There is no denying that it’s been a tough, tough year for many in our industry. With signs of “recovery’ around job growth (albeit small and certainly protracted over the next 12-18 months) and improvements in the stock market, there is certainly room for optimism in the coming year ahead.
But for this past year our clients have managed their budgets much more tightly and with an eye towards spending on only those things that correlate directly to tangible benefits whether that be operational efficiencies or actual sales revenue.
We’ve discovered some consistent themes in terms of channel priorities for 2010.
• Remodeling and validating partner programs
• New incentives to drive specific behaviors within channel
• Optimizing existing channel “spend”
• New markets
• Optimizing internal sales teams
• Partner training and enablement
We hope these insights have been helpful and that may be able to use them as a benchmark against for your own strategic channel planning process for the upcoming year.
Divine Discontent
Channel Management Series 1.0
In business (as in life) a certain level of tension between and within organizations can be healthy. For example, vendors and their partners can harness the power of channel conflict or disparate business models as a source of motivation towards change, growth and innovation. there is a phrase today being coined “Divine Discontent”. Divine Discontent is a signal that something awesome, amazing and wonderful may be breaking through the inertia of the old paradigms. It rears its face in the initial stages of an idea and then transforms into a sudden urge to bring the vision into fruition. How does divine discontent play out in business? It can be the motivation that drives the business relationships forward.
Consider these historic proof points:
- Channel Conflict between larger and smaller reseller have pushed vendors to create programs that even the playing field and created “Deal Registration” programs which are now de facto standard for channel programs.
- Changing economies and commoditization of products have naturally evolved into service heavy business models by partners. These new partner business models were in direct conflict with the need for vendors to drive product sales and created tension between the two types of organizations. The result of this tension has been the development of hybrid vendor programs, SaaS, HaaS, outsourced services to partners by vendors and the advent of partner networking communities that provide partner to partner collaboration.
What can you do to ease the symptoms of divine discontent in your business and move more quickly towards forward progress:
- DO NOT FOCUS OR GET CAUGHT UP IN THE COLLAPSE OF AN OLD WORLD PARADIGM —- BUT RATHER, ASSIST IN THE SHIFT. This shift in thinking will take a while. So you may as well, get comfortable handling fluctuating channel activity and constant conflict.
- DO NOT FOCUS ON A HALF EMPTY —-BUT RATHER, FOCUS ON A HALF FULL. Design programs that make your partners feel a part of and useful in the process of defining new ways of thinking and working together.
- IDENTIFY WITH THE AMAZING BREAKTHROUGH RATHER THAN THE DISCONTENT.
In celebration of our 13th year in business we are contributing to the evolving nature of IT channels. You can now join our community dedicated to being the primary source for the channel by logging on to ChannelWorks.com, joining us on Facebook, following us on Twitter (www.Twitter.com/ChannelWorks) and subscribing to our blog and newsletter .
You will have access to valuable information, cases histories, interactive discussions, videos and thought-leadership articles and insights from industry experts. These new tools demonstrate our ongoing commitment to being on the cutting edge of channel marketing community-building and thought-leadership.
Please send me your thoughts and ideas by joining our community or feel free to e-mail me directly at acelmer@channelworks.com.
Most of all, thank you all for your continuing support as we enter our 13th year in business. These past thirteen years have certainly been both terrific and challenging and we are grateful for your encouragement, business and friendship.
-Alicia Celmer
P.S. Here is a fun romp through 30 years of channel trends http://www.channelworks.com/FUNLOOKBACK.pdf