The Three Things Every Channel Chief Must Strive to Accomplish

The average tenure of an NFL receiver is 48 months, slightly more than that of a chief of alliances and partner programs at a typical IT products and services company. That’s somewhat ironic given that the men and women managing partner and alliance programs today for IT vendors don’t have 250-lb. linebackers who cover 40 yards in under five seconds chasing them. But there are days it can sure feel that way.

That’s especially true if you are laboring in an organization that treats channels as a backwater, where junior executives shuffle in and shuffle out with little rationale or expectation. Know how you can tell if your company views channels and alliances as a backwater? Try playing the Kevin Bacon "Six Degrees of Separation" game inside your office. If the man or woman who runs global channels at your company is more than three people removed from your CEO, then you may be laboring in the bayou of your organization. But don’t despair: smart companies eventually discover all kinds of value buried deep in the bayous of their organizations. Take Cisco, where channels once accounted for 20 percent of sales. Today? Try north of 90 percent. No wonder its channel budget is up hundreds of millions of dollars in the last several years.

That said, individual turnover remains high in channels and alliances management. Consider the following: each year, upwards of 20-25 percent of the men and women who manage partner programs move onto other jobs. That means much of the channel essentially turns over every four years. To wit, what do CA, Toshiba, Lexmark, Cisco, Gateway, Samsung, VeriSign and BEA all have in common? Each has a channel chief who has been in his or her position for less than one year.

That’s not to say that the individuals running the partner programs at these companies are amateurs; far from it. Many have years of valuable corporate and IT experience. John Johasky served as senior vice president of global sales and marketing at Equitrac and vice president of worldwide marketing at Lexmark before taking his new position as Samsung’s new channel chief. That said, he and many others are new to their companies, new to their geographies and new to their roles, nonetheless. That’s true at more major vendors than at any time in recent memory.

And it’s not just at the executive level where turnover is a constant. Tenure among channel account managers in the field is typically less than three years. Channel marketing managers? No more than four, on average. Channel sales? Well, people in channel sales tend to stay in channels sales, only they switch employers every few years.

Churn, unquestionably, is real. But is it necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. Consider the following: some of the industry’s best companies like to rotate executives into channels roles so they gain that experience as they move up in their organizations. IBM prefers that its key executives, for example, have a channel stamp on their corporate passports. Same with HP and Cisco, too. Unlike Nikita Khrushchev’s promotion to Siberia, for example, former channel chief Paul Mountford was actually promoted when Cisco reassigned to him oversee the vast Russian wilderness in addition to other territories grouped under a comically vast and diverse region known as "Emerging Markets." Really.

The upside of this practice is that channels and alliances get the benefit of some of the best thinking the IT industry has to offer, not to mention friends in high places. The downside? Some channels interlopers, well-intended though they may be, don’t stick around to see some of their "brilliant" ideas fully implemented, leaving others to clean up the occasional mess.

The corollary to this approach is hire or appoint a proven veteran to run channels. That’s what Oracle has done, much to its benefit. After years of trying to build effective alliances and partner programs with insiders, Oracle got smart and hired Rauline Ochs. A veteran of IBM and BEA, Ochs brought proven methodologies and realistic expectations to the organization that was a pariah to third-party business allies for years. And she did so without ever meeting the CEO before joining the company. Everyone including this pundit gave her almost zero chance of succeeding. But lo and behold she did. Why? She simply knew, after years of partner management, how to do things right. That includes improving predictability and consistency, among other things. (see below)

The industry is chocked full of individuals that understand the same. Take Julie Parrish, Symantec’s vice president of partner programs. She’s been in channel management for more than a decade and today owns what is widely considered to be one of the five, most important jobs in all of IT channels management. In her current role, she’s program strategist, sales champion, partner IT systems analyst, marketing maven, partner ombudsman and more.

As more companies transform their businesses into ones dependent on indirect sales instead of direct sales, they look more and more to proven talents like Ochs and Parrish.

Like Parrish, Ochs and others, they understand the idea that whether an interloper on temporary assignment to a company’s partner management team or a lifetime student of channels and alliances, a channel manager has a few, basic things that he or she must accomplish on his or her watch, including: simplify partner engagement, increase partner profitability and improve partner satisfaction.

Consider:

• Program simplification: Not to be presumptuous, but how easy are you? Seriously. If you had a question about your own company, do you know who to call? And would you turn to the same source for information about sales assistance, technical support or program administration? If you do not know the answers to these questions, then chances are your partners do not either. Why? You are too complex. And yes, that’s an off-the-couch professional opinion. Try the following exercises and see for yourself what partners endure everyday: try signing up as a new partner and see what happens. Gauge for yourself how quickly your own company gets back to you. (And while you’re at it, sign up for your rivals program and see who welcomes newcomers better.) Next, adopt the identity of a "Gold" level partner and try getting help with a commonly asked question. Not satisfied? Well, the reason may be that your company is harder to deal with than partners expect, or, worse, partners experience elsewhere. To wit, ask yourself the following: are your partner contracts more than 10 pages in length? IBM, which has more attorneys than any IT vendor on the planet, has streamlined contracts. Why not you?
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