition. This can be in the form of presenting your products in a different way in terms of content. Your competition might use blog posts and to stand out you might publish a long video series. The point is not just to be different, but also to get valuable insights that your competition doesn’t have. Contrast is all about being different from your competition. This can be in the form of presenting stuff in a different way but it can also be in terms of content. This means bringing valuable insights that your competition doesn’t have.
3. Conflict
Watch out, this can be tricky. Conflict isn’t always bad. If you can comfortably disagree with your partner, you can address the tough topics and have in-depth discussions. After all, being comfortable enough to confront and challenge each other helps both of you grow and improve.
Conflict is also a sign of commitment. You and your partners will not always agree on the same things - but both of you want to get things right. So, debating over your strategy and action steps is only normal because it shows how important it is for both parties to succeed. Unfortunately, conflicts aren’t always good - which is why it’s necessary to build a trustful relationship. You and your partner have to trust each other enough to strategize and take risks in order to increase sales and have a mutually beneficial partnership. That’s it.
The three easy steps to stay on top of mind with your partner involve context, contrast, and conflict.
How do you stay on top of mind with your partner? Got any tips? Let us know.
