Sometimes I wonder whether IT vendors are all drinking from the same pool of water. Over the years, we’ve noticed that enquiries about our training come in waves. For a long period of time, it was basic channel management skills. Then it was presentation skills. Then financial skills, then executive conversations, then business planning. Different companies suddenly all seem to have similar priorities, then just as abruptly, their focus changes again. The latest seems to be channel leadership. My current three projects all share a desire to help people move beyond managing channel activities to providing leadership.
At the recent ARN Leadership Program, I described management as using authority to secure compliance, whereas leadership uses influence to win commitment. In the channel, that distinction matters because your partners don’t report to you. You need them to choose to follow your direction. AI accelerates that shift: as technology provides more information and handles more administration, channel managers need to contribute more judgement and commercial insight.
So what does effective channel leadership look like?
Setting Direction
A good channel manager keeps today’s business running. A channel leader also considers what the partnership needs to become. That means looking beyond this quarter’s pipeline to the customers, capabilities and opportunities that could drive future growth.
Give partners a reason to invest in that future. If you want them to build a practice around your technology, explain where the demand will come from, how you’ll help develop it and what each business needs to contribute. A vendor revenue target is an objective for you. It isn’t a strategy for them.
Understanding Partner Economics
Knowing your discount structure isn’t the same as understanding the partner’s business. You need to know where they make money, what it costs to deliver their services and what constrains their growth. Your product may be a small part of a much larger opportunity.
Look for ways to improve the whole opportunity. Helping a partner win services revenue or reduce delivery costs can make you more valuable than another point of product margin. Equally, don’t mistake free enablement for a cost-free investment. Engineers attending training aren’t doing billable work, and the partner still needs customers to justify that investment.
Engaging Business Leaders
Product knowledge gives you credibility with people evaluating your technology. A CEO needs a conversation about their business. Understand their strategy, customer base, competitive position and pressures before asking for their time.
Then connect your recommendation to their priorities. A partner trying to improve cash flow needs a different business case from one building recurring revenue. Explain the commercial implications, including costs and trade-offs. Executive engagement means helping the people running the business make a decision, rather than delivering your usual product presentation to a more senior audience.
Using AI to Develop Insight
Partners reasonably expect you to arrive knowing more than what’s on their website. Channel leaders use AI to explore the environment the partner operates in… its customers’ industries, competitive threats and external pressures that could affect demand or profitability. They use that research to identify opportunities and prepare better questions.
AI can also help identify potential partners with a stronger prospect of succeeding with your technology. Look beyond who sells similar products to businesses with the right customer base, complementary capabilities and services model. Use those characteristics to find and assess candidates, then validate the fit through discussion. The value is in identifying where a successful partnership could develop, rather than simply producing a longer recruitment list.
Selling a Vision for the Partnership
In my ARN Leadership Program keynote, I talked about why great leaders need to be great sellers. The difference between a channel manager and a channel leader is what they’re selling. A channel manager focuses on selling products, solutions or technology to achieve their number. A channel leader also sells a vision of what the partner could achieve by working with them. The conversation moves from why the technology is worth selling to why the vendor is worth building a business with.
Make that vision specific to the partner: which customers could they reach, what services could they develop, and how will you help them succeed? Influence and persuasion mean connecting that opportunity to their ambitions and addressing their concerns. You’re asking them to commit to a business relationship, with benefits that extend beyond the next transaction.
Investing Where Partners Can Grow
Partners who return your calls and attend your events deserve appreciation, but they may not necessarily be your best growth prospects. Assess their customer base, capabilities, capacity and willingness to invest before deciding where to spend your time.
Apply the same discipline to underperforming partners. Some have limited potential; others haven’t received the attention needed to develop it. Leadership involves making that distinction and allocating resources deliberately. And when recruiting, remember that identifying why you want a partner is only half the job. You still need a compelling reason for them to want you.
Securing Commitment and Accountability
A good business plan records decisions both parties intend to act on. Agree the priorities, responsibilities, resources and measures of progress. Completing the vendor’s template is useful only if it supports that agreement.
When commitments are missed, find out why. The obstacle might be capability, competing priorities or a concern nobody addressed. It might also be your organisation failing to deliver its side. Have that conversation and agree what changes. Repeating the target won’t fix the underlying problem.
Summary
Good channel leadership builds on sound management. Develop the commercial understanding to recommend a direction, the insight to make it relevant and the persuasion skills to win commitment. The aim is to be involved when partners decide where to take their business, rather than only hearing from them when they need a quote.
