Archive for the ‘LinkedIn’ Category

Supporting a channel partner in today’s world has become a lot more complex as end-users are far more demanding and educated.

To me a channel partner is a company that partners with a manufacturer or producer to market and sell the manufacturer’s products, services, or technologies. This is usually done through a co-branding relationship. Channel partners may be distributors, vendors, retailers, consultants, systems integrators (SI), technology deployment consultancies, and value-added resellers (VARs) and other such organizations.

A channel partner will never have the insights into the product or services as the manufacturer has. Thus providing a framework, process and system to allow for the sharing of why the product is relevant to a customer is key to the success of the manufacturer and channel partner alike!

As outlined in my blog post on The Emperor’s clothes – Selling through Social Media – Why should you care? Clearly manufacturers would need to support a channel partner in either:

1. Communicating value – where the product is unique
2. Creating Value – where the product is a commodity

To effectively support the channel partner; manufacturers need to support the WHY – the cause or intention underlying an action or situation, especially in the phrase ‘the whys and wherefores’.

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Many individuals use social networking sites for personal communication and interaction. What they may not realize is that these sites produce huge professional potential as well. Growing your business using LinkedIn may be something you haven’t considered but it can be very helpful once used perfectly. One of the finest ways to get on track is to create your profile page. This can be your personal page, or a page set up specifically for your business. Be sure the information is correct and that there are no typos. LinkedIn is for professionals and if you do not look the part online, you will not be taken sincerely.

Then the next step to growing your business using LinkedIn is to do a search for the decision makers in fundamental industries and invite them into your network. Not everyone has an email address attached to their profile, so you may need to do a bit more searching, using other methods. This has the advantage of allowing you to gather more about them and their company than what is in their profile. Learning about their company will produce you something to talk about to begin building the relationship. Show interest in them and what they do.

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Let’s get started! To begin with, create your LinkedIn profile text in MS Word and keep this as your Master Document. LinkedIn has no spell check capability. Firefox enables limited spell check capability. Here’s my additional tips in favor of you: Picture – Use a basic headshot picture from any digital camera, no professional service needed. A clean, white background is the best. Do not make use of group photos or logos. Upload up to a 4Mb file and use the system’s cropping tool. The final picture is quite small – 80 x 80 pixels. A thumbnail to be exact.

Headline – This is the most notable section on your profile, all 120 characters. Defaults to Current Job Title and Current Employer. Add interesting, compelling and colorful words to attract interest. This is vital in attracting people to click through from search listings.

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