THE CHANNEL INSTITUTE

Helping channel partners to develop profitable business models is a major concern for the most successful technology vendors. This interview from our "Channel Insights" series on the topic of partner profitability is with Ed Moore, Director of Channel Development, Western Europe at Microsoft. Ed highlights some of the most important aspects affecting partner profitability, delivering key insights and tips on how technology resellers can optimize their profits.

The ability of technology resellers to differentiate themselves from other resellers is critical for long-term business success. This interview from our "Channel Insights" series is with David English, President at TSL Marketing Inc., a specialist channel marketing agency. In this revealing interview David discusses the best practices used by top performing channel resellers to successfully differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace.

What is your company’s place in the world? Do your customers, business partners and employees have a clear understanding of “what your company is about”? Or do you straddle a number of different technologies and market segments so that it takes some time to explain where you stand and why your company is in business? Technology resellers, VARs and SIs are particularly vulnerable to this strategic weakness.

Building a channel partner business plan from scratch can be a struggle. What are the best practices? What are the questions that you don't know to ask? How can you be sure that your partner business plan will meet the needs of both your company and the business partner. If only there was a template! Both the Certificate in Channel Sales and the Certificate in Channel Management include modules on joint business planning with partners. This includes channel partner business planning templates, tools and guidance that you can use to conduct effective joint business planning sessions with your partners. Most importantly, you can be sure that your new channel partner business plan will meet global best practices.