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By Diane Krakora, CEO

Don't just take it from us. More perspectives abound.

In my last post I discussed what we believe are the top 10 mistakes vendors make when it comes to working with their channel partners. It’s a topic everyone in the industry tends to ask me – so I expanded the discussion to a recent webinar with Stephanie Sissler (at right), Senior Research Director, Channel Sales Strategies at SiriusDecisions. During our hour-long discussion, Stephanie took on each of the 10 mistakes, as well as a few anecdotes on what some of her clients are doing to help smooth the often bumpy road for their channel partners.

By Diane Krakora, CEO

On a plane, train or even Uber I’m regularly asked, “so, what mistakes are we making in the channel?” Okay, so not just anyone asks me this question. But at any channel event or conversation with someone who is even tangentially related to partnering I rarely have  more than a 15-minute conversation before this question surfaces. I typically call to mind this handy checklist of channel mistakes, which unfortunately hasn't changed much in recent years. It’s easy to remember them because –  regardless of industry – most companies fall prey to at least 3 of these mistakes.

The following is an excerpt from our 2016 State of Partnering report: 10 Trends for a 2020 Vision, using survey responses from over 100 vendors, 200 solution providers and years of industry data. 

Partners engage with more partners, and with more vendors.

As the transaction model shifts to the cloud and channel partners become more ingrained in developing full solutions for customers, they will develop more partnerships as well. We’ve been talking about peer-to-peer or partner-to-partner relationships for almost a decade. In the age of reselling in 2006, the thought was almost unimaginable. VARs only partnered with other VARs under duress – in cases when they needed to partner for the bench strength to service customers with dispersed regional offices. This year, nearly 40% of solution provider respondents reported regularly partnering with an average of three to five other solution providers. And 30% of respondents regularly partner with six to eight other solution providers. This is a 10% increase over just last year. And less than 10% reported they didn’t partner at all with other solution providers. In ten years, we’ve had a complete reversal of these metrics.

Awesome Partner Account Managers are critical to channel success.

By Diane Krakora, CEO

I was a Channel Account Manager two, maybe three, decades ago. Way back then, the role was primarily reactive and somewhat administrative. I recruited new partners into my territory, harangued them to a sales goal, ate a ton of bad pizza during “lunch and learns,” and chased stocking orders through distribution. Although the role of the Partner Account Manager has changed to a more pro-active business adviser to your set of partners, the underlying traits of a successful PAM haven’t changed much.