Channel Sales in the New Normal

This week we start to see easing of coronavirus restrictions with pubs and clubs joining cafes and restaurants in allowing patrons back in to dine. That means we’re not far away from being able to meet with our partners and customers in person again. But just because we can, that doesn’t mean we will. While … Continued

Nice Isn’t Good Enough Anymore

When I first got into this industry, it was easy to be a channel account manager. All you needed was a half decent product, an expense account, and a nice personality. You built relationships over drinks or at a football game, and people bought from you. (It probably was a bit harder than that, but … Continued

8 Tips for Partner-to-Partner Partnering

The complexity of modern hybrid cloud solutions provides significant delivery challenges for solution providers. Many partners are finding that the skills and resources required to deliver the solutions they sell, may be beyond the scope of the capabilities they have in-house. Consequently, many partners are teaming up with third parties to deliver a complete solution … Continued

Not Being a Trusted Advisor Can Be an Advantage

This month I am continuing on from Moheb’s feature article in our August newsletter, that explained the four traits of being a trusted advisor. I am going to start by making a controversial comment and suggest that being a trusted advisor should NOT necessarily be the primary goal for every Channel Account Manager (CAM), and certainly … Continued

The Four Traits of a Trusted Advisor

If I had to pick my most annoying phrase right now, it would be “Trusted Advisor”. Greatly overused, often misrepresented, and largely misunderstood, those two words are now well and truly entrenched in the “Meeting Bingo” category – they seem to get bandied about without any particular definition or consideration. But while I may hate … Continued

Distribution and Channel Alignment

Author: Cam Wayland Vendors often measure, profile and segment their partners and their distributors based on revenue performance. Rarely do they dig deeper to look beyond the numbers to what is actually driving the revenue via distribution.   When it is working well you will usually find there is “alignment” between the capabilities, resources, and vendor … Continued

Use Customer Segmentation to Enable Partners

I often ask Channel Account Managers (working for vendors or distributors) why they think their partners buy products from them. And I’ll get a range of answers from “we have the best technology” to “great service” to “a strong relationship”. But at least one person will respond with the correct answer, namely, “to sell it … Continued

Don’t Trust Your Partners? Trade Places

I’ve been in more than a few meetings with vendors where the question of trust has come up. Typically it sounds like this… “I’ve got an opportunity, and I want to give it to a partner, but I’m concerned they’ll make a mess of it or sell something else, so I’ll hold on to it … Continued

Ten Lessons From Trump For Channel Managers

On the 20th January 2017, Donald J. Trump, an American businessman and television personality with no prior government experience, became the 45th President of the United States, in what many consider to be one of the biggest upsets in American political history. Since then, he has gone on to lead what many consider to be … Continued

Partner Management In The Cloud Era

We are currently working with a range of clients (vendors and distributors) who have business models that are moving to be more Cloud, annuity or XaaS orientated. In working with these clients, our research findings are suggesting that using “traditional” partner engagement used for “perpetual” products will not give partners the skills necessary to successfully … Continued