Vendor perspectives on the channel 17 May, 2007 By Diane Krakora

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

Besting the likes of perennial favorites 'Ease of doing business' and 'Partner Profitability', 'Partner Readiness' was a front runner for nearly half of the respondents. The category grabbed a 4 or 5 ranking for 80% of those surveyed (on an importance scale ranked 1 to 5).

But what does 'Partner Readiness' really mean? The first step toward better understanding would be to distinguish the difference between readiness and enablement, terms often used interchangeably. We see them as having different, though related, meanings. Settling on a definition is worthwhile since vendors consider it a critical component of what they plan on providing for their partners this year. Let's start by clearing up some confusion around terminology.

Along the continuum of being a 'channel friendly' company and effectively engaging and empowering partners, the first step is to focus on your own channel readiness. This stage primarily applies to internally focused activities to ensure your own organization is ready to engage partners: i.e. Does the product have the proper documentation?

Is the product easily packaged or bundled into SKUs?

Is it easy to configure and order?

Does the sales team structure support an indirect sales effort? Is their compensation aligned to this effort?

Is the product easy to install and support?

The next step is partner readiness or the core training partners need to be able to sell and support your products and services.

This includes:

Does the solution provider have the right qualifications to be a partner?

Do they have experience in my market?

Do they sell similar solutions?

Are they successful with customers?

Do they have the technical knowledge -- the training and the certification to correctly position, sell, implement and support these products?

The third stage on the continuum of being a 'channel friendly' company is partner enablement, which means providing the tools, materials and resources for the partners to be effective with your products. In this stage the vendor supplies the partner with the means, knowledge and opportunity to be effective.

For example:

Do the partners have the marketing tools available to them?

Are there field and corporate resources available to work along side the partners?

Do the partners have access to pre-sales engineers? And post-sales support engineers?

Can a partner quickly and easily develop a quote and source products for the customer, with the 'right' pricing?

At Amazon Consulting, we envision the partner cycle moving another step forward, beginning with channel readiness, moving to partner enablement and ultimately realizing a level of partner empowerment overarching four pillars of support: skills enablement, sales support, marketing support and technical support. We believe that vendors can enable a partner by giving them tools, but 'empowering' them to effectively utilize those tools is much more productive.

Diane Krakora is President & CEO of Amazon Consulting, LLC, a partner development firm based in Silicon Valley, California wholly dedicated to helping companies in the technology sector increase profitability by effectively developing and leveraging their go-to-market through channels and alliances.