Deal Registration Whitepaper by Computer Market Research

Industry White Paper from Computer Market Research

TM

Computer Market Research

Best Practices for
Deal Registration
in Multi-Tier Channels


Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3
Set Overall Objectives and Strategies 4
Modernize, Automate and Implement 4
Integrate Channel Programs 7
Reward Value Added Selling, Discourage Deal Poaching 8
Prevent Duplicate Registrations to Reduce Conflict 9
Create and Enforce Program Rules Consistently 10
Comply with Antitrust and Price Discrimination Laws 11
Close the Loop, Monitor Partner and Program Performance 11
Greater Trust, Loyalty, Efficiency, Profitability and Success 14

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Executive Summary
Preventing and/or mediating channel conflict is one of the greatest challenges for manufacturers with
multi-tier channel distribution strategies. Price discrimination and antitrust laws, industry practices and
ethics, distributor / reseller agreements and end-customer preferences restrict the level of control a
manufacturer can exercise over its sales channels. Yet, the pursuit of market share and optimal
profitability dictate that vendors implement best-practice sales channel policies and programs.

In addition to energetic rivalries and competition among channel partners for their piece of the market
pie, channel conflict can also include collisions between a manufacturer’s own direct sales force and its
channel partners. These incidents can cause great damage to the trust and collaboration that is
necessary to enable sales channels to operate efficiently.

3
Deal registration programs that enable channel partners to stake a claim on pending transactions and
value-added product-service solutions were introduced over 30 years ago as a mechanism to reward
those who actively created demand for a manufacturer’s products by ensuring that at least a portion of
the final sale would be credited to them.

Over the years, deal registration has been expanded into a set of strategies and processes that enable
producers to:

• More effectively manage the pipeline
• Improve their forward-looking view and forecast of future opportunities
• Enhance communications while reducing administrative costs and complexity
• Motivate channel partners to be more loyal and write more business
• Increase reseller loyalty by assuring better margins for those that initiate sales opportunities
• Enhance pre-sales end user support through greater channel collaboration
• Improve the quality and completeness of information delivered to the end customer
• Create incentives for channel partners to share information on deals they are working to enable the
vendor to collect more competitive intelligence
• Price larger deals in a more consistent manner
• Improve record keeping and compliance with industry standards or government regulations
• Gain more insight into dynamic market opportunities and better understand how business is trending
overall
• Close the loop at the end of the sales process and determine which partners and sales programs are
most effective

This white paper suggests a set of best practices to help manufacturing companies with multi-tier
channels to implement efficient deal registration processes that have proven to be effective through
extensive market experience by Computer Market Research™ (CMR) and numerous leading
manufacturers that CMR has served over its more than 25 year history.



Deal Registration Best Practices
Set Overall Objectives and Strategies
Begin by clarifying your high-level channel sales objectives and adopt a market-proven set of strategies
to achieve them. Confirm that your company is fully committed to a channel sales model. Vendors who
don’t have a robust channel strategy or are quick to sell direct may create an excessive amount of
channel conflict. This causes distributors and partners to be reluctant about sharing information with
vendors, even when a deal registration program is available. Your level of commitment to supporting
your channel with a deal registration program and other channel tools will determine the results of
your program.

Recognize that registering deals will help you gather more insights into opportunities being worked in the
channel and will improve your understanding of how your business is trending overall. You may gain a
better forward-looking view as well as more tangible information on deals that you should be working.

Once your objectives have been clearly defined and specific strategies have been developed, find a way

4
to rapidly deploy a centralized infrastructure to support all of your channel operations programs.

Modernize, Automate and Implement
Automate your process flow and offer 24/7 self-service to your distributors and resellers.

Legacy deal registration programs formerly consisted of a set of document files or spreadsheets used to
collect data and then circulated by email or discussed during costly telephone conferences. The
inefficiencies and frustrations that resulted from these schemes greatly inhibited their value and reduced
the likelihood that partners would participate.

Today, it’s easy to implement an automated deal registration portal that provides channel partners
with 24/7 secure access to a wide variety of resources. Partners can initiate deal registration
requests using online forms that have a standard look and feel consistent with other programs in your
company (See Figure 1).

Your channel managers can receive instant email notification of requests from resellers and
immediately accept or counter-offer requests, or forward them up line to senior management for
higher-level decisions (See Figure 2).

Partners should be immediately notified of the status of their request (approved, denied or revised). A
request number should be issued, and a registered deal letter generated and sent to the partner.
Generate confirmations at every step and save an audit trail for later reference.

Reduce the administrative burden for reseller personnel. Make it easy for them to modify
information dynamically on deals in progress and report status and feedback to the vendor. Everyone
should have secure, authenticated access to current information that can be easily updated and visible
to all vendor and partner personnel anywhere via an Internet connection.

Centralize your deal registration system and scale the program to include your entire partner
community. If appropriate, provide different layers of permission to different users (different levels
of partners) and to managers / administrators.



FIGURE 1. Sample online deal registration form.



FIGURE 2. Example email notification for newly registered deal.



Integrate Your Channel Programs
Integrate your solutions to the fullest extent possible. Market experience shows that deal registration
programs are more effective when they are fully integrated with other channel activities such as
point-of-sale (POS) data collection, opportunity management, co-op program management, special
pricing requests and results tracking (See Figure 3).

Focus on implementing proven methodologies across the board to promote successful channel
management. This will help you streamline channel processes for the best results, greater partner
acceptance, and deeper, more intelligent insights into what is happening in your channel.

The richer and more efficient your automation is and the more integration you offer, the more
satisfaction, participation and loyalty you’re likely to get from your channel partners.

FIGURE 3. Example landing page of fully integrated channel activities. Links display for eligible channel
programs that the partner may access in this all-inclusive solution.

7



Reward Value Added Selling, Discourage Deal Poaching
Motivate resellers to engage in value-based selling, not just commodity box moving.

End users are more likely to buy your product and become repeat customers if they get good
technical and sales support from start to finish. But many customers are unwilling to pay a premium
for value added items if the same product is available from a commodity discounter at a lower price.

Require partners to demonstrate competence. Establish minimum criteria for participation in your
channel programs, related either to technical training or verified support levels delivered to
end customers.

Reward the partner who creates the opportunity and first registers it by protecting his or her margins,
and perhaps by offering additional margin points or rebates when the sale is successfully closed.
Discourage other partners from poaching a sale at the last minute (See Figure 4).

Provide vendor assistance to partners through every phase of the sales process and track the progress
of the deal all the way to the close. Understand partners’ needs and perspectives and do your best to

8
fulfill them.

FIGURE 4. Example approved email notification that indicates discount/rebate amount that the partner
is eligible to receive.



Prevent Duplicate Registrations to Reduce Conflict
Use deal registration to create an incentive for resellers to share information with you on deals they are
working. Leverage the system to gather market data and competitive information (See Figure 5).

In order for them to receive the benefits of a deal registration, require partners to provide comprehensive
information about a deal – all customer details, product descriptions, quantities, expected order and

9
shipment dates, needs analysis evidence, environment, competition, etc.

Implement an intelligent, automated solution that prevents duplicate registrations of the same deal.
Make a strong effort to reduce channel conflict and promote collaboration within the channel to increase
satisfaction for distributors, resellers and end customers (See Figures 6, 7, 8).

FIGURE 5. Competitive information section of new registration form. Partner can indicate competitor,
pricing and desired purchase pricing if the manufacturer chooses to meet competitive costs.

FIGURE 6. End user company and contact detail section of new registration form. Here the partner
indicates the customer related information for the deal.



FIGURE 7. Product detail section of new registration form. Partner indicates what products are to be
purchased for the deal by selecting from a list of eligible parts. Quantities are entered to calculate the
total deal size.

FIGURE 8. Duplicate review in administrator view. Possible duplicate deals are listed based on
predetermined criteria. The administrator can review to verify whether deals listed are valid duplicates
and approve or deny the current registration.

Create and Enforce Program Rules Consistently
Establish rules that are appropriate to your channels, your company’s way of doing business and the
needs of your channel partners. Publish comprehensive program rules and enforce them consistently to
maintain credibility and promote loyalty and channel satisfaction.

Make sure that the rules of the program are clear to all participants. Reduce barriers to entry to
encourage qualified, competent partners to join the program and participate frequently.

10
To the greatest extent possible, automate the monitoring and enforcement of rules and be consistent in
their enforcement so that partners always know what to expect. For example, if you intend to take direct
all sales opportunities exceeding a certain dollar amount, let that be known to your channel and be
consistent.



Comply with Antitrust and Price Discrimination Laws
U.S. antitrust and price discrimination legislation was written to promote competition, provide
consumers with the best combination of price and quality and promote efficiency in the marketplace.
Penalties for violating these laws can be substantial.

Consult your legal counsel to assure your company’s compliance with antitrust laws, including the
Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Robinson-Patman
Act, which prohibit price discrimination under certain circumstances.

It may be appropriate for your deal registration policies to provide special pricing to resellers and
protection from competition if it can be shown that a reseller has reduced your cost of sales or increased
your competitiveness in the marketplace. Vendors should not pressure distributors or resellers to adhere
to specific prices – every partner should have the ability to set its own pricing to its customers. Once

11
again, consult your legal counsel as you design your deal registration policies and processes.

Close the Loop, Monitor Partners and Program Performance
Close the loop when a deal is completed. Verify all reseller claims for credits and extra benefits against
POS data, including verification that the registered deal has shipped, meets all agreed criteria, went to
the correct end user and that margin points or special pricing discounts were appropriate and justified.

The vendor should also collect and archive all reusable information and competitive intelligence for
future use. This can be done within the deal registration application, if it is properly designed,
implemented and widely adopted by your partners.

Regularly and systematically evaluate partners who participate in your deal registration programs.
Monitor ROI and other results, make adjustments to improve future results and support a sustainable
business model.

Revise and tune partner eligibility requirements, program product mix, pricing discounts and other
incentives on a regular basis.

Measure the impact of deal registration, special pricing, opportunity management and other related
channel programs on your sales volume, market share and overall profitability.

As a final step in closing the loop, vendors should look back at the demand generation program that
created the opportunity to monitor which programs are most effective so that they can be enhanced and
continued (See Example of Deal Registration Request and Deal Registration Process on pages 12 -13).



Example of Deal Registration Request Process
Partner Immediate
re-submits form submittal error
Partner accesses message provided
DR
application

01
Partner completes
No
online request Was submittal successful?
form Request form
submitted
d
Yes

Partner accesses
submit new application
requests to review update Notification of
new request
forwarded to
Administrator
Notification to via email
Partner

Registration status
updated in
application with
reason for denial

No Confirmation
message
Does Administrator approve Resgistration? provided to
partner
Yes

Registration
status
updated in
application

Notification to
partner; Partner
closes deal



Example of Deal Registration Process
After Deal closes, Confirmation
Partner closes message provided
Deal Registration Was submission successful? Yes to partner Notification of
closed Deal
02
No forwarded to
Administrator
via email
Partner re-submits Immediate
Deal close submittal error
message provided

Yes

Are additional notifications required? No

Yes

Partner accesses Deal status Request to Email notification Deal status
application to updated in close denied by provided to updated to
review Deal application; administrator additional closed
update Notification sent approvers
to partner

Approver accesses
application and
reviews Deal info

Start a new request
No Yes
Enough info to close Deal?

Partner accesses Reports available
Deal Registration for sales,
application accounting and
admin users
01



Conclusion: Achieve Greater Trust, Loyalty, Efficiency, Profitability and Success
Deal registration programs can be highly effective in increasing channel sales by identifying where major
opportunities exist, and providing protected margins and other incentives to the partner who creates an
opportunity and is first to register the deal.

They can also improve collaboration and communications with end customers and prevent them from
receiving conflicting information from disconnected sources.

An automated deal registration solution that is fully integrated with other channel solutions such as POS
data, opportunity management and special pricing applications can significantly increase a vendor’s
ability to motivate channel partners through incentives, training and collaboration. These in turn facilitate
greater trust, loyalty and efficiency in the channel to improve profitability and market share for

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distributors, resellers and manufacturers alike.

About Computer Market Research (CMR)
For more than 25 years, CMR has delivered cost effective, technology-based applications and services
to manufacturers to assist them in managing channel data, optimizing their trade promotion investments
and maximizing the effectiveness of their distribution channels. CMR’s Web-based solutions accelerate
and automate distributor and reseller data collection, processing, analysis and reporting. CMR’s clients
include Eastman Kodak, D-Link, Jabra, LSI Corporation, Brother International and Targus, among others.

For more information
Please call CMR at (858) 279-6668
or visit www.ComputerMarketResearch.com

For questions related to this white paper, contact Del Heles.
Email: del@computermarketresearch.com


Deal Registration Whitepaper by Computer Market Research

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