In the manufacturing ecosystem, success is powered by strong partner networks. All types of partners and networks have a potential role in expanding reach, knowing new markets, and driving revenue. According to research by Gartner “Channel partners are crucial for revenue generation, and they account for 75% of revenue income.”
Yet, despite their importance, channel sales often possess unique challenges in manufacturing. From juggling leads and managing complex deals to ensuring collaboration and tracking performance with distributors and dealers. Manufacturers are embracing advanced digital solutions to overcome these pinpoints. The integration of Salesforce Experience Cloud and Manufacturing Cloud is the most effective solution as it enables manufacturers to redefine channel sales to increase efficiency and revenue.
Before exploring Salesforce solutions, let’s begin by understanding the concept of channel sales in manufacturing.
What is Channel Sales in Manufacturing?
Channel sales or partner sales are a B2B sales model in which a company sells its product through several different partners. Channel sales are indirect and include partners from alliances to resellers to brokers. In manufacturing, a channel partner is an independent company or individual that performs the sale, marketing, and distribution of a manufacturer’s products or services to the end customer. Channel partners, including value-added resellers, distributors, and retailers, leverage their own customer networks and expertise to sell products/services. This model enables manufacturers to extend market reach, scale distribution, and focus on core competencies like product development and innovation, while partners handle sales, logistics, and customer engagement.
The importance of Channel Sales includes:
Channel partners provide new opportunities for manufacturers to penetrate new markets, geographies, and customer segments that might be difficult to do alone.
Channel sales also help to gain valuable market insights and customer feedback through which manufacturers improve products, and they can build customer trust through their own credibility in the market.
Reduces investment in direct sales and distribution infrastructure. It also eliminates the need for a large in-house sales force, cutting down on hiring, training, and management costs.
Distributors and resellers often have established relationships with end customers, accelerating trust and adoption. As customers trust your partner, their endorsement extends to the manufacturer as well. This enhances credibility and creates a positive brand perception.
It enables rapid growth without the complexities of managing every customer directly. Manufacturers can expand their sales and distribution easily without the need for huge capital.
Challenges of Channel Sales That Manufacturers Face
Manufacturers frequently face challenges associated with managing different channel partners, like distributors and dealers, while also encouraging effective communication and collaboration across the supply chain.
Disconnected Channels
Manufacturers work with multiple distributors, partners, and internal sales teams. When communication is spread over several emails, phone calls, spreadsheets, or disjointed systems, important updates may be overlooked. Lack of centralization leads to confusion, delays, and inconsistencies across the channel network. This gap in collaboration leads to missed opportunities and lost customers.
Complex Pricing
Channel sales typically have separate pricing agreements (discounts, rebates, promotions) for the distributor or a location. The complexities of pricing agreements over multiple partners and systems increase the likelihood of errors, inconsistencies, or disputes, and overall make pricing a nightmare.
Coordinating Lead Generation
When several distributors operate in the same territory or target the same customers, coordinating leads becomes tricky. Overlaps can result in conflicts, duplicated efforts, or even lost opportunities if leads are not assigned and managed properly. Manufacturers also struggle to generate and filter high-quality leads, sending underqualified or poorly formatted leads to partners. This challenge limits efficiency and reduces the overall effectiveness of channel sales.
Limited Visibility
Manufacturers sell to distributors, but they may not always be able to access real-time data on sales performance, inventory, or customer interactions. Without visibility, manufacturers have blind spots that impede demand forecasting, opportunity tracking, and the ability to quickly pivot to changing markets.
Disparate Systems and Integrations
Many manufacturers and distributors use different tools or systems, like ERP, CRM, spreadsheets, or other legacy software that lack integration. These incompatible platforms lead to data silos, a lack of visibility into partner operations, hinder collaboration, and cause difficulties in tracking performance. Ultimately, slow down processes and create operational inefficiencies.
Balancing Inventory Across Channels
Maintaining the right level of inventory across channels is another ongoing challenge. Manufacturers face the risk of overstocking in some regions while facing shortages in others, causing lost sales, dissatisfied customers, and unnecessary operational costs. These issues lead to overselling and underselling, which can damage brand reputation and result in lost revenue.
Introducing Salesforce Experience Cloud and Manufacturing Cloud
Digital transformation is essential in manufacturing to drive efficiency, improve supply chain visibility, and stay competitive. Salesforce’s Experience Cloud and Manufacturing Cloud, both platforms, enable manufacturers to modernize operations and strengthen partnerships.
Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud
Manufacturing Cloud helps manufacturing businesses by providing a unified view of operations across the supply chain. It empowers manufacturers with real-time visibility, intelligent insights, and seamless collaboration with channel partners. Tailored specifically for the manufacturing industry, it offers industry-specific standard objects, features, tools, and apps to streamline operations and drive growth.
Manufacturing cloud helps to monitor orders, forecasts, and inventory levels throughout the supply chain in real time so you can make quicker, more well-informed decisions. Using predictive analytics, manufacturers can gain intelligent insights into market trends and forecast production demand. The unified platform helps to connect teams, distributors, and suppliers in one place, which helps to reduce friction and increase operational speed. Manufacturing cloud provides applications and functions for maintaining sales agreements, partner performance, and rebate programs.
Salesforce Experience Cloud
While Manufacturing Cloud optimizes internal operations, Experience Cloud focuses on connecting manufacturers with their external ecosystem—partners, distributors, and even customers. With Experience Cloud, organizations can build branded digital experiences and design responsive portals where partners can access knowledge articles and manage leads autonomously. This self-service platform improves collaboration and partnership within the manufacturing ecosystem.
Salesforce Experience Cloud transforms channel sales by creating connected ecosystems for manufacturers, partners, and customers. This integration helps manufacturers to create branded, intuitive portals for partners to gain product information and updates. With self-service capabilities, partners can easily manage leads, submit volume commitments, and collaborate without the need for internal support. Provides a centralized hub for communication, breaking barriers between teams and partners, helping to resolve issues more quickly, share insights, and strengthen relationships.
By integrating Experience Cloud and Manufacturing Cloud, manufacturers can build a connected ecosystem where internal teams and external partners can work efficiently. This helps to gain operational agility, enhance performance, and accelerate channel sales.
Benefits of Pairing Experience Cloud and Manufacturing Cloud
Improved Collaboration with Channel Partners
Using Manufacturing Cloud functionality in Experience Cloud allows manufacturers to eliminate silos and improve visibility to their sales and service teams. Experience Cloud enables partners to access self-service portals, better partner engagement, and collaboration tools, while Manufacturing Cloud provides data-driven insights. Manufacturers can harness real-time visibility and communicate seamlessly with customers, channel partners, and others. This results in improved collaboration, reduces errors, and forecasts demand.
End-to-End Visibility
When manufacturers implement these clouds, they gain a holistic view of their business, in all aspects like production schedules, inventory levels, partner collaboration, and customer interaction. Both platforms integrate data from various departments (sales, marketing, service, operations) into a single, comprehensive view. Being involved in time counts provides significant visibility to allow better decisions for the entire supply chain while reducing delays.
Lead and Deal Management
Utilizing both the Clouds, you can focus on measurable lead and deal management. Experience Cloud enables partners and internal teams to collaborate directly on deals, share insights, and accelerate sales cycles. Both platforms support automation for repetitive tasks such as follow-ups, lead assignments, and approval processes. Also, sales and partner managers can leverage dashboards and analytics from both clouds to identify top-performing partners, evaluate lead conversion rates, and optimize deal strategies.
Self-Service Quoting
Experience Cloud allows external representatives, distributors, or dealers to have self-service functionality. They can easily generate quotes and access contract pricing. Manufacturing Cloud provides real-time data on pricing, product availability, inventory levels, and volume commitments. By integrating this information into Experience Cloud portals, quotes generated are always accurate, consistent, and aligned with current operational conditions. It enables collaboration and partnership and drives business opportunities and growth within the manufacturing ecosystem.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Manufacturing Cloud’s predictive analytics, coupled with Experience Cloud’s engagement metric, makes it easy for manufacturers to forecast demand, analyze trends, and optimize production and distribution strategies. Both clouds provide access to partners with relevant order and inventory data, helping in improved supply chain and demand planning.
Conclusion
Transforming channel sales is crucial in manufacturing for managing dealers and distributors. It helps in creating a connected, transparent, and collaborative ecosystem. The combined version of Salesforce Experience Cloud and Manufacturing Cloud helps manufacturers with the tools to overcome inefficiencies, strengthen partner collaboration, and accelerate sales growth.
At Kasmo, we specialize in helping manufacturers to elevate channel sales strategies by implementing and customizing Salesforce solutions. Our expert team implements these solutions successfully and helps to drive measurable impact. If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your channel sales with Salesforce, Kasmo is here to guide your digital transformation journey.
