Are Your Business Partners PSYCO?

Usually a Vendor’s primary focus is revenue growth. Channel partners however tend to be primarily focused on measures such as profit and cash flow. These differences are important considerations for vendors and partners alike when considering a partnership strategy. While all businesses are looking to ensure they are profitable, this simple “rule of thumb” business … Continued

Nice Isn’t Good Enough Anymore

When I first got into this industry, it was easy to be a channel account manager. All you needed was a half decent product, an expense account, and a nice personality. You built relationships over drinks or at a football game, and people bought from you. (It probably was a bit harder than that, but … Continued

Don’t Trust Your Partners? Trade Places

I’ve been in more than a few meetings with vendors where the question of trust has come up. Typically it sounds like this… “I’ve got an opportunity, and I want to give it to a partner, but I’m concerned they’ll make a mess of it or sell something else, so I’ll hold on to it … Continued

The Value Of A Three Tier Pricing Strategy

We are currently working with a mid-market VAR/MSP on their business transformation process. In addition to looking at their sales team structure and size, we are also examining their overall profitability. Our first question was to determine how they set the price for their client offerings. Like many companies, they look at the cost of … Continued

Maybe It’s YOU That’s Not Adding Value!

It’s funny how things come in waves. In the last month, I’ve had four conversations with four different vendors, concerned that their sales team is not engaging the channel because their reps believe partners add no value. And while I agree that there are certainly partners who add no value, we obviously wouldn’t be in … Continued

The Journey of Partner Business Transformation

We recently did some work with the senior management team of a mid-market VAR/Service Provider on how they adapt their business model with the continuing growth of Cloud & XaaS. Our analysis identified several external forces acting upon their business, as well as internal pressures, and helped them create a set of priorities of what … Continued

Lessons For MSPs From a “Free” Phone App

I’m fascinated by some of the games available on phones nowadays (which is kind of interesting given that I don’t play them). But what I find interesting is not the game itself, but rather the business model behind how it makes money for its developers. One of my favourites is Candy Crush – a “free” … Continued

Why Your Services Business Might Shrink

It’s interesting that a marketing concept introduced 30 years ago can have implications for an IT industry transitioning to an “as a Service” model today, but that is exactly what is happening. In 1986, Regis McKenna presented the concept of the Whole Product in his book “The Regis Touch”, which was later popularised by Geoffrey … Continued

Productise For Repeatability and Profit

We work with a number of partners to help them to optimise their overall business and associated vendor engagement. Something that comes up regularly is whether or not a business should invest and create a specialist “practice”. i.e. Security, Cloud, UC, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity etc. The primary benefit of building a practise comes from the … Continued

What Customers Expect From Their MSP In 2016

If you are a regular reader of our newsletter, you would have seen that Channel Dynamics has been working with global not-for-profit channel association CompTIA to establish an ANZ IT Channel “Community” to advance the industry through education, research, networking events and professional certifications. Last year, CompTIA worked with research firm After Nines Inc to … Continued