The Partner Relationship Management industry has changed. Once focused solely on lead distribution, now companies must deeply engage with partners to drive channel success. The average company gets one-third of its revenues from channel sales and that figure tops 75% for manufacturing companies. Partners are essential to growing your business and increasingly, they’re expecting a great partner experience that gives them the tools, content, access--everything they need to be successful--in one centralized place. Or put more simply, it’s time to blend PRM with CRM to deliver an exceptional partner experience.

One of the things I enjoy most about my job is meeting with our customers. Companies typically ask me three questions when it comes to engaging with their partners:

1. How can we deliver a modern, compelling user experience to partners? Many partner portals today are using antiquated systems that are cumbersome and slow and not mobile ready. Companies want to provide a consumer-level, app-like experience to their partners that is sleek, fast, mobile, and branded.
2. How do we know what our partners are doing and need? Most companies I talk to with extended partner sales have 100+ partners, spanning multiple geographies and industries. For the ones that have partner portals, they’re often black boxes and the companies have no idea how (or even, if) the partner is actually using it.
3. How do we control who sees what? Everyone is drowning in information. Companies want to make sure partners get the right information for their industry, market size and partner tier - no more, no less.

That's why I'm excited today to announce Sales Cloud PRM - it brings the world’s #1 CRM directly into a turnkey PRM app to make it fast and easy for companies to provide partners with everything they need to sell--all in one place.

The PRM app empowers companies to:

• Create a modern, compelling user experience for partners: The Guided Setup Wizard and Lightning CMS Connect make it easy for companies to provide a customized, personalized partner experience. Guided Setup Wizard lets channel managers seamlessly configure lead distribution, deal registration, marketing development funds, assign partners into tiers, provide targeted promotions and pull in AppExchange components. With Lightning CMS Connect, admins can simply drag and drop existing website content, videos and graphics - ensuring it has the same look and feel as the company’s website.

• 360-degree view of partners: Sales Cloud PRM comes with real-time dashboards which give companies an easy, powerful way to see what every partner is doing - where they’re excelling and where they need help. The dashboards are dynamic, responsive and provide companies with a 360-degree view of partner sales activity, making it easier for channel managers to co-sell.

• Get the right information to the right partner: Sales CloudPRM leverages the world-class sharing model in the Salesforce Platform. Meaning that companies can easily control what partners see, giving them the right access to CRM data, providing them with a personalized experience.

But wait, there’s more. Sales Cloud PRM also has Einstein Content Recommendations which use machine learning to surface relevant files and Channel Marketing Automation which extends the power of Marketing Cloud to partners, enabling them to build, track and analyze email campaigns to deliver 1:1 customer journeys.

The Sales Cloud PRM app is a huge leap forward and brings a modern, CRM experience to  PRM. Tune in to Boston World Tour Keynote on May 31 at 10am ET to learn more about the Sales Cloud PRM announcement or check out our upcoming webinars on Wednesday, June 7th at 11:00 PDT and Tuesday, June 20th at 11:00 PDT. Click here for June 7th or click here for June 20th to register.

1 Simple Rules for Making Alliances Work, by Johnathan Hughes and Jeff Weiss, HBR. Reprint R0711H

2 Alexander Group: Manufacturing: The Rise of Complex Selling Models