(Direct) Channel conflict can be a huge stumbling block on the way to b-to-b integrated marketing success. Here are some tactics that might help you avoid conflicts:

• Give credit to your salespeople for all sales in their territory or to their accounts, regardless of the channel that actually made the sale.

• Don’t allow your salespeople to place orders directly with your company. Instead, require that they process all orders through your resellers.

• Encourage salespeople to “clone themselves” rather than trying to close every order on their own. Give them additional bonuses or larger commissions for sales revenue that comes from specific resellers or channels in their territory.

• Charge list price on your e-commerce Web site. This will give the resellers you work with an opportunity to offer your products or services at a lower street price.

• Let prospects choose among a handful of appropriate local resellers in their area.

• Devise rules-driven lead assignments that match prospective customers to reseller by proximity and/or industry or application expertise.

• If you have too many resellers in a specific area, consider creating a round-robin lead assignment that rotates through the list of resellers offered to each prospect.

• Create different versions of your products, or choose different product names, for each sales channel.

• Consider using sales leads or links on your Web site as a benefit of qualifying for silver, gold or platinum reseller status.

• Allow your resellers to “register” their sales opportunities, minimizing the risk that you inadvertently distribute new leads from that same company to other resellers.

  M.H. “Mac” McIntosh ([email protected]) is a North Kingston, RI-based b-to-b marketing consultant, specializing in lead generation and sales.

Channel conflict can be a huge stumbling block on the way to B-to-B integrated marketing success.

Here are some tactics that might work for you.

• Give credit to your salespeople for all sales in their territory or to their accounts, regardless of the channel that actually made the sale.

• Don’t allow your salespeople to place orders directly with your company. Instead, require that they process all orders through your resellers.

• Encourage salespeople to “clone themselves” rather than trying to close every order on their own. Give them additional bonuses or larger commissions for sales revenue that comes from specific resellers or channels in their territory.

• Charge list price on your e-commerce Web site. This will give the resellers you work with an opportunity to offer your products or services at a lower street price.

• Let prospects choose among a handful of appropriate local resellers in their area.

• Devise rules-driven lead assignments that match prospective customers to reseller by proximity and/or industry or application expertise.

• If you have too many resellers in a specific area, consider creating a round-robin lead assignment that rotates through the list of resellers offered to each prospect.

• Create different versions of your products, or choose different product names, for each sales channel.

• Consider using sales leads or links on your Web site as a benefit of qualifying for silver, gold or platinum reseller status.

• Allow your resellers to “register” their sales opportunities, minimizing the risk that you inadvertently distribute new leads from that same company to other resellers.