You can tell partners they’re important.
You can recruit them, enable them, and invest in the relationship.
But if your internal compensation structure puts your salespeople in competition with those partners, eventually the compensation plan will win.
This is especially common in companies adding a channel motion to an existing direct sales organization.
A partner identifies an opportunity. A direct rep sees the same account. A CSM sees an expansion opportunity.
Suddenly, multiple people believe they own the same revenue.
That’s not a people problem. It’s an architecture problem.
If your compensation model doesn’t clearly define how partner-influenced and partner-sourced opportunities are handled, you’ve created competing economic incentives inside your own organization.
And partners figure this out quickly.
They learn which suppliers protect their opportunities. They learn which ones compete with them. Eventually, they learn whether bringing you into an opportunity helps or threatens their position with the client.
That’s a dangerous calculation to force a partner to make.
The goal shouldn’t be deciding who gets the biggest piece of the pie. It should be creating an economic model where everyone benefits from making the pie bigger.
If your direct and channel teams win differently, don’t be surprised when they start working against each other.
BR’s Takeaway: Don’t ask teams to collaborate while paying them to compete. Align the economics, and behavior will follow.
