More Partners Doesn’t Mean More Revenue
One of the most common mistakes I see is confusing partner recruitment with partner success. Recruiting partners feels like progress. Your ecosystem grows. Your partner count increases. Everyone celebrates the latest logo added to the website. But partner recruitment is only the beginning. Every new partner requires an investment of time; from channel managers, sales […]
You’re Recruiting Partners Too Early
One of the most expensive mistakes startups make is believing the channel will validate a product the market hasn’t yet. It won’t. Partners aren’t product testers. They’re trusted advisors protecting relationships they’ve spent years building. Before asking partners to invest their credibility, ask yourself: If those answers aren’t clear, adding partners won’t solve the problem. […]
Why Most Startup Channel Programs Never Scale
I’ve spent more than two decades working with technology advisors, distributors, master agents, suppliers, and channel leaders. One pattern shows up over and over again. Startups build a channel program…but operate it like a direct sales organization. That’s the first mistake. Partners are not an outsourced sales force waiting to memorize your product. They’re trusted […]
Multi-Partner Engagements: Leading Without Owning the Room
For most of the channel’s history, the path from opportunity to outcome was relatively straightforward. A customer had a need.A partner brought a solution.A supplier delivered the technology. Today, that reality is disappearing. The average technology engagement now involves multiple providers, advisors, consultants, distributors, and specialists. AI, automation, cybersecurity, cloud, communications, virtualization, and managed services […]
What Partners Expect vs What Suppliers Can Deliver
One of the most consistent sources of friction in the channel isn’t intent. It’s expectation. On the surface, most relationships in the channel start from a good place. Partners want to serve their customers well, suppliers want to support partners and grow the business, and there’s alignment in the goal. But as soon as real […]
The Hardest Part of the Channel No One Talks About
The channel is one of the best opportunities in business. We’ve established that. It’s created careers, wealth, community, and stability for people who were willing to bet on themselves. But there’s a part of this ecosystem that rarely gets talked about, and it’s the part that quietly breaks people if they’re not prepared for it. […]
Stewardship in an AI-Accelerated Channel. What AI Can’t Change in the Channel
AI is moving fast. Agents are reshaping pipelines, surfacing insights, automating routine tasks, and accelerating decision cycles. What once took weeks can now happen in hours. For many in the channel, this feels like a genuine leap forward. And in many ways, it is. But those of us who have spent decades in this ecosystem […]
The Skills That Don’t Get Talked About. But Matter Most in the Channel
The channel loves to celebrate the loud skills; the big wins, the big logos, the big quarters. But if you’ve been around long enough, you know that the people who build real, lasting businesses in this ecosystem aren’t the ones with the flashiest presentations or the most polished pitches. They’re the ones with the quiet […]
The Channel: A Legacy Worth Protecting
There are a lot of great places to build a career in business, but the channel is different. It’s special. It’s one of the few ecosystems where opportunity, community, and upward mobility collide in a way that genuinely changes lives. I’ve said this for years, back when I was a Channel Manager, and still today […]
The Myths We Need to Stop Teaching the Next Generation
Every industry has myths. Stories that get repeated so often they start to sound like truth. The channel is no different. Over the years, we’ve built a collection of narratives that were either never true, used to be true, or are only true for a very specific type of person in a very specific moment. […]