That is a fair response because again I would hazard a guess that most decisions within organisations of whether or not to run an event is based on the theory, “we did it last year and it seemed to work well”, or the very similar, “we have always run events, our customers expect it”.  These could be very valid reasons, especially if they create the bulk of your sale opportunities, but I challenge anyone involved in creating, managing, running or funding events to stop and ask a few simple questions before agreeing to run another event.

Questions like… Are physical events more successful than virtual events, like webinars? When I say successful I mean with a positive return on investment for the company. Do we know the results; have we got the metrics from previous events to give us insight? What role do these events play in the sales cycle? What has changed, are customers, prospects, partners, vendors still coming out to events? What will the audience learn at our event? Will they actually turn up to our events? Who is the target audience and finally can we actually resource this event?

In my opinion, webinars are popular with vendors because they are a recurring information resource that be accessed 24/7 on their website, but I do question how many people actually watch or listen to each and every webinar in its entirety? Whereas at a physical event, you can tell who is engaged and who is not engaged plus your sales people should be able to focus upon building relationships with the attendees that look to be engaged. It is a good test to see which of your sales people are natural networkers, and can actually sell. Another benefit of physical events is when customers sell to other customers or event better to prospects; you can’t get that from a webinar.

So how do you make your events more effective? First think about the elements that contribute to successful marketing events. The three essential items are venue, content and presenter. A successful event will be set in a great location, it will have character, be easily accessible and relate directly to the topic of the day, for example if the theme is higher education, why not use a state of the art university or for architects you would use architecturally inspired building, it will be an immediate talking point. The content must be current and relevant, plus try and build in some type of exclusive content as this will answer the initial question of what will the audience learn at our event? Finally, please ensure you use tried and tested presenters; this can make or break an event. Ensure they are rehearsed and briefed not to go off script or make any inappropriate comments. Please also check all the slides to ensure they are legible and not repetitive. These three simple elements require preparation, as with any marketing activity, but the benefits will be enormous and measureable.

Events can take a lot of time and resource, sometimes more than creating a direct marketing campaign. Here is a simple approach to actually making it happen. We can look at three main areas which are planning & organising, running the event and post event. Firstly create a team and develop an actual plan that has dates, deadlines, budgets and areas of responsibility. Next decide on a theme, venue and most importantly a date (try to avoid any holidays or anything that could harm your attendee numbers). On the day the team must all know their roles for an event to be successful; as once it starts it cannot stop it. Ensure you have the correct signage, the AV and presentations have been tested and the food and drink are suitable for the audience. Finally post event, you may have decided to create a feedback form to handout on the day of the event, with an incentive of a gift for its return or as an email the next day, either is acceptable.

This final step is the most critical to the overall success of the event and the purpose of running the event, lead generation. I would advise that the team have a verbal debrief – preferably face to face, to discuss all aspects of the event, what worked well, what didn’t work and how are the leads going to be handled? Event follow up is often forgotten, as most marketers think that an event is completed once you say good bye to the last delegate and put the final box back in the car. This is actually where the real work begins - closed loop marketing.

One final point to consider in the marketing mix is the number of events you plan to run in a given year, what percentage of the budget and activity plan is taken up with events, is it 30% or 50% or even 80%. Just step back and think about it for a moment so it is clear what events are essential and generate the bulk of the business and what contribution these events are making to your business. It may help make the decision, along with the marketing metrics, on whether or not to run the next event.

Just step back and think for a moment, if your company takes the time to submit a decent entry that highlights the value of the solution to the customer or the way your company has deployed technology to break new ground then your entry should be on the shortlist. If your entry then goes on to win the category you receive great PR and then your business can use that win in all your company PR and the new business approach for the next 12 months until you win another category the next year. 

If we look back on the names of the businesses that have won at least 1x CNA for the past 8 years Central Telecom comes to mind and as we all know they are now part of Vodafone. Winning awards can only help your business to succeed it is simple people like doing business with winners. So now is the time to take action and get your entry in on time. Check out the website:  www.cnawards.com .  Any questions about how to go about your entry please get in touch.

I doubt it, so I sent the 7 question survey to as many people in my network of vendors, partners consultants etc. that would (a) be interested in the topic, so as to take part and (b) be even more interested in the results.

I started with a simple question, (1) Where are you employed? This helps set the tone for the survey and how to then interpret the answers to the more in depth questions. The responses were as follows Vendor 38.3%, Reseller 31.9%, Distributor 12.8% or Supplier 17%. Therefore 64% of the responders were from Vendors or Resellers which is the perfect base for answering the remaining questions and providing the insight I required to summarise and interpret the results.

Throughout my vendor careers we were always asked to ensure that the partners were aware of the rules and regulations that governed vendor funding models, my initial view was that not many partners took any notice, but I was wrong as when I asked, (2) Have you ever heard of the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Rules or Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Compliance? Surprisingly 72.5% of the responders answered ‘Yes’ and 27.5% answered ‘No’ that is a very positive sign for vendors who are tightly governed by these various policies. This result is very positive for vendors as governance of funding programs is very tight and they need to ensure that everything is managed to the letter of the law.

The next question had to be simple and direct, (3) What is the preferred funding model for partners? I wanted a definitive answer to this question so I only listed 3 possible answers, Accrued (earned as % of revenue), Discretionary (allocated on case by case basis) or other. The results were as follows Accrued 43%, Discretionary 41% and other 16%. There were some additional comments that were added in the other section which I think need a mention and that add to the debate…

1.     “Hybrid, mixing both to support short & long term goals”

2.     “Mixed”

3.     “A mixture of both”.

4.     “Split 50/50 between the 2”

5.     “Mix of earned and specific projects”

6.     “To run both in parallel is particularly useful. The accrued approach provides an element of predictability but there are occasions where the vendor can collaborate with you on activities with mutual benefit above and beyond the accrued %, as long as you are a 'clean' user of accruals!”

7.     “most reseller too small for accrued funds to be meaningful”

8.     “they want to see a mixture of both”

9.     “Discretionary allocated on long term agreed plan

The audience is almost split on which system is preferable, plus a decent number advocate a mixed approach which might well be worth exploring for future vendor program changes.

In the next question, (4) what are the barriers to spending? I created a multiple choice question because I know people have more than one reason for not being able to spend their allocated Market Development Fund (MDF) or Business Development Fund (BDF). I was interested to see where the answers would rank, and here they are in order of response:

Clearly vendors need to address all of the items listed, but I would say the top two were easily the area of most focus from the responders. If vendors make it easier for partners to claim on activities that they would like to execute the utilisation rate would increase and everyone would be happy, but this seems to be where there is a gap, and everything slows down and momentum is lost from creating and executing joint marketing programs funded by the vendor.

Next I wanted to find out if people thought, (5) if marketing funding levels should be linked to a partners status within the Vendor’s Certification Program? And we would accept a simple, Yes 75%, No 10% or No Preference 15%. The consensus here makes perfect sense, if a vendor has a certification program, a benefit of that program and achieving a higher level of certification should be rewarded with more Market Development Fund (MDF) or Business Development Fund (BDF) than lower certified partners. But that does not always happen which I find a little bit odd.

The next question was (6) Should Partners match Vendor’s funding with contribution of their own to an activity? And the answers were a little surprising nearly 32% of responders were from resellers. The answers were Yes 36%, No 7% and Depends on the activity 57%. This is a really interesting result as it shows vendors that resellers are open to new ideas and approaches, so if you are changing your partner program don’t just serve up the same old program rewards and guidelines, think outside the box and stimulate growth with your partners who are asking for a new approach.

And finally, let’s talk about how to get access to these Market Development Fund (MDF) or Business Development Fund (BDF) statements. The question was (7) Are the online Marketing funding portals you have experience of easy to use? And the answers came back were Yes 20%, No 48% and Varies 32%. I think we can safely say that as nearly 50% of the responders were negative in response to this question then the vendors seriously need to take a look at the platforms that are used to access the fund balance and create the transactions. We must bear in mind that the vendors may be constrained by using a global system, but if the system is not used by the partners, then clearly changes are required.

In conclusion, this is just a snapshot with 51 individual opinions on the 7 simple topics that  admittedly only covers a fraction of this topic, but I think it gives us a genuinely good indication of the thoughts within our industry Re: Vendor Funding: Accrued or Discretionary, what is best for the partners? As a next step I would encourage vendors that are thinking of changing the way they reward their partners to investigate the pros and cons thoroughly before making any changes, and most importantly consult your audience. If a vendor changes from discretionary to accrued it takes smaller partners at least 6 months to earn enough funds to afford to roll out a single activity, if the program then changes back they lose out again as the more highly certified partners will most likely always receive the discretionary allocations. Vendors need to think carefully around this topic, as they can help to make or break quarters and most importantly channel relationships and coverage.