Monday, March 29, 2004
Issue: Rewarding Influence Channels
by Bryan Johanson, VP Channel Ventures
For the last few weeks I've have the opportunity to interview many channel executives from various organizations on the direction of the channel, their strategy for the future and the implications for their programs. After completing one of these interviews, one channel executive posed the following question: "How do we continue to provide incentives to channel partners who are opting out of the traditional transactional part of the sale?"
"Recently, we've had several good partners who just decided that they were changing their business model and dumping their "reseller" label moving exclusively into a services and design spec business model. They were no longer going to actually sell products. They still design our product into the solution, they still recommend it and ultimately they are the reason we win the business, but they don't sell it. How do I reward and encourage them to continue to include our products in the solutions when our programs are 100% tied to revenue?" This is a great question.
She continues, "We know about these people only because they started as a reseller of our products. What about those organizations that are influencing the sale but have never resold our product? How do we find and influence them?"
Great program design will reward partners for their true value add, and that might not necessarily be based on their sales out stats.
by Bryan Johanson, VP Channel Ventures
For the last few weeks I've have the opportunity to interview many channel executives from various organizations on the direction of the channel, their strategy for the future and the implications for their programs. After completing one of these interviews, one channel executive posed the following question: "How do we continue to provide incentives to channel partners who are opting out of the traditional transactional part of the sale?"
"Recently, we've had several good partners who just decided that they were changing their business model and dumping their "reseller" label moving exclusively into a services and design spec business model. They were no longer going to actually sell products. They still design our product into the solution, they still recommend it and ultimately they are the reason we win the business, but they don't sell it. How do I reward and encourage them to continue to include our products in the solutions when our programs are 100% tied to revenue?" This is a great question.
She continues, "We know about these people only because they started as a reseller of our products. What about those organizations that are influencing the sale but have never resold our product? How do we find and influence them?"
Great program design will reward partners for their true value add, and that might not necessarily be based on their sales out stats.
