Understanding & Managing Multiple Channel Partner Models

by Marketopia | Mar 9, 2020

Being a great account manager used to be about managing your resellers and systems integrators alone. Today, your partners don’t fall cleanly into those neat boxes. Instead, every one of them is operating as a complicated puzzle – a few pieces of MSP, a section of VAR, a corner of CSP, an edge of consultant and so much more. To become an evolved channel account manager (CAM) who truly fulfills all of their needs, you need to master the nuanced options for channel partner models so that you can deliver the guidance and expertise to allow your partners to grow faster.

You took the time to master your vendor lanes of distribution and better understand your partner. But that only breaks the surface level of becoming an evolved channel account manager (CAM). In this blog, we’ll help you take the next steps toward CAM enlightenment with smart ways to manage multiple channel partner models and get to the root of each partner’s concerns.

Become A Better Channel Account Manager

Model Structure

The first step to take a deep dive into the kind of business each of your partners is running. This is your opportunity to figure out the components of their business, the specific combination of services and target audiences that will be the key to unlocking their pain points. Once you have a clear understanding of your partners’ business foundation, you’ll be able to start outlining their immediate and long-term goals and co-producing game plans to achieve those goals.

Mastering Management & Understanding

The next step is keeping in mind how you first formed your partnership – through understanding and proper management. As a CAM, your job is to mature your partners’ businesses and introduce them to knowledge, people and companies that can help them grow at or ahead of their goal rate. That means really digging deep into what they want to achieve and helping them understand the best ways to make that happen.

Agility vs. Ease

Now you’re facing a challenge. To keep things easy, you’ll want to be prepared to service clean categories of partners with specific solutions that speak to each type of partner. But then you’ll be losing out on the agility that your partners are counting on to support their increasingly complex businesses. Success here lies in finding the balance that works best for you and your partners, offering enough complexity to meet their needs without overextending your support capabilities.

Building Relationships

Being an evolved CAM will help you become the guiding light each of your partners need. As a vendor, when you work with a partner like Marketopia, you don’t have to spend your time training and creating lead generation for your own partners – you let us handle it. Give your partners more motivation and confidence to do more themselves by weaning them off reliance on you. If you want a partner to help you become the best CAM you can be, get in touch with Marketopia today and see how we can help you meet your goals.