The full version of this article was first published at: Don't Manage—Accelerate: Why Sales Acceleration Is the New PRM
PRM is dead—long live partner sales acceleration! When comparing PRM and partner sales acceleration, we can start with the name. Would you rather manage or accelerate? That one’s pretty easy. But your intuition doesn’t tell you why PRM is inferior to partner sales acceleration. To get a good idea of the entire situation, let’s first step backward a bit. PRM came about at a time when there was a definite need for something in the channel partner arena. Partner relationship management (PRM) filled that void well and defined a set of business practices that some still cling to today. PRM defined portals as a necessary integration into channel sales and had a system that was rigid in its implementation and inflexible in adaptability. But over time, things began to change, and the rigidity that so many had come to depend upon would be the ultimate downfall of PRM. Customers were becoming more educated, for one. We were seeing prospective buyers seeking out the solutions that would work best for them. This flew in the face of the PRM norms, where channel sales staff would hunt down leads and hammer out deals. At the time, lead hunting and cold calling were working fine. But ever so slowly, the old way, the PRM way, of doing business in the channel was becoming inefficient. The once-revered portals were now the bane of every employee trying to work in the channel. What was formerly a well-defined and standardized system was now quickly becoming an…
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