To help its channel partners better serve the North American market, Sage North America will launch a new marketing automation tool next year, its vice-president of channel management, Tom Miller said.
When Miller left a career with Microsoft and joined the Sage team last year, he realized there weren’t as many partners participating in the Sage channel program as he would have hoped. While he admits the level of partner engagements is still very much a work in progress, Miller said the company’s bringing to market more partner resources in the new year.
Within the first couple of months of the new year, Miller said Sage will launch an end to end marketing automation tool that enables partners to find opportunities in a targeted way. The tool is still in its pilot stage with only a select number of partners using it. The company will launch the tool to its broader partner channel in January or February next year, he added.
“Our goal is to be more targeted with business units across our portfolio to help partners be more directed in their local markets,” he said. “Partners who use the tool will be able to find customer opportunities in Canada and the US by type and size.”
Once these customers are identified, Miller said partners will be able to register their leads thru Sage’s Partner Portals.
“Internally, we validate the authenticity of the prospect, then protect the prospect’s name for this partner,” he said. “This protects the partner from Sage redistributing the lead to another partner, but doesn’t restrict other partners from engaging in the sales cycle.”
Partners will also be able to complete a self-assessment to evaluate and identify where their strengths are so they can go after customers in relevant markets. In addition to the marketing automation tool, Miller said Sage will also launch an enhanced campaign initiative to help partners with things like e-marketing.
Currently at Sage North America, Miller said there are about 4,500-5,000 partners on record, including about 3000 reseller partners across the portfolio.
Next year, Miller said he will focus his efforts on working to accelerate Sage partners’ engagements with the company’s channel programs so they can grow their mutual businesses further.
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