What is Channel Conflict? (And How to Avoid It)

Channel conflict can occur for a huge number of reasons. It usually happens when a lot of people try and sell the same product but for different prices. This causes a situation and it forces your partners to compete with one another and with your sales team. The conflict is not based on price alone, and it can also cause friction because you also have to deal with lack of dealer training, communication preferences and more. If you want to avoid all of this then you can find out whatever you need to know right here.

Have Clear and Concise Communication

The first thing that you need to do is make sure that your communication is as clear and concise as possible. You also need to have active alerts, bulletins, new product introductions and even reminders as well. your channel partners also need to be trained via learning activities, webinars and more, so that they can then be aligned with the marketing position.

Impact

It is also very important that you are able to measure your success and your impact. This is key to your company’s performance because it will help you to make decisions that are going to benefit you in the long-term. If you do not monitor your decisions then this will cause you to hinder your own performance and this is something that you need to avoid at all cost.

Partner Portal

Your partners really do need to have access to their own partner portal. This way they are able to collaborate with one another and they are also able to talk about their own sales strategies as well. If you do not give them the chance to do this then you will never achieve the best results.

Your Company Resources

If you want to execute all of the above action points without actually having any kind of impact on the resources that your company has then you need to create a channel partner system. This will give you the chance to track your own performances and I will also help you to be much more strategical in the future. On top of this, you will make your partner’s job much easier and you can even reduce the cost of managing and administrating the channel as well. This is the main cause of conflict, and it is a great way for you to improve the experience for everyone who is involved.

Conclusion

So all in all, there are in fact ways for you to try and boost the potential of the channel program that you have right now and when you put the work in, you will soon find that success could be just around the corner. Sometimes channel conflict is going to happen and at times there is nothing that you can do about it, but by utilising the above tips, you can be sure to take things to that next level while also efficiently maintaining your channel structure.