How to build a sales channel for startups. Part one, theoretical

When I was still young, one of my parents' friends told them a phrase he had heard from the Americans: “ it’s easy to make something, and you try to sell it ”.
Then, at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika deficit, these words seemed at least strange to me. I understood their true meaning later.

Now the competition in the software market is as high as ever.
So, any startup should first create a channel for sales of its creation. Here we will talk about it.

There are three main ways of selling - only independently, only through partners and combined.
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Direct sales

Used by
Either by newcomers to the market, or by companies with an exclusive and sought-after product.

Nobody knows novices, their products are not yet in demand. Therefore, in order not to die of hunger, you need to sell yourself.

Companies with exclusive products simply do not want to share profits. After all, and so will come, stand in a queue and buy. A striking example was the company Xerox 30 years ago. Then nobody copied the photocopier technique. The brand itself has become a household name. For devices it was possible to assign any price - they still bought them. The bad news is that there are almost no such companies left.

Benefits
Vendor gets more money. The partner can keep from 15 to 70 percent of the price of the goods, so the savings can be very significant.

disadvantages
A small capture of regular customers. For example, if you take our market, then 2-3 thousand people come to the site per day, who either already know about the program or are attracted by advertising. In those days, when publication in the media is published, the number of visits for a short time rises to 5-15 thousand.

In fact, it is a drop in the sea. Only a small proportion of visitors have a real need for your product or the authority to test / purchase / implement it. In addition, the potential audience of your program may be tens of thousands of times more. And telling strangers about your product, you will hear "does such a thing exist ?!"

findings
In any case, it is necessary to read from direct sales. If from the first day you are engaged exclusively in building an affiliate network, then soon the investor’s money will run out and there will be nothing to eat. Yes, and partners with a zero-speed vendor is not very interesting ...

Sales only through partners

Used by
Large and well-known companies for which wide market coverage is important.

The most famous example among Western vendors is Microsoft, whose Russian division officially deals exclusively with marketing. Distributors purchase licenses at North American headquarters and sell to local partners who work directly with customers.

In Russia, the main seller through partners is a monopolist in the 1C accounting market. 1C dictates very strict pricing terms to its partners - the cost of licenses is determined only by the vendor, the partner does not have the right to make discounts to the client at his own expense. Dissenters with this approach quickly fly out of the channel.

On the one hand, the partners are unhappy that they cannot compete at the expense of lower prices, but thanks to this policy, the channel remains very high margins (from 50%).
True, the owner of 1C, Mr. Nurgaliyev persistently calls his partners franchisee, with which I strongly disagree.

Benefits
The confidence of partners that the vendor will not compete with them. When the buyer has a choice - to buy from the manufacturer or from an intermediary, he will always choose the manufacturer. Perhaps this is the legacy of the 90s, when the dealers tried to slip us all sorts of rubbish under the guise of a quality product, but customers are trying to go directly to the vendor, I think that it is better and cheaper. (Surprisingly, this is true even for software, although the program code is in any case downloaded from the manufacturer’s website).
It is clear that the partner is not very pleased to offer your product to their customers knowing that they can buy directly at any time. So the fact that the vendor’s work only through partners is a huge plus for them.

Large reach of potential audience . Every sales company has a pool of customers who buy something from time to time. Often, representatives of such companies share their problems with sellers and ask them to choose a product to solve them. This is where the seller can recommend your product.
Also, partner managers can proactively ring up their clients (or inform them via mailing) and offer to test a new solution.

Easy to scale . If you want to increase sales, you will have to increase your marketing budget and recruit additional sales managers. And all this is money and time that you invest in development. If you sell only through partners, then it will be enough to sign several agreements and your virtual sales department will be replenished with two or three dozen employees.

disadvantages
If you are known, and your products are in demand, then there will be no release from partners. Otherwise, your company will soon be left without money - because you yourself do not sell anything.

At the same time, partners can sign contracts with you, smile and assure that they are actively working to promote your product. In fact, their managers will simply be too lazy to actively promote you and they will wait for incoming requests from customers. (Stimulation of partners will be discussed in the second part)

Combined sales

Used by
The scheme by which most vendors work. The manufacturer uses its own ways of promoting the product and while customers, and partners - their own. In most cases, they focus on different audiences, which makes it possible to scale sales.
To assign transactions to a specific partner, a registration mechanism is used (we will consider it in the second part).

Benefits
You do not put all your eggs in one basket. From somewhere the money will come, or it will be your sellers or from partners.
In addition, your sales are actually an success story for new partners: “look how much we earn, you can even more with your customer base”.

disadvantages
Partners will be afraid that customers will go to the vendor. (This is also solved with the help of registrations or rebade ).
You need to keep your own sales team. But is it scary? Microsoft doesn’t have its own salespeople, but there are call centers that ring up potential customers, after which they are “handed over” to their partners for registration.

Fuh, the theory is over. In the next part, we will look at how and where to look for partners, how to register their deals and how to encourage their managers to actively ring up clients.

Successful business!

Andrey Ignatov