Marketing that sells through partners.
Channel marketing is how a company sells through others: resellers, integrators, managed service providers, distributors and cloud marketplaces. It has two sides, and I've worked both. The vendor needs partners who actually sell. The partner needs a reason to push one vendor out of the thirty it carries.
The vendor and the partner want the same deal.
If you sell through partners
Signing partners is the easy part. Getting them to sell is the job. They need a message they can repeat, campaigns they can run under their own name, funds they'll actually claim, and a portal worth opening.
If you sell for vendors
You carry many vendors and one brand, yours. Lead with your customer's outcome, bring each vendor in as proof and as funding, and keep every program's rules straight.
What I do when you sell through partners.
- Partner recruitment: the list of partners worth signing, and the campaign that signs them.
- Onboarding and enablement: what a new partner needs in week one, in English and in French.
- Campaigns partners run under their own brand, built to be used, not downloaded and forgotten.
- Co-op and MDF programs with rules partners understand and claims they file.
- Partner portals people open on their own.
- Partner events, from the kickoff to the regional roundtable.
- Measurement: which deals partners found, and which ones they helped win.
What I do when you sell for vendors.
- One plan across your vendors: which program pays for what, and when.
- Campaigns under your brand, with each vendor as proof.
- Funding requests filed on time and claims filed with their proof.
- Co-sell with AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud.
- Events with your vendors in the room.
Five terms you'll hear in every partner meeting.
- Co-opMoney you earn from what you already sold.
- MDFMoney a vendor gives you ahead of time for a plan it believes in. Many programs blur the two.
- Through-channel marketingA vendor's campaigns that partners run under their own name. The software used to be called TCMA. Forrester now calls it partner marketing automation.
- PRMThe system that runs a partner program: the portal, deal registration, leads and content.
- Partner-sourced and partner-influencedSourced means the partner found the deal. Influenced means the partner helped win it.
More partners per deal, fewer vendors per customer.
- An average deal now involves about seven partners, each with a different role.
- Customers are cutting their supplier lists, so partners sell outcomes, not product lines.
- Every vendor now hands out AI-built campaigns. Partners get more of them and fewer reasons to pick one.
Your partners' campaigns have to work in French.
In Quebec, websites, brochures and ads have to exist in French, at least as good as the English, and French has to dominate in advertising. There's no exception for B2B. A vendor's English kit isn't enough for a Quebec partner, and machine French shows.
The same four steps.
I get the assumption
Which partners sell today, which should, and the number that proves it.
I build the plan
Recruitment, enablement, campaigns, funds and events, with owners and dates.
I review
With your channel team, and with a few partners who'll tell you the truth.
I execute
I run it, and I report what partners sourced and what they influenced.
Start with where you stand.
Two weeks to see your channel the way your partners see it. You leave with your route, whether we work together or not.