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There are two theories of channel management. One
is that the more partners the better. It represents more
feet on the street, more leads, etc. The other is that a
select group of partners can deliver quality sales.
The more-the-merrier mentality only requires a mirror
for recruiting. If the agent can fog the mirror, he is good
to join. This begs the question: Does signing a partner
agreement make you a partner?
Pareto’s Principle comes up time and again when talking
with channel heads. Often, it isn’t 80/20, but 90/10 – 10
percent of your partners are bringing in 90 percent of the
sales for the channel program. Now if you have 450 part-
ners, juts 45 are producing. Why have the other 400?
There is an expense to carrying those extra 400 non-
producing (or low-producing) partners – cannel managers’
time being the largest expense. These partners still ask for
quotes, still ask questions, yet don’t close anything. Time
is the finite resource of any channel manager.
Who is your channel manager spending time with?
Think about how much time a teacher spends with an
unruly child. How often does a teacher spend time on an
‘A’ student? Your channel managers will have to grade
partners to prioritize tasks for the producing agents. This
may create an environment where a ‘C’ agent can’t get
the attention necessary to move up to a ‘B’ or an ‘A’.
wwJust signing a partner agreement doesn’t make
anyone a partner. It isn’t even a good indicator of any-
thing. On-boarding is the piece that gets the partner in-
terested – and engaged. Not many vendors have a writ-
ten on-boarding process. Not many do any on-boarding
at all. (A webinar is not on-boarding.)
On-boarding should be a two-way process whereby
both parties get familiar with each other. The more the
vendor knows about the partner’s business, the better
the vendor can help that partner. More interest in the
partner’s business will likely mean more interest from the
partner in the vendor’s business.
During the on-boarding, instead of Power Point-ing the
partner to death, discuss where the partner has holes in
his portfolio or where the partner sees a fit for the vendor
in his offerings. This gives a view into the potential busi-
ness. This also gives the vendor more insight into the part-
ner (and his motivation for signing up), while providing the
vendor with opportunity for sell-through.
their primary vendor. For example, IBM partners are
primarily focused on an IBM line of business and not
much else. Telecom and cloud partners do not typically
have any of these tendrils: certification, gold status,
quota, training, co-marketing dollars.
The Big 4 also tend to invest in their partners with
co-marketing, training, portals, knowledge base, events,
support and free product. The free product means that
the partner is “eating the dog food,” and therefore has
hands-on knowledge of the product. That isn’t typical
even in the hosted VoIP sector.
The telecom/cloud partners characteristically are not
product experts. Rarely is their business aligned with
a single vendor such that a single provider’s service is
a major component of a partner’s portfolio. Managed
service providers (MSPs) are the exception, since man-
aged print services and remote management (RMM)
tools tend to end up as the bundled offering. This results
in a multiplier effect for the vendor as his product gets
disseminated to customers through the MSP – without
advertising to the customer (end user).
One aspect to take away from hardware vendors
is the simplicity. The more friction added to the sales
process (lead registration, quoting, paperwork, com-
missions), the less likely success. If the process is more
arduous than the payoff, partners will do other stuff.
Most people take the path of least resistance.
Another facet that hardware and software vendors
demonstrate is that partners usually know where their
products fit. Take Cisco routers, for example. Each
router has a specific purpose and functionality. Cloud
communications is not like that. Every vendor has one
size to fit all, which is a ridiculous position for a vendor
to take (because it leaves no one happy – not the ven-
dor, nor the customer, nor the partner). Furthermore,
lacking a specific target or value proposition from the
vendor, the partner will furnish it himself. The partner
will determine where the vendor fits.
It works similarly in branding. Salespeople, who of-
ten aren’t trained on the brand message, tend to make
up their own messaging. Suddenly, there are as many
messages bouncing around the marketplace as the
vendor has salespeople. That mixed messaging doesn’t
help with branding.
When vendors or service providers want rapid entry
into new markets, the indirect channel looks like a good
option. It can be, but only if the alignment, on-boarding,
offering and recruitment are planned out.
During the next several months we will be touching
on these aspects of channel management: alignment,
on-boarding, branding and recruitment. The branding as-
pect will encompass the service offerings, the brand, the
value proposition, the differentiator, competitive analysis,
co-marketing and sales tools.
Chapter 2:
How Good is Your On-boarding?
8
THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S
PLAYBOOK