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Channel/routes to market goals are undefined.
No accurate self-assessment of internal partnership go-to-market capabilities.
Lack of a channel sales partner evaluation tool/framework.
Lack of buyer channel preference and unknown requirements for channel partnerships.
Channel marketing, sales, and customer service programs lack clear metrics to assess channel partnership success/failure.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

As a software company leader, choosing the right channel partner or partners may be one of the most important decisions you make to drive growth, scale, and future success.
However, that success is not guaranteed. The competition for channel partner mindshare has never been higher, as leading providers such as Salesforce and Microsoft actively recruit thousands of new partners each year.

Impact and Result

Requires a self-assessment of your company to identify what is needed to select a qualified channel partner against business goals.

Uses a channel partner evaluation framework to assess channel partners’ strengths and challenges.
Delivers prioritized good-fit channel partnership candidates for products, services, or sales.
Enhances your skills using modern processes and data science to shift your knowledge from guessing to fact-based partner decisions.

Choose the Right Channel Sales Partner Research & Tools

1. Choose the Right Channel Sales Partner Storyboard – Through a self-assessment process, determine what types of channel sales partners are suitable for your company’s needs.

Using a nimble approach to evaluate partnerships, you can select the kind of partner(s) that best enables your sales strategy.

2. Choose the Right Channel Sales Presentation Template – This template will help you understnad the process, milestones, and research to determine the right channel sales partner.

A best-of-breed template to help you build a clear, concise, and compelling strategy document.

3. Choose the Right Channel Sales Partner Workbook – An efficient and easy-to-use diagnostic interview guide of your channel sales capabilities and your goals that identifies foundational gaps.

An efficient and easy-to-use diagnostic interview guide of your channel sales capabilities and your goals that identifies foundational gaps.

This workbook helps you research and prioritize which partnerships will be the right fit for your company’s goals and capabilities.

Workshop: Choose the Right Channel Sales Partner

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Align the Team, Identify and Document Channel Strategy

The Purpose

Self-assessment of your channel strategy.

Key Benefits Achieved

Lay the foundation to implement a successful channel sales strategy with measurable results.
Create a targeted channel sales partner and a measurable partner pilot.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Identify team members, roles, and responsibilities.

Documented channel strategy committee and working team.

1.2

Establish timelines and project workflow.

Documented channel strategy committee and working team.

1.3

Modify and document your self-assessment questions and answers against your channel sales strategy.

Documented prioritized channel sales self-assessment and business objectives.

1.4

As a group, review your self-assessment questions and answers, and summarize and modify your partnership criteria.

Documented prioritized channel sales self-assessment and business objectives.

Module 2: Validate Initial Insights, Identify Partnerships and Market View.

The Purpose

Learn to get better results from your channel sales strategy by assessing the maturity of your channel sales marketing organization.

Key Benefits Achieved

Increase the speed at which you evaluate and select channel sales partners that correctly fit your organization.

Reduce the risk of selecting the wrong indirect sales partners, and select the right set of channel sales partners who will help you scale sales and accelerate your growth.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Identify potential partnership types by market segment, region, and industry based on your self-assessment and objectives.

Understanding of market and potential target partnership types.

2.2

Hear from industry analysts their perspectives on the potential sales partnerships, their competitors, buyer expectations, and market trends.

Understanding of market and potential target partnership types.

2.3

Establish channel partnership criteria and scoring attributes.

Objective competitive partnership and market research.

Module 3: Schedule and Hold Potential Partner Interviews.

The Purpose

Step-by-step research and interview guidance to interview your potential partners for your channel sales strategy.

Key Benefits Achieved

Reduce the risk of selecting the wrong indirect sales partners, and select the right set of channel sales partners who will help you scale sales and accelerate your growth.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Hold partnership interviews and use scoring criteria as a guide (over four weeks).

Learn whether you are going in the right direction.

3.2

Hold a review session after initial three or four interviews to adjust the approach or criteria.

Validate or adjust the partnership criteria to what you hear in the market.

Module 4: Summarize Findings and Provide Actionable Guidance to Management.

The Purpose

Align stakeholders on an overall program of identifying target partners, building a shared understanding of what constitutes a qualified channel sales partner.

Key Benefits Achieved

Reduce the risk of selecting the wrong indirect sales partners, and select the right set of channel sales partners who will help you scale sales and accelerate your growth.

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Review all draft partnership findings against the scoring criteria to rank.

Complete partner evaluation findings and compare against your ranking of each sales partner.

4.2

Review to Finalize Channel Partner Strategy Plan with Management for approval view.

Complete partner evaluation findings and compare against your ranking of each sales partner.

4.3

Approach the final selected sales partnership with a proposal.

Presentation of Choose the right Channel Sales Partner Strategy plan and proposal.

Choose the Right Channel Sales Partner

Poor channel partner selection can spell disaster. The right approach includes realistic self-assessment and an effective partner evaluation framework to find complementary candidates.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Choose the Right Channel Partner

Joanne Morin Correia.

As a software company leader, choosing the right channel partner or partners may be one of the most important decisions you make to drive growth, scale, and future success. However, that success is not guaranteed. The competition for channel partner mindshare has never been higher, as leading providers such as Salesforce and Microsoft actively recruit thousands of new partners each year.

We see buyers choosing specific partners more and more. This is driving providers to be ready quickly to work with their prospects’ channel providers of choice, given a buyer’s preference for channel partners who deliver the right mix of cloud and technical services such as integration and support end-users and administrators with training and superior support programs.

Software CEOs, therefore, need the right strategy to not only evaluate their need for partnership when entering new markets or seeking to open a new revenue stream, but a quick and easy way to evaluate and select partners when required by sophisticated buyers.

Read on to find ways to address two key questions: How can you, through a self-assessment process, determine what types of channel sales partners are suitable for your company’s needs? What’s a nimble approach to evaluate and select the kind of partner(s) that best enables your sales strategy?

Joanne Morin Correia
Principal Research Director
SoftwareReviews

Executive Summary

Your Challenge	Common Obstacles	SoftwareReviews’ Approach
Channel/routes to market goals are undefined. No accurate self-assessment of internal partnership go-to-market capabilities. Lack of a channel sales partner evaluation tool/framework. Lack of buyer channel preference, and requirements for channel partnerships unknown. In addition, channel marketing, sales, and customer service programs lack clear metrics to assess channel partnership success/failure.	Software company leaders lack the patience for a detailed self-assessment and potential partner evaluation framework. A VP of Sales is reluctant to consider channel partners alongside the field and inside sales. Lack of transparency with channel partner financials and other vital data when doing due diligence. Loss of direct customer contact, changing business models, as competition for mindshare increases causes time limits for partnership evaluations.	Requires a self-assessment of your company to identify what is needed to select a “qualified” channel partner against business goals. Uses a channel partner evaluation framework to assess channel partners’ strengths and challenges. Delivers prioritized, good-fit channel partnership candidates for products, services, or sales. Enhances your skills using modern processes and data science to shift your knowledge from guessing to fact-based partner decisions.

Your Challenge

Common Obstacles

SoftwareReviews’ Approach

Channel/routes to market goals are undefined.
No accurate self-assessment of internal partnership go-to-market capabilities.
Lack of a channel sales partner evaluation tool/framework.
Lack of buyer channel preference, and requirements for channel partnerships unknown.

In addition, channel marketing, sales, and customer service programs lack clear metrics to assess channel partnership success/failure.

Software company leaders lack the patience for a detailed self-assessment and potential partner evaluation framework.
A VP of Sales is reluctant to consider channel partners alongside the field and inside sales.
Lack of transparency with channel partner financials and other vital data when doing due diligence.

Loss of direct customer contact, changing business models, as competition for mindshare increases causes time limits for partnership evaluations.

Requires a self-assessment of your company to identify what is needed to select a “qualified” channel partner against business goals.
Uses a channel partner evaluation framework to assess channel partners’ strengths and challenges.
Delivers prioritized, good-fit channel partnership candidates for products, services, or sales.

Enhances your skills using modern processes and data science to shift your knowledge from guessing to fact-based partner decisions.

SoftwareReviews Insight:

Software CEOs must use a rigorous self-assessment of internal needs and a proper partner evaluation approach to their channel sales partner selection decisions. This reduces the risks of selecting the wrong partnerships and accelerates sought-after benefits.

What is the right channel sales partner strategy?

To find the right channel sales partnership, your partner strategy must have an internal self-assessment and an external partner evaluation framework to verify that the business, its markets/environment, and its assets are in a state that is consistent with the financial and strategic value that the organization has put upon it.

Your channel partnership largely depends on what value you are building for your customers. For that, you need to identify and define the type of partners relevant to your business and choose the best among them. The success of a partnership and channel sales lies in the value each party receives from it.

Channel sales partner strategy is …	Channel partner strategy is not …
An integral part of any sales and marketing strategy. Essential to improving and maintaining high levels of revenue growth, and expansion of your sales organization. Focused on delivering timely and quality partnerships for products, services, or sales to your customer’s business value. Understanding partner value metrics vary by Industry and SaaS/software solutions. Knowing that a channel partner is any company or organization that can help you deliver more value to your customer.	Increasing the number of partner relationships based on anecdotal evidence, guesswork, and biases to identify partner targets. Changing sales partners for short-term gain. Wasting significant resources on activities that don’t align with your strategic sales goals or your stakeholders’ expectations. An unstructured approach that can lead companies to under-investigate potential targets and result in missed sales opportunities.

Channel sales partner strategy is …

Channel partner strategy is not …

An integral part of any sales and marketing strategy.
Essential to improving and maintaining high levels of revenue growth, and expansion of your sales organization.
Focused on delivering timely and quality partnerships for products, services, or sales to your customer’s business value.
Understanding partner value metrics vary by Industry and SaaS/software solutions.
Knowing that a channel partner is any company or organization that can help you deliver more value to your customer.

Increasing the number of partner relationships based on anecdotal evidence, guesswork, and biases to identify partner targets.
Changing sales partners for short-term gain.
Wasting significant resources on activities that don’t align with your strategic sales goals or your stakeholders’ expectations.
An unstructured approach that can lead companies to under-investigate potential targets and result in missed sales opportunities.

SoftwareReviews Insight:

If your channel sales strategy is derived from your self-assessment and our partner evaluation framework, prioritized sales partners will align with your sales goals.

Why pursue sales partnerships?

The right partnerships can remedy operational challenges by scaling sales reps and opportunities.

Your firm is under fire; you are facing pressures financially from clients and your competitors.
Your pace of scaling sales revenues and talent sourcing is too slow and limiting.
Your competition is moving faster, and your clients are considering other options.
Revenues and costs are trending in the wrong direction.
You need to act now to avoid spiraling further.

“A study of 121 firms outsourcing various business processes found that 50% of those surveyed saw no gains from the outsourcing arrangement, so it is critical to make the right choice the first time.”

Source: Zhang, March 2022

SoftwareReviews Insight:

Companies are under increasing pressure to innovate, enhance their brand, increase sales, and reduce costs. At the same time, they face increased competition both in innovation and for quality resources. The right indirect sales channel partnerships can provide remedies.

Choose the Right Channel Sales Partner visualization

Poor channel partner selection can spell disaster. The right approach includes realistic self assessment and an effective partner evaluation framework to find complementary candidates.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Guided Implementation 1: Self-assessment of your channel strategy.

Call 1: Share the sales partnership team vision and outline activities for the strategy planning process. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 2: Modify your self-assessment questions and answers against your channel sales strategy. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 3: Conduct a group interview to discuss your self-assessment questions and answers, summarize and modify your partnership criteria. Plan next call – 1 week.

Guided Implementation 2: Evaluate potential channel sales partners.

Call 1: Best practices for the partner and competitive analysis. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 2: Review partnership research results and ranking to prioritize new sales partners’ business cases. Plan next call – 3 weeks.
Call 3: Review proposal types and approaches for sales partnerships. Plan next call – 1 week.
Call 4: Review final channel sales partnership business case and coach on Steering Committee Presentation. Plan next call – 1 week.