I often get questions from customers on how to best leverage campaigns and generate leads for Channel Partners; and how can leads be managed with Partners out of SAP CRM. The challenges lie in the distribution and efficient management of information between the company and their partners. The answer: there is a simple and powerful way to distribute leads to channel partners with SAP CRM via Adobe Interactive Forms.

 

Let me outline a few basic principles which are important for efficiently collaborating with your partners:  

• Distribute the leads to the most appropriate external sales partners (channel partner)
• Automate the partner lead processing
• Monitor partner activities and lead status
• Incorporate feedback about the lead

 

Here are some of the benefits that can be obtained for your customers and your company by collaboratively managing Leads with Channel Partners:

 

For Your Customers

• Improve response rates to their requests
• Gain a better understanding of their needs

For Your Company

• Increase revenue generation with high-quality leads
• Accelerate the process from first interest to closed deal, and reduce sales time and costs
• Automatically and quickly capture, qualify, and distribute leads
• Track the progress of each lead with the system's closed-loop monitoring

 

To show how you can distribute leads and manage feedback from Partners via Adobe Interactive Forms in SAP CRM, I created a video with the following storyline:

 

• The lead is distributed in PDF format by workflow to the external channel partner
• The channel partner receives the lead in his or her email inbox
• He/she can preview the lead and accept or decline it
• After accepting the lead, it is assigned to the channel partner for follow-up
• The channel partner updates the lead status and includes any additional notes directly in the PDF document and sends it back via email.
• Finally, the lead status is updated automatically in SAP CRM. The channel manager then has full visibility into information about the current status of the lead - i.e. if the lead has been rejected or if there is no response to a distributed lead.

 

So, with Adobe Interactive Forms you can easily implement a lightweight lead management process with efficient partners collaboration via e-mail.

 

Watch the video and let me know your thoughts!

 

To get additional information on lead creation and distribution rules, please also see our previous blog: “Lead Creation to Conversion - linking marketing & sales”