Data-driven attribution: Road map to purchase, detours on the way
By Two Rivers Marketing
To drive business outcomes, your organization needs operational alignment within your corporate teams and B2B channel.
Within the engine of your B2B organization, a synchronized operation is essential to successfully drive your business forward, grow revenue, and win more market share. That’s why we measure a company’s Operational Drivers in our 2RM Catalyst Diagnostic to assess areas like talent and training and how well the marketing, sales, and channel teams are valued and resourced within your company.
Operational Drivers are your drivetrain: the gears, shafts, and connections that turn engine power into forward motion. A car can have a roaring engine and go nowhere if the drivetrain isn’t connected. The same is true of your commercial organization. You can have brand ambition and budget but stall if the parts aren’t connected.
What’s missing in B2B sales and marketing alignment?
The 2RM Catalyst Diagnostic evaluates the friction points that often exist between the corporate sales, corporate marketing, and local channel partners of B2B companies. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative surveys, we assess team alignment on a 5-point scale (with 1 being low and 5 being high).
Most leaders assume that when corporate and the channel partners are misaligned, it’s due to a disagreement or lack of understanding. While that’s sometimes the case, more often the misalignment is about whether each part of the organization actually has the resources, training, and capacity to do its job and support the others.
Consider a manufacturing company that participated in our Diagnostic. We asked the corporate sales and marketing teams to rate their own internal operation (what was going on at HQ). Then we asked their channel partners to rate what was going on at their dealerships.
As you can see from the diagram below, the two halves of the same company were living in different worlds.
One company, two operational realities
Corporate teams gave everything a low rating (out of a 5-point scale).
- Marketing investment vs. competitors: 1.7
- Service investment vs. competitors: 1.7
- How well employees understood the brand and what made it different: 1.9
- Training support: 2.2
- Ease of getting resources to service team: 1.7
Meanwhile, the channel team (dealers) rated the equivalent aspects of their own dealerships at 4s and 5s across the board.
This wasn’t an alignment problem in the usual sense where there was obvious friction between two teams. Instead, our Diagnostic results showed that the manufacturing company was operationally stretched and that the corporate sales and marketing teams at HQ were under-resourced. Corporate teams simply couldn’t generate the support their confident, capable dealers needed. And the dealers sensed the vacuum and went their own way.
For example, one respondent said, “I know we all want to grow market share, but I don’t really know what [corporate’s] plan is to do that.”
That’s the hidden danger of a gap in your Operational Drivers. When corporate sales and marketing teams can’t supply the campaigns, the leads, the training, or the brand story, channel partners don’t stop and wait; they improvise and build their own marketing, sales approach, or training.
This is how B2B companies end up with channel partners telling their own version of the brand story and growing loyalty to their dealer network rather than to your business. Over time you risk having a network of independent operators who happen to sell your products.
Measuring channel partner performance metrics beyond quantitative data
For another manufacturing company, our Diagnostic identified a slightly different problem. In our survey, the company’s operational scores pointed to genuine strengths that were shared by corporate and channel teams, as shown in the diagram above.
But the interviews and open-ended responses told the rest of the story: Teams on both sides described a company running too many initiatives at once, as well as some struggles with operational fundamentals like limited parts availability and slow service speed. For this company, their business engine had power but the parts weren’t connected.
Assessing the corporate strategy and channel strategy relationship
There’s another element evaluated in the Operational Drivers that’s often overlooked: alignment. An excellent illustration of how this dynamic can play out very differently can be found in our Diagnostic evaluation of the two equipment manufacturers.
First, for both companies, corporate tends to rate the strength of its dealer network low (2.1 and 2.6 out of a 5-point scale). Meanwhile, dealers consistently rate their relationship with corporate high (4.0 and 3.7). This indicates that each side is looking at the same bond from its own seat and coming away with a very different reading, and unfortunately corporate seems to consistently have the more pessimistic view.
Second, the gap between scores is noticeably wider for Manufacturer 1 vs. Manufacturer 2 (1.1 vs. 1.9 points). These data points represent only two companies, so it’s best to take the findings as directional rather than definitive, but there’s something valuable to learn here. The second company has a larger disconnect between how corporate rates the network and how dealers rate the relationship. We see two ways to read this finding:
- The optimistic read: At Manufacturer 2, corporate is undervaluing the channel, not realizing that dealers are more engaged and loyal than its own scorecard suggests. If this is the case, corporate risks under-investing in or working around channel partners that have actually bought in.
- The cautionary read: It’s also possible that corporate may see capability or performance gaps in their channel partners that the dealers themselves don’t see or feel. If this is the case, dealer optimism could be built on a false understanding of how well things are actually working in their dealerships, masking real operational weakness for the company.
This isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison because corporate and channel teams were evaluating each other on different criteria. Corporate sales and marketing teams were asked to judge the channel on strength and performance (“Is this network good enough to win?”). The results came back a little skeptical.
Dealers, meanwhile, were asked to judge the relationship with corporate (“Do I feel supported and connected?”) and their responses indicate they felt good about it. The operational takeaway is the same: The two sides aren't measuring the network on the same terms, and neither has the full picture. Unfortunately, that misjudgment can have a big impact on how corporate runs its channel strategy.
When corporate believes its channel is mediocre, they may view dealers as a liability to be managed. But if the channel is made up of strong local operators with real customer relationships, then dealers are a competitive differentiator for the company. A capable network of trusted local operators is an advantage competitors can’t easily copy.
As one channel partner responded, “This business is very reliant on relationships … These guys that are investing millions of dollars in their equipment, they want to know those people. And I think [we do] a good job with that.”
The gap in scores here indicates that the company might not be tapping into one of its most competitive assets. At the very least, it merits a closer look (which is what we did in our Diagnostic assessment).
How to improve channel partner performance and operational alignment:
- First, look under the hood before you launch the next big initiative. Make sure your operational capacity is aligned. If teams can’t get resources, service is stretched, and your corporate sales and marketing teams can’t articulate the brand, no amount of channel partner agreement or cooperation will produce forward motion. Make sure your corporate and channel teams have the talent, training, and resources to succeed and support each other.
- Second, audit the gap between corporate and channel capabilities. If your dealers operate at a 4 and your corporate teams function at a 2, you don’t have a partnership; you have two layers loosely bolted together. Fixing it requires digging into the unglamorous work of resourcing, training, and aligning priorities.
- Third, don’t underestimate your channel partners. You may be sitting on channel strength you don’t realize. Measure the gap between perception and reality by reviewing the channel across the four operational areas below and comparing corporate’s view vs. the channel team’s self-assessment (if possible, get the customer’s perspective too):
- Capability: Do your channel partners have skilled sales and service people who can tell your brand story and explain your products confidently?
- Local standing: How strong are your channel’s customer relationships, local reputation, and community ties?
- Perception gap: How far apart are corporate’s rating of the channel vs. the channel’s own rating? (A wide gap is a signal that you’re misreading your channel.)
- Big highs: In what areas do dealers rate their own operations higher than internal marketing and sales teams rate HQ?
Then build on what you learn. After identifying those outperformers in the channel — the dealers who are absolutely crushing it in their market — equip your other channel partners to match that performance. Lean into local strength and build your go-to-market strategy around it.
See your own score. The 2RM Catalyst Diagnostic reveals the specific areas where internal misalignment may be stalling your commercial strategy. Take the 2RM Catalyst Diagnostic to see where your corporate and channel teams are disconnected and where you can drive your business forward.
By Rachel Martin