MDF? Or more like WTF?

Honestly, can anyone put hand on heart and say they always have have visibility of how their investment in MDF has built sales pipeline and is contributing to the revenue number?

Imagine the scenario – It's March 2024.  A channel account manager has been to one of his partners and various actions have come out of the session including some for marketing. Back at HQ the conversation might go like this

Channel Manager -  “I’ve spoken to Acme reseller and they want to run a fine dining event in London and get 30 of their customers along”.

Marketing Manager -  “Aren’t events getting more and more difficult to get people to show up?”

Channel Manager -  “Maybe, but they know their customers really well and it will help us get more traction in that account – and the sales director Acme Reseller was at the meeting so we kind of need to do this”. In any case, there’s MDF budget outstanding and if we don’t use it, we’ll lose it."

Application made, ROI guesstimate entered in appropriate box, approval given. Sales given the task of inviting their accounts to this “can’t be missed” event in 8 weeks time and are given the invitation to send. May also just send to a few random cold prospects and get the ISR on it in case the numbers aren’t looking too good. Just proof of performance to submit when the event’s done then job’s a good ‘un.

Fast forward to July 2024, and Q2 MDF admin time

An email comes in from the CMO – it’s time to roll up the results of all last quarter’s marketing activities into the system and report back on ROI. You call up the channel account manager to find out how many end users attended the Acme Reseller event. He’s travelling but “will speak to the customer to find out”. Later that same week when you chase him up, he tells you that there were 8 people there, but 6 were from the reseller themselves, but that “it’s okay because the team had a great time and it’s face-time and awareness that are important”.

When you go to enter the results into Salesforce, there isn’t a category for ‘face-time’, ‘awareness’ or ‘great time’. There’s only fields for number of attendees (of the end user variety) total leads generated, and opportunities and pipeline created.

So you’re in a bind. £2,500 for 2 leads is a rather inflated £1,250 Cost per Lead, and no opportunities yet to show for it. Most definitely “WTF?!” and not “MDF”.

We’d stick our necks out to say in recent years there’s not a single regional or channel marketing manager that’s not been here. Sales or corporate putting pressure on to invest MDF with the channel on the one hand, and dubious return on investment and often poor execution on the other.

Where does the problem lie?

Is there a single point of failure? If there is then it’s relying purely on, and only measuring, the number of bums on seats at the so-called end game.

We’d even go as far to say most MDF programmes aren’t fit for purpose because they only place value on a snapshot in time. This is because many MDF rules, systems, processes and reporting haven’t kept pace with the way buyers engage and buy from us in the digital age.

Times, they are a-changin’

Whilst the scenario we describe above may be on the extreme side, it’s fair to say that unsuccessful channel-led events are more common than successful ones.

Emails aren’t cutting it, cold calling doesn’t connect, and events are more and more difficult to fill. Not to mention those poor buyers being bombarded from every which way the minute they take a passing glance at a bit of content. But if  the channel is still an important part of a vendor’s business and is supported by marketing funding, there needs to be a better way.

We need to shake things up!

The sales guys and gals aren’t going to like this, but short-term-ism is out. Quick flings are out. Relationships are in and not only with customers at renewal time, it also means prospects too. It takes time and effort to build and from a marketing perspective this needs to include outreach via multiple channels – website, email, social, apps, events, phone and so on – all managed by slick automation processes and CRM to manage the buyers’ journey. One-and-done activities are a relic of the 90s and noughties and should be left there.

Vendors’ own marketing efforts generally are supported by the systems and processes needed to develop marketing qualified leads, track engagement, offer analytics, push to CRM at the right time. This level of sophistication for tracking MDF spend end to end at partner level definitely isn’t mainstream. By the time you add distribution, telemarketing, digital agencies into the mix, you haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of keeping an eye on the prize. You’re pouring wads of cash into a bottomless pit with no end-to-end way of seeing how your investment is performing.

And let's not forget the audience who were invited and didn't register.  Valuable, surely?  And yet they get tossed aside until the next dining experience or golf day on offer where it all starts over.

Doing the same things and expecting a different outcome

With so many different stakeholders engaged as part of the process every silo dilutes and weakens the ability to monitor, track, measure and deliver performance and ROI, but there is a solution.

If you’re a vendor or distributor and you’re curious, then do get in touch and we’ll be happy to show you how this will help you work better with your channel and show real return on your investment in MDF.

If you’re a reseller that would love an enterprise grade system and professional team to support your sales and marketing efforts at a fraction of the cost of doing it yourselves, then this should be interesting..

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Author:  Shelley Hirst, Founding Director, The Amigos Network
Email:  shelley.hirst@theamigosnetwork.com

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