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Tip of the Month Archives
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Roles and Responsibilities
February 2005 “We don’t know what it is you want us to do.” The biggest single complaint from business partners about their suppliers. You can put a stop to this! If all the planning is done………….why doesn’t it work? “It
is always much easier to design than to perform.” Let’s take a quick look at the possible bumps in the road for your business partners when they work with you. What are their typical daily transactions and contacts with your company?
Whom do they contact and whom do they need to contact in your organization. Do they know? Do you know?
As a channel and business partner (BP) manager, you need to be able to manage and coordinate your BP Account Manager who handles the manufacturer / business partner operations, business management and acts as a consultant to your business partner and your Product Business Unit who is responsible for product marketing and product support. How can you easily manage and coordinate all this and obtain the cooperation and buy-in of all concerned? Identify your team members and their areas of responsibility. Your team consists of those people who interface regularly with your business partner. Establish the individual time allocated to each partner account and the individual target / objectives for each account and for the total objectives of the individual. This is done to determine the overall importance and impact that each team member has with each specific partner. Bring the team together in a workshop initially with only the internal team. The team tasks include identifying your value proposition to the business partner and defining your action plan to deliver the key values to your business partner. Identify, define and allocate each team member’s role and responsibilities together. Using an external facilitator often helps speed the process along. The focus of your roles and responsibilities is to deliver value to your business partner(s) and ultimately to their customers. An easy way to do this is to concentrate on four main areas: Relationship Management, Sales Execution, Business Partner Support and Measurement and Reporting and the roles that fall into each of those categories. Once this has been accomplished internally, meet with your business partner’s team and repeat the exercise with the focus being towards serving your business partner’s dealers and customers. Again, use of a facilitator, supplied by you, is a welcomed benefit for your business partners. Through this process, you build support and cooperation with your business partner and account team management for the successful implementation and achievement of your business plan. At the conclusion of the workshop, each participant ends up with personal action plans and a clear definition of what they need to do and with whom to realize the team’s targets for the period. Finally, a hidden objective and accomplishment is that you will have eliminated most if not all sources of conflict between you and your business partner for the next six months. You will have altered your relationship to one of cooperation and enhancement broadening and deepening the relational bonds with your partner. Make their life easier and yours will be too. Once everyone knows what they need to do, each person can get on with the tasks at hand, managing, doing, evaluating, assessing and correcting. You gain the full cooperation of everyone involved because they have committed themselves to what they can contribute. And, everyone has the same focus and objective – to add value through more efficient and effective cooperation, support and help. If you would like help in organizing such an event and in training your account managers to run their own workshops included with tools and case studies, email MNSA with your requirements. Subscribe or Unsubscribe We hope you find the tips informative and relevant. If you know of others who would be interested in these tips, encourage them to sign up for our Tips via Email. Should you like to cancel your email subscription, please click here.
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