What Would You Spend?

Let’s say you had 1000 channels in your community, but that the top 10% were the most valuable. These are the one’s that follow the Four Relationship Principles: Mutual Commitment, Mutual Growth, Mutual Profitability, and Brand. These are the partners with whom you want to build your business around and the one’s in which you want build your share of wallet. Inevitably, you will need to decide the affordability of your channel relationship program(s) and make tough choices about the elements that stay and the elements that go.

Recently, Starbucks closed all of their stores (everyone of them) for three hours. They did this for training. When you do some reverse math, I estimate the total cost of the training to exceed $24 million. Seems like a lot for barista training. But, again using some best guestimates, it is really only about $100 per employee. When you consider that the training gets passed along to customers in the form of improved service, the investment is less than $1 per customer. Is it worth it?

If your Top 100 is the best of the best, then your investment in those relationships is paramount. It is not some tangential marketing program, but rather an integral part of your business strategy. Is $10,000 per partner too much? What about $50,000?

I think that if you frame your investment decision around the investment per channel, you will be able to find the investment required to build your channel relationships. While the correct answer is, “I will invest whatever it takes”, the reality is that you will need to convince someone to give you a bucket of money. The overall spend may look large, but on a per channel basis, the investment will seem reasonable.

Now that you have your money…you better be able to measure your results.