Traditionally software sales for resellers are about Software and Services. However new wave SaaS companies now look at typically smaller deals to help grow into larger enterprises. How best could an organisation support resellers to reach their targets (min 250k annually) with such small margins?
Organisationally, the resellers would have to match the potential volume. The organisation needed to support Software and Services are different that resellers of SaaS. With a target of 250k annually in volume, would only leave room for a few employees, depending on where you are in the world, so I would think that the head count of resellers would be high.
But I would consider one of the following, when approaching your question "How best could an organisation support resellers to reach their targets (min 250k annually) with such small margins?":
1. "Land and Expand" is apparently not a unified approach. See this link about strategy - think about product strategy first. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/land-expand-sales-strategy-mike-pilcher
2. Make it easy for the resellers. Have some infrastructure ready, f.eks. Suggested templates for website design, scripts for calling, marketing material, etc. Make it as easy as possible for them to execute.
3. This also goes for monitoring how the sales are going, which would also be of your interest. Build something unified in salesforce.com or develop your own platform. Build in benchmarking of the resellers - either for an overview for you, or for informing them how they are doing compared to their peers. Noting motivates sales people as knowing their position compared to others.
4. Build a feedback loop to you - have the resellers feed back, what works and what doesn't in the dialogue, and change the material accordingly.
5. You could also build a lead generation infrastructure somewhere, where costs are lower, if a generic sales approach to your product would work. This could be an offshore callcenter, or lead generation from your website. That also depends on whether the resellers should visit the customers physically or not. But anything to avoid the resellers to cold call - that destroys their motivation.
6. Create a sense of community among the resellers, and do anything to keep motivation up. Help them share best practise across the resellers, give them new products or sales approaches to work with. Give prizes to those, who share best practise.
7. Give them a portfolio commission. That would signal that you trust them and you want to partner with them in the long haul. They could also take part in portfolio maintenance work down the road, if they get customer "ownership" - f.ex. Through service visits, retention calls or similar activities. You could also consider giving them all customer facing contact, so you don't have any direct contact with anybody other than the resellers. That may be a little risky, but it would signal, that you trust them, and want to share your success with them.
8. Develop added services, that are integrated with the end customers usage of your product. So your SaaS would only be part of what the reseller was offering to the client. This could be information products about your software, best practice, consulting opportunities or similar. Anything, that can make your value proposition to the reseller more attractive.
This was some of the characteristics, that I have thought of with regards to making it attractive for the resellers to work for you. Feel free to schedule a call, where we can discuss the ideas, and develop some more, so you create an approach, that will be successful.
Good luck with your distribution.
Best regards
Kenneth Wolstrup
