Channel Sales People Have Their Own Problems

Channel Managers Are Becoming Business Consultants

Today's best managers help partners:

• hire salespeople
• improve compensation
• improve CRM
• expand products
• improve marketing
• improve forecasting
• 
  

The relationship shifts from vendor representative to trusted advisor.

The Channel Manager as Business Consultant: Why the Best Partners Want Advice, Not Just Pricing

How successful channel managers help partners improve:

• recruiting
• onboarding
• compensation
• territory planning
• CRM usage
• proposal quality
• customer retention
• sales management

That is very different from simply "checking in" or delivering pricing sheets.

Additional Reading

Sales & channel management

Gartner Sales Practice (excellent on partner management) (Gartner)

Channel Dive (Channel Dive)

GTIA (formerly CompTIA Channel) — widely cited for partner relationship and channel trends, including increasing program complexity. (IT Pro)

Bigtincan partner enablement research (Bigtincan)



Pipedrive's research on common channel management challenges (Pipedrive)