The channel has come a long way since classroom training was mandatory for most technical and sales certifications. These training sessions usually meant that resellers had to sit through mind-numbing presentations that did more to explain how products worked than how they could be integrated into a solution or why customers would want to purchase them. Resellers promptly started calling the experience “Death by PowerPoint” or the vendor version of “Traffic School.” And worst of all, classroom training meant that resellers had to fly their best employees around the country – an activity that was costly and, more importantly, non-billable.
Luckily, Web 2.0 products and capabilities have largely transformed the learning experience for resellers of progressive suppliers. Partners are now picking up their product information from YouTube, SlideShare, Brainshark, and a slew of innovative sites that offer low-cost, easily accessible recorded webcasts, slides with voice-over, and professional videos for training purposes. This glut of information is viewable 24/7 on handheld
devices like an iPhone in a parking lot or an airline terminal or the conference room of your biggest customer. All it takes is a vendor’s willingness to post the information and a partner’s knowledge of how to access the sites.
Most large vendors and/or their channel sales managers (officially or unofficially) have moved quickly to make product information available on popular social media hubs. Then, when they realized that many resellers did not know how to use the sites, began enablement programs to get resellers more active online. The goal was to improve communications, speed knowledge transfer, and bring resellers closer to their customers.
EMC, Partnerpedia, and Qwest are currently sponsoring a program to make their partners more comfortable by introducing them to the most popular sites with encouragement to be active online. This program includes a series of webcasts on topics like setting up professional profiles, social media etiquette, online marketing and sales, and social media strategy development. The exchange of information is fostered through an active LinkedIn group where reseller students get their homework assignments and ask questions for the other students and teachers to answer. It’s using social media capabilities to teach social media skills. More than 300 enthusiastic channel partners are participating. And all are coming to understand (just like mama said) that “you only get out (of the program) what you put into it.”
We are probably going to be seeing this kind of interactive, social learning a lot, as vendors see that it can be used successfully to help resellers to get trained on products, programs, and services. It’s a whole different kind of training: exciting and full of promise. But let’s take a breath and evaluate.
As we pass the half-way point of the program, it’s time for participants to take stock of what is working and what needs to be changed. There is a lot of innovation in the delivery of the course and many views on the best use of the technology. Concepts like focused social media sites, homework, classmate introductions on LinkedIn, introduction of free tools like Tweetdeck and Xeesm, topic discussions in the community, and assignment reviews that are not typical for reseller enablement training. Participants, what do you think?
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