Case Study: Channel Management Team Training at Hardy Process Solutions
A North American channel team certified together, with the online syllabus wrapped in a live webinar and Q and A.
Hardy Process Solutions designs and manufactures process weighing, measurement and control equipment, and sells a large share of it through channel partners. A team spread across North America manages those partners. It is led by Rodger Jeffery, Vice President of Sales, Service and Marketing.
What they wanted
Formal channel management training for the whole team, timed to land with the annual kickoff meeting. The team had grown up managing partners by experience rather than against a written method, and Jeffery wanted everyone working from the same definitions of partner recruitment, enablement, business planning and incentives.
What they chose
After comparing the options available, Hardy chose the Certificate in Channel Management, and combined the online modules with a live webinar and question and answer session for the team. Completing the certificate made each of them a Certified Channel Management Professional. The modules run from channel foundations and terminology through partner recruitment, onboarding and enablement, partner business plans, incentives, positioning, partner marketing, opportunity management and channel data, finishing with managing relationships and channel conflict.
The blend was deliberate. Self-paced study meant nobody came out of the field for a week, and the live session gave the team somewhere to argue about how the material applied to Hardy's own partners.
What Hardy said
Overall it was a very straightforward, effective approach and has provided very good value.
Rodger Jeffery, Vice President of Sales, Service and Marketing, Hardy Process Solutions
Asked why he picked the Institute, Jeffery pointed to the online delivery, the content and the value, and described the team as flexible and supportive. He said he would recommend the Channel Institute to companies looking for better channel results and tighter alignment across the business.
How this usually works
For most corporate customers the attractive shape is the one Hardy used: a pre-built online course carrying the syllabus, with live interaction wrapped around it, whether that is a webinar, a mentoring arrangement or a question and answer session for the team. It keeps the cost and the disruption down while still giving people somewhere to ask about their own accounts.
Team training is arranged through corporate training, or by writing to corporate@channelinstitute.com. There is also a case study covering Hexagon's channel sales team, which took a similar route across a wider spread of countries.
Here is your template
Download it in whichever format suits you. The Excel version is the one to work in.
Download the Excel templateDownload the PDF versionWant the full joint business planning module? See the Certificate in Channel Management.