'Channel your MDF investment into Virtual Teams to accelerate your indirect pipeline'

VARs and Distributors that want to beef up lead generation activity are increasingly looking to adopt virtual selling teams to add instant BDR resources to ramp up pipeline for vendor partners.

Direct vendors and suppliers that utilise internal teams of business development resources (BDRs) are not the only ones looking to reorganise remotely or recruit virtually, the channel is too.

Traditionally utilised as a robust and complementary part of an IT vendor's go-to-market strategy, value added resellers, (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) have been an invaluable extension to a vendor's sales team and a reliable source of both pipeline and sales.

For this service, channel partners receive vendor training to get sales accreditation and marketing development funds (MDF) to support sales activities.

And usually, especially pre-pandemic, this MDF funding has largely been invested into face-to-face events to generate leads, with one large enterprise software company spending over 80 per cent of its annual MDF budget on events alone.

Face-to-face meetings between reseller reps and potential prospects were also commonplace before the Covid-19 pandemic, but more recently the number of B2B sellers operating virtually reached 90 per cent in January 2021, up from only 24 per cent in 2020, according to research firm Gartner.

It noted: "For decades, direct field sales was the dominant go-to-market channel. This dominance is being challenged with 67 per cent of CSOs planning to transition some field sellers to virtual roles, and 80 per cent have already considered or are considering creating hybrid field/virtual sales roles."

But following Covid and the cancellation of events during the lockdown and residual concern about attending mass events remaining today, the channel has been a little slow out of the blocks to embrace complementary ways to attract, validate and nurture potential prospects to the products and services they sell on behalf of vendor partners.

Anecdotally, some channel veterans have commented that channel marketing is behind the rest of the marketing world by about five years and that most VARs are five years behind that.

Although many channel companies have invested in digital marketing tactics such as pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO) to promote web properties and to generate interest and leads, the results in terms of marketing qualified interest (MQI) or marketing qualified leads (MQLs) of inbound leads is mostly disappointing in terms of return on investment (ROI).

This is largely because the content they are providing on their sites is often more important to them than their users or potential customers. Often VARs and distributors are just recycling a vendor's corporate marketing collateral which looks at speeds and feeds rather than producing content that would address the needs and benefits to their potential customers.

And without the usual events to drum up prospects, many channel companies are now scrambling to find new ways to help with pipeline acceleration and lead generation support.

One of these tactics has been to set up virtual sales teams to retain pre-Covid sales forces that are tending to favour remote working practices and benefits rather than returning to workplaces, according to Gartner.

It also noted that chief strategy officers (CSOs) have been hesitant to fully commit to virtual teams as they are undecided if remote working is just a temporary hiatus until the world emerges from the Covid pandemic or if it is indeed the ‘new norm.'

But due to other contributing factors, listed below, they may face no choice in doing so, especially in the UK.

According to behavioural economist, Roger Martin-Fagg:

• The UK has lost 1.3m EU workers since Brexit

• Current UK demographics show 1.8m fewer 15-24-year-olds entering the workforce

• Around 500,000 55-65-year-olds have retired early

• Overall supply has fallen by 3.6 million

• In Q1 2022, a record 994,000 changed jobs and not in market

• There are currently 1.3 million advertised jobs (Feb 2022)

Founder of IT specialist recruitment firm, Justin Plowman said: "One thing we can prepare for with certainty is that there will continue to be a shortage of talent."

He noted that his firm Pivotal London is recruiting for over 150 roles currently. In comparison, in April 2020 it was recruiting for five roles.

With the current cost of living and energy crisis getting more acute, it is unsurprising that salary increase to the average tune of 15.7 per cent is one of the main asks for prospective candidates, according to Plowman who also notes that some companies are offering over 25 per cent raises to anticipate the 18 per cent inflation predictions for 2023.

But, although salary is a key ask, hybrid working or fully remote working is also very popular with Pivotal's candidates. And what is clear to many channel companies is that by reallocating field sales to virtual sales teams there are many savings to be had such as less travel expenses, company vehicles and entertainment budgets (including less golf!).

And combined with the challenges to finding the right candidate as outlined by Plowman, there are also the reduction in costs associated with full-time employees (FTEs) such as: pension contribution, holiday and sick pay and other hygiene factors introduced to promote staff retention.

Virtual insanity or virtually impossible to ignore?

As today's MDF funding is less discretionary and requires more business planning that is tightly linked to sales performance, demonstrating a credible source of pipeline and sales-ready leads seems a better bet to secure funding than the usual spend on events or plain vanilla recycled corporate marketing that is irrelevant to the needs of prospective clients.

Virtual teams not only instantly increase pipelines, it can also be measured in uplift of closed won opportunities so very transparent for the vendor allocating MDF to its reseller partner.

The opportunity is validated and has given GDPR consent so even if the opportunity is not sales-ready, it can be put back into nurturing for the future.

Virtual Teams v Digital Content Syndication

For those in the channel that have tried digital content syndication for lead generation, many are finding the returns are not as they once were, especially in a GDPR monitored market that has reduced the number of daily marketing emails by 1bn.

There is a very low conversion rate between the number of digitally content syndicated leads that are recognised as sales accepted because in many cases the interest is triggered by open rates which are not a true indication of the prospect's interest that you can get through virtual tele-based means.

There is also often little nurturing, personalisation or validation of the prospect before it is handed over.

So, its small wonder that when these digitally generated ‘leads' are passed on to a vendor's sales team, there is the usual outcome of "I don't remember downloading the whitepaper" or "Where did you get my details? I don't remember giving consent for you to email me."

Even when customers are followed up with BANT style questions (Budget Authority Need and Timescale), many outcomes are considered closed because the prospect either a) might have the need but not the budget or b) need buy in from a group rather than overall sign off or c) may have need but not in the next 12 months as they might be working on another project.

Combined with often unrealistic internal KPIs to move leads from MQL to SRL in a couple of weeks, it is often easier for sales to close negative the leads rather than do the required nurturing to move the prospect down the funnel, especially when there is another fresh batch of leads on the horizon that have to be processed.

In this scenario many BDRs think it better to bin prospects that don't instantly convert than manage too many prospects that are stuck in the funnel because they have not had the required nurturing to be approached.

This often means that vendors are paying several times for the same MQL which is wasteful and potentially brand damaging.

However, with a virtual BDR approach, highly trained agents can call on behalf of the channel partner or vendor, strike up a conversation with the prospect using an agreed script, validate the person's details are correct, gain GDPR consent to email over collateral and also capture any buying intent signals or verbatim comments that might be useful to prioritise who to follow up, first.

By deploying virtual teams, sales agents are not only identifying those prospects that might be ready to have a call with full time sales agents and BDRs, virtual agents can also take the pressure off the volume of prospects that are interested but not sales ready and have need for more nurturing. With this approach, there is less recycling of prospects or wastage and much better ROI.

And even though face to face is returning, virtual teams looks likely to play a considerable role in a vendors go to market strategy in the next few years.

Paul Briggs is director of global corporate development at BNZSA