#1 reason channel programs fail

Speakers: Bruce Sherman, Co-founder and President, Alveo

Bruce Sherman: Organizations simply being underprepared for what it takes to start and build a channel. That's the number one reason most companies fail in their efforts to create a channel. Every single channel. They're simply underestimating the level of resources that it will, it will take.

Bruce Sherman: Depending on the technology type that they're trying to bring to the channel and the level of complexity of a typical sales cycle of the solution that they're selling, in order for a technology provider to recreate the intellectual property and tribal knowledge that they use to sell their products direct and recreate that in their partner communities so that each of their reseller partners can be as equally efficient or, you know, at least partly efficient at being able to sell their stuff on their behalf, it takes a lot of heavy lifting and it's more significant an effort than most companies really have in mind when they when they go into this process. Enablement is not a lunch and learn. Enablement takes time. There's a lot of initial, there's a lot of initial efforts they have to be put into the onboarding process. The more enabled the partner becomes at being able to resell your stuff on their behalf, on your behalf, excuse me, it requires a lot of work. If you're not willing to put that effort in, then the technology provider has to be prepared to pretty much close, own the effort of closing nearly 90% of the deal for their partners and that's not why they want to get into the channel in the first place. They're trying to get, you're trying to get to scale.