How many channel partner elephants stuff themselves into your tactical and strategic MSP (managed service provider) plans? You know the elephants are there. So does everyone else. Except no one wants to do anything about them.
Channel partner elephants are the Us versus Them mindset perpetuating “the way things are.” These pachyderms clog throughput, creativity and innovation. Your organization has them; so do your customers’ organizations.
You carry these elephants into the workplace; you take these elephants home with you each day.
Channel partner elephants pit your IT (information technology) and sales engineering folks against the VAR’s (value added resellers) sales and marketing folks. They marginalize and exclude. These creatures represent the biases and baggage which you all carry around with you into every meeting.
Isn’t it exhausting?
Business development is everyone’s responsibility, whether stated or not in your job description. Addressing channel partner elephants is an excellent first step in clearing your path to increased revenue generation and efficiency as well as professional development.
Walk through the dynamics of your workplace which, in the MSP world, is simultaneously virtual and physical. How much of your non-billable time and non-revenue generating hours are spent on cross-functional bickering with colleagues and channel partners?
Channel partner elephants are very hungry animals. They eat up a lot of your per project profitability. They leave a big, steaming hot mess in their wake.
Some of those channel partner elephants are older than you are. They have a longer history with your company than you do. While your channel partner elephants may not be sacred, their history certainly has been perpetuated.
Channel partner elephants prevent you and your company from streamlining processes and practices. They erect huge conceptual obstacles that defeat management, teams and individuals.
What are yours?
Channel partner elephants are “the way things are.” In fact, some of them are “the way things have been for so long, I can’t recall how things are supposed to be.”
Isn’t it time for you to take a 10,000 foot eagle’s eye view of your MSP landscape and locate some of them? They won’t be difficult to spot, even from that altitude. They congregate in large herds.
Power Tip 1: You may not be in a position to re-organize your channel partner structure. You can, however, restructure your own professional dynamics. That’s a Minimum Viable Change you can make, yourself, which will differentiate the quality of your business outcomes.
Power Tip 2: Us versus Them mindset doesn’t work. It never did. When you pivot your own perspective of the landscape littered with channel partner elephants, you can more easily traverse it. Identify new pathways for communication and collaboration.
I’d say it was high time we identify those elephants, together. Just be careful where you step.
This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own.
Babette N. Ten Haken is a management consultant and business coach. Babette develops business, technical and engineering professionals of worth. She remodels startups and small-to-medium manufacturing and service companies experiencing difficulty with unpredictable revenue streams. Her book cross-functional business development and collaboration strategies, including tools, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.
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