Indirect sales channels have always been attractive to companies seeking to augment their sales force, increase market share, remain competitive, and keep in-house employees focused on product development. The traditional downside was loss of insight into customers, fractured pipelines, missed opportunities, diluted branding, and market share cannibalism.

Contemporary technologies and best practices now allow companies to manage not only their partner relationships but partner operations as well, supporting them with proven go-to-market strategies that increase lead-to-win ratios. Will this technology remove the limitations on successful partner relationships? If so, how quickly will each side be willing to adopt?

To find answers to these questions and see how your experiences in partner relationship management and adoption of best practices and technologies compare with those of your peers, read on.

Avangate has partnered with Aberdeen Group, who is conducting a study on “Partner Relationship Management: Channeling Better Sales Results”.  This study will provide recommendations for channel sales managers and partners to work together to achieve higher top-line revenue and greater market share.

To thank you for taking 15-20 minutes to answer this survey, Aberdeen will provide you with a complimentary copy of the final report, which is expected to be available after February 29th, 2012. Here is the link to the survey: www.aberdeen.com/survey/0403-Avangate/

Do not worry, individual responses will be kept strictly confidential, and data will only be used in aggregate.

Shanghai, here we come! And it should be both business and pleasure, since this is one of the most fascinating cities in China.

Alexandra, Adriana, Florentina and Andy will welcome all of you software professionals at the conference. If you want to meet software experts, develop new business partnerships or just schmooze with key people from software & eCommerce industry, then don’t plan anything on Saturday, December 4th and join us in the beautiful Everbright International Hotel.

We’re going to talk about selling software in Europe and the US and see what the trends are for 2011. Also, speaking of international sales, there will also be an interactive panel where DVDFab and WinXDVD will share their best practices on this subject.

On top of this, you will learn how to optimize your conversion rate via practical tips from our experts.

And if you don’t know the Avangate platform and what it can do – don’t worry. We’ll have a live solution demo over there.

So, we’re looking forward to meeting and chatting to you there! See you in Shanghai!

In case you missed it: Avangate just turned 5 – Happy Birthday, Avangate! :)

With this in mind and with a strong desire to unwind, we left the office and went for 3 days to the quiet town of Săcele, in the heart of Romania, close to the mountains.

Apart from enjoying the glorious scenery, we did a lot of fun activities to help us bond and discover new ways to put into practice the company values.

We also discovered the artist within. For 4 full hours we went back school, this time to to the art and craft classes. A very special moment. We basically  painted a huge picture split in several pieces. Imagine a large room full of people working frantically, ingeniously mixing colors, and making sure they are consistent across the board (difficult task!), and let’s not forget also the personal touch. The outcome was spectacular as you can see below:

The Contest, part II

Wow, an amazing 200+ people took part in the “Avangate wins 5” contest. Going through all the answers was a wonderful experience per se – thank you all for your kind thoughts and words of appreciation – big happy smile on our faces.

Thanks for your thumbs up for our customer support, account managers, for helping you increase sales and manage your partners, for our affiliate network, impeccable accounting, for joining the same conferences that you go to and so much more. Here is how Avangate in your 5 words looks like:
It was a pleasure going through your answers and really difficult to choose only 2 winners, so… we decided to give away 3 prizes. Well, let’s not keep you guessing:

Avangate celebrates its five year anniversary today. To mark the occasion, we sat down on soft couches and thought hard about what we’ve gained in all of these years. And came up with a little concept that has since grown on us:

Avangate Wins 5:

• 5 Years of Experience
• 5 Years of Trust
• 5 Years of Knowledge
• 5 Years of Fun
• 5 Years of Success

And Thousands of Enthusiastic Partners!

Hurray!

Plus we threw in an anniversary fun contest to go with it so we can celebrate together. Cool prizes to be won!

Now about our story, which actually starts in 1992, being part of a larger IT group. Avangate as a brand was born in 2005 – back then we were starting with the idea that we could bring a new level of services in eCommerce for the software vertical. It has not always been a smooth journey, but five years down the road tell us we did well. Our 1,500+ clients and 18,000+ affiliates surely agree.

[Tricky to make a selection of testimonials]

Want to sell software in China?

I bet you do. It’s a multi-billion dollar market (packaged software accounted for US$4.7 billion in 2008) that has seen positive growth even through the recession. Admittedly, there is a software piracy issue that shadows the country, still it’s a huge market and provides sales opportunities, especially in the B2B area.

A good enough reason for Avangate to partner with AliPay, China’s leading online payment service and part of giant Alibaba Group, so Avangate vendors can accept Alipay for China domestic payments in Chinese Renminbi (RMB or CNY).