15 Country, 21 Day, Round-The-World McBain Adventure 2019

Having returned yesterday from an epic family vacation, several people asked about the itinerary so I wanted to share the details. Michelle will be sharing her thoughts here shortly.

The trip started with a speech I needed to deliver on July 31 in Hamilton Island, Australia for ARN Edge 2019 on the future of channels. The idea was to meander our way around the world with a bunch of shorter flights ending up in Australia at the end.

With heavy use of Kayak.com and Hotels.com, we kept the trip as flexible as possible and in many cases would only book the hotel room the day of staying. This caused a bit of anxiety at times, but also saved money without keeping to a rigid schedule. The days of having to book anything multiple weeks in advance is long over.

This trip also helped the original bucket list "100 Country Rollerblades and Red Bull Tour". While the rollerblades and red bull have been curtailed in recent years, the march to 100 continues with this trip bringing me up to 95 countries!

Next year I expect to join the Travelers' Century Club. The Travelers' Century Club™ is a nonprofit social organization representing world travelers who have visited 100 or more of the world's countries and territories.

Here is a quick video of the trip:

Well, here is a taste of the numerous stops:

And here is the detailed itinerary of how it all happened:

My Crazy MBA Story…

Last summer while climbing Machu Picchu, Peru as part of my wife Michelle’s International MBA from Manhattan College, I thought – why not me?

As a mentor earlier in my career, I would often tell younger people to not take an MBA too close to their undergraduate degree as it tends to get overlooked by recruiters and hiring managers if there isn’t enough work experience in-between. My own personal life plan had me returning to school at some point, but as with so many people, life got in the way.

I looked for a recognized, accredited, and affordable online program that I could do while working at Forrester (and that they would pay for). For almost 25 years, I have been in channel-related jobs which is basically representing over 600,000 entrepreneurs and family-run businesses around the world. LSU – Louisiana State University – had the perfect program for me, an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise. The program could be completed in as little as 10 months and cost a grand total (including books and all other costs) of $12,473.90.

I had a couple of hiccups getting started convincing them that Canada was not a third-world country and my undergraduate degree from the University of Lethbridge should be accepted on par with a U.S. degree. Once the dean accepted my story, I was off to the races. Online classes would commence on October 23, 2017 and end on August 18, 2018 – a few days shy of ten months.

Then the fun really began!


1. Nov 11, 2017 - Embarked on a 10 day cruise through South America and Panama Canal 2 weeks into first semester. The Wi-Fi on cruise ships is spotty at best and the cost ran into hundreds of dollars as I was on video calls with my class teams (who would later rate my participation as part of the final grade!).

2. Dec 10, 2017 - Moved the family from New York to Florida. Michelle had a great opportunity to join the team at Office Depot in Boca Raton and we set sail for warmer climates!

3. Mar 18, 2018 – Completed my first Forrester Wave on TCMA, the most intensive product that the company offers, taking over 100 hours of research and interviews. This is while traveling heavily through the channel industry busy period and keynoting in front of large audiences once per week on average.

4. Mar 20, 2018 – Became Vice-Chair of Emerging Technology community at CompTIA – the world’s largest IT Association, involving multiple calls per month and travel to Chicago in March and Washington DC in August.

5. May 3, 2018 – Closed on new house in Boynton Beach after living in tiny corporate temporary housing for almost 5 months with Michelle, Danica, Brooklyn, Cali, and either my mom and sister as well as Michelle’s mom giving a much needed helping hand.

6. Aug 6, 2018 – Michelle had open heart surgery in New York City to repair a condition she has had since birth. We spent two and a half weeks at different apartments and hotels with the kids and Michelle’s mom Mary Anne while she recovered. I ended up finishing my last semester finals using spotty internet and not sure where I was going to be from one minute to the next! (I finished my Econ 705 final at the hospital while waiting to hear from the surgeon on how it went).


So, if you are sitting back thinking that the time isn’t right for an MBA…when would be better? With my wife and two older children, Danica and Mila, all in college together, it was a family bonding exercise talking about our school adventures.

With two young ones in diapers, moving across the country, a very time and travel intensive job, holidays, and a serious medical issue, never did I feel that the doubling of classes was too much. There were times that I had to reach deep into the night to finish everything – but it was never overwhelming.

And now, much like pulling off a band-aid, the MBA is done! I have completed the course requirements and can walk across the stage as a newly-minted MBA. The course work has proven to be immediately valuable to my job and a major personal bucket list item has been checked off the list.

 

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Read some other stories from A Few Thoughts - Jay McBain:

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My Life Story - Have you ever thought about the impact of big decisions that you made in your life? How about the small ones or the ones made for you? How would have your life turned out if things went the other way?

My Love Story - Michelle and met on October 15, 2010 in a serendipitous way. We were both part of a charity in Raleigh, NC and one night at a dinner struck up a conversation about many things - including our love of travel.

My Housing Story - After 13 moves and stops in three Canadian Provinces and three U.S. States, here is my journey in pictures from the Northwest to the Southeast of North America.

My Car Story - I have the dubious honor of getting speeding tickets on all 6 driveable continents - lucky that there are no cars in Antarctica! Did I ever tell you the time I passed the Polizia in Italy with my mom?

My Travel Story - The story started with a "Rollerblades and Red Bull" journey to 100 countries. It is now expanding in every direction after hitting 7 continents and the 7 wonders of the world (most with kids in tow).

My Nautical Story - I am pretty sure the love of water started in 1972 when I was six weeks old and my grandparents Bob and Dona McBain retired to Shuswap, British Columbia, Canada, and built a log cabin.

My Hockey Story - As long as I can remember, I have been playing hockey. Over four and a half decades and thousands of games later, I still lace them up a couple times a week, year-round.

My Cycling Story - When the Covid-19 pandemic first took hold in March 2020 we responded quickly as a family - including strict stay at home orders and no outside contact until we could get a handle on the risks. My attention now turned to exercise - and biking across North America (virtually).

My Retirement Story - I have no interest in disconnecting fully from the work that makes me so fulfilled. I could never see myself  in bingo-playing retired life. I want to stay curious, engaged, and adding value past the (very specific) date in 2034 that I am aiming for.

My Christmas Story - Whether traveling to see family, or going to Disney or Hawaii, or simply staying home - the season is packed with memories of family and friends.

My Music Story - My favorite music can be best defined as sad / emotional / multi-level slow music. Oddly, it is opposite of my worldview - which is normally overly-positive and optimistic.

My Movie Story - Oddly enough, I think Pretty Woman made me very interested in business. I named my cat Austin Powers - oh, and yes, "Danger" is his middle name. Our current dog is named August Rush (Auggie Doggy). Movies such as Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Forrest Gump, & National Lampoon's Vacation have become soundtracks to my life.

The March To 100 Countries Continues!

76 Countries now visited (or 73% of the world population and 66% of world land mass). Travel now becomes a bit more tricky to avoid war zones and unstable political regimes.

Countries visited:

• Argentina
• Austria
• Australia
• Aruba
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Bahamas
• Botswana
• Belarus
• Canada
• Switzerland
• China
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Czech Republic
• Germany
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Egypt
• Spain
• Finland
• Fiji
• France
• United Kingdom
• Greece
• Haiti
• Hungary
• Indonesia
• Ireland
• India
• Iceland
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Japan
• Cambodia
• South Korea
• Cayman Islands
• Sri Lanka
• Lesotho
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Latvia
• Morocco
• Macau
• Mexico
• Malaysia
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Nepal
• New Zealand
• Panama
• Peru
• Philippines
• Poland
• Puerto Rico
• Portugal
• Russia
• Sweden
• Singapore
• Slovenia
• Slovakia
• Swaziland
• Thailand
• Taiwan
• Ukraine
• United States
• Uruguay
• Vatican City
• Vietnam
• Vanuatu
• South Africa
• Zimbabwe
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

More details:

South America Cruise 2017

Excited to be going on a South American cruise with Michelle, Brooklyn and Cali tomorrow - 10 days including Columbia, Panama Canal, Costa Rica, Aruba, Grand Cayman Islands from Fort Lauderdale!

Peace out winter blast.

#NauticalLife Update

We didn't get out boating as much as Michelle and I wanted in 2017 - but still are finding new places and enjoying the nautical lifestyle!

Keynote - How The Channel Is Adapting To The Changing Customer Buying Journey

In the Age of the Customer, line of business (LOB) executives are increasingly leading technology decisions, sometimes taking over completely from the IT department. These business leaders are looking to a new set of hyper-specialized “shadow channels” to help them plan, implement, and integrate the technology to drive business value. In this session, we assessed the impact on vendors, partners, distributors, and explored what is required for success in this new channel ecosystem.

Check out my 28 minute Forrester keynote from Rackspace Solve Partner Conference this week in NYC:

Jay McBain Joins Forrester Research As A Principal Analyst - Global Channels

June 5, 2017

I am very excited to be joining the amazing team at Forrester today as Principal Analyst - Global Channels.  Most of my 23 year career has been inside the channel, gaining experience from Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and Lenovo, midmarket companies such as Autotask, and a 5 year startup journey with ChannelEyes.

This blog has been home to over 100 different articles about the channel (among other things). I am fascinated with how partners, vendors and distributors have navigated the changes in technology, business models, and most recently, the customer buying journey over the past 35 years. With over 160,000 views, there are many others that share my passion!

Forrester is an idea company, where smart, motivated, curious people bring a diversity of opinions and the courage of their convictions to collaborate on ideas that change the course of business. Most of all, bring a point of view. I’ll get to work with innovative clients at emerging and established brands around the world; these are the business and technology leaders who I can inspire and who will inspire me. The Forrester experience is built on a singular, powerful purpose: to challenge thinking and lead change.

Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) is one of the most influential global research and advisory firms in the world. They work with business and technology leaders to develop customer-obsessed strategies that drive growth. Forrester’s unique insights are grounded in annual surveys of more than 500,000 consumers and business leaders worldwide, rigorous and objective methodologies, and the shared wisdom of our most innovative clients. Through proprietary research, data, custom consulting, exclusive executive peer groups, and events, the Forrester experience is about a singular and powerful purpose: to challenge the thinking of their clients to help them lead change in their organizations.

For more information, visit forrester.com.

The Channel Faces Another Difficult Transition: And This Time It Is Not A Technology Or Business Model Change

The global IT channel have proven to be remarkable change-agents, both in front of their customers and inside their own businesses. Thinking about the amount of churn over the past 35 years can be downright dizzying.

Starting from the first disconnected PC's to last week's WannaCry ransomeware attack, channel partners have transitioned their skills to dozens of new technology opportunities. At the same time, they have transformed their business models from resell, break-fix, installation, maintenance, to solution providing and recurring managed services, among others.

The one thing that has stayed relatively constant over these decades is how customers decide and procure technology. Led by CIOs and IT departments, channel partners and vendors have fine-tuned their product and messaging mix to capitalize on this customer buying journey. Over the past couple of years, driven by cloud and the growing acceptance of SaaS business ecosystems, this journey just took a hard right turn.

Analysts are now reporting that 72% of technology decisions are influenced and/or made by line of business executives (Gartner). These leaders of departments such as sales, marketing, finance, operations and HR are increasingly taking ownership of their own digital transformations. In fact, it is predicted that this number will rise to 90% by the year 2020.

Here are some other startling numbers that are reflective of this new buying journey:

• 29% of technology decisions have no involvement by the IT department. The business executives are building the solution without internal help and in many cases are using external talent to advise on things like security, backup, compliance, disaster recovery, etc. (Forrester)
• 52% of business executives are using business-unit budgets to buy technology as opposed to assigned technology budgets from IT departments. (CompTIA)
• 58% of business executives are significantly involved in deciding and hiring third party services firms to implement and integrate these projects into the back-end of their company. (Forrester)
• 73% of B2B buyers prefer buying from the web, or self-service functionality from the vendor. Reselling technology and taking a margin will soon become a relic of the past. (Forrester)
• 68% of purchases through distribution are now categorized as simple or transactional. This is because business buyers are doing the upfront research, building the solution, and in the absence of self-service options, are purchasing at the part number level. (National Association of Electrical Distributors)

Business leaders are clearly looking for full-service solutions and are putting together the resources and teams to make it happen. They are increasingly relying on a new set of influencers including SaaS ecosystem partners, industry-based professional services firms, ISVs, born in the cloud firms, and the startup community. These shadow channels are discussed in detail here.

There are three reasons why I feel this will be a difficult (and futile for many) transition for channel partners:

1. B2B Marketing Weakness - As the book The E-Myth masterfully outlined, most SMB channel partners are technicians at heart and haven't focused on the sales and marketing skills required to scale their business. Now that there are ten times the amount of buyers at each customer, this weakness will be amplified. Many vendors are also guilty of focusing only on the IT buyer and have a serious visibility problem with the new buyer as well, assuming their products and services are even relevant in this new world.
2. Lack of Sophistication - About a decade ago we started a march towards specialization. The secret to success was becoming verticalized in certain markets and industries. The new buyer is looking for a level of hyper-specialized skills around business outcomes. In this new world, "vectorization" is now required which means having skills germane to the line of business itself,  customer size and segment, sub-industry, geographic nuances and business technology application and how it integrates with the organization as a whole. Further discussion of vectors is here.
3. May Not Have The Will To Change - This industry is about 35 years old, and most of the traditional channel started their companies in the 1980s with IBM, Apple or Compaq or in the early 1990s with the rise of Microsoft. It doesn't take long at an industry event to see that the aging channel is not being replaced by millennials. In fact, IT does not rank in the top 10 of desirable industries for college grads today (CompTIA). 

After all of the technology and business model twists and turns, and with 40% of the channel planning retirement in the next 7 years (CompTIA), there may be a lack of energy or enthusiasm for this latest curveball.

This is more difficult than adding a new technology practice or specialty to the line card. I even think this is harder than changing a revenue model. Working with a completely different buyer, with different preferences, motivations, requirements, and levels of influence will profoundly challenge the channel like nothing before it.

The 10 Rules to Guarantee a Promotion to Channel Chief

I decided to have fun with some data over the past week.

I started by downloading the 337 Channel Chiefs from CRN's annual list (2016 version) and ran them all through Linkedin to see what insights I could come up with.

I decided to focus on 10 attributes that could shed light on the road to becoming a Channel Chief. The data had some obvious edge cases, but statistically, it formed a relatively tight bell curve around the averages.


The 10 Attributes I looked at:

1. City where Chief lives

2. Are they still working at the same company (a year later)

3. Gender

4. Age (estimated based on undergrad date and other factors)

5. Attained Masters degree or above

6. Number of companies worked for in career

7. Time spent in current company

8. Time spent in current role

9. Did they have channel roles leading up to Chief role (if not, what?)

10. Size of company, and impact on above attributes

Before we get to the rules, why would anyone ever want to be a Channel Chief?

[begin sarcasm]

The head of indirect channels for an organization is (by far) the best job an individual could hope for! Spending your time traveling the world to glorious destinations, hosting parties and galas for partners, spending millions of dollars in marketing funds, and striving to drive more boondoggles than last year.

All this while not being held accountable to senior management. Perhaps it sounds too good to be true. But wait, it gets better...

What could be easier than dealing with people who are passionate about your products and want to promote them to the world? How hard could it be recruiting this fan base and keeping them motivated by dozens of expensive programs? Oh, and look at that, another industry magazine just put you on the cover!

Sounds good so far, but how do Chiefs get a free pass internally from management?

Easy. Channels tend to be nebulous – not only hard to measure because of their indirect nature, but time-delayed as you are collecting data through a complicated multi-tier supply chain. Sales in, sales out, end user reporting, return on invested capital - these are metrics that confuse even the best CEO.

The VP of Sales gets the brunt of the pressure because direct sales are easy to measure, forecast and build KPI’s around. And most CEO’s out there didn’t rise through indirect channels. In most cases they were engineers, direct sales leaders or financial people.

So, is a Channel Chief is basically a rock star without responsibility or accountability? Not quite.

[end sarcasm]

These common perceptions actually make the job harder. The average tenure of a Chief is only 4.2 years – contrast that to the average CEO at 8.1 years. If the job was that great and liberating – why the short stay?


1. Channels take a very long time to develop. 

Trying to explain to a CEO who is (very publicly) measured quarterly that developing an effective channel takes years is not a very popular conversation.

2. The indirect organization is usually the red-headed stepchild. 

Getting access to top people, technology, resources or investments is last in line behind the sales, marketing and product teams.

3. The Rodney Dangerfield Effect. 

Because it is not understood by other executives, it can be glossed over in senior management and board reviews. While the commitment to channel differs by company, the attention it gets is, in many cases, out of alignment.


The end result is a high pressure job, without adequate support and dubious respect.


A Channel Chief is a part-time sales leader, marketer, finance and operations exec, lawyer, motivator, counselor, trainer, product manager, strategist, economist, support agent and futurist.

If this is the life of a rock star, perhaps it is not as fun and rewarding as we once thought. It truly takes a special individual to step into the above chaos day in and day out and maintain a sense of humor.

So, do you still want to be a Channel Chief? Read on.

Armed with a nice big spreadsheet of data (and a number of strategic VLOOKUPs and COUNTIFs), here are the rules to becoming a Channel Chief:


1. Live in California

More specifically, San Francisco. About a quarter of all Chiefs live in California, with the majority of those (60%) living in the Bay area.


2. Don't get too comfortable

I analyzed the 2016 CRN list on purpose, to see how many of them stayed put after making the list. A year later, upwards of 25% of them are now working for different companies! Even more have been promoted internally into new responsibilities. This is not a "set it and forget it" profession.


3. Unfortunately, the gender gap exists here too

The Channel Chiefs are 77% male on this CRN list. Unfortunately, it gets worse when you narrow down this list to choose only the most senior from each company (248 companies). At this point it jumps up well into the 80's. As an industry we NEED to do better - check out this analysis of the Top 100 Global Women in Technology groups that I compiled recently.

4. Be born before the first moon landing

Specifically 1968. The average channel chief on the list is 49 years old. While there was a wide range of ages, most were clustered tightly around mid 40's to mid 50's.


5. Don't rely on an MBA for career progression

Almost three quarters of the Channel Chiefs do not have a masters or above degree. While college degrees number in the high 90's, most Chiefs relied on career progression to get to where they are. More on that to come.


6. Move companies to achieve higher positions in the Channel

The average number of companies the Chiefs worked previously for was 4.8. Many used company changes to elevate from Rep to Manager, Manager to Director and Director to VP. Larger companies are the exception where some have progressed internally for a few decades to get that coveted title.

7. But don't move companies too often

With only 4.8 company stops on average, the average Chief has spent 8.7 years at their current company. You may not get hired as a Chief right away, but one or two promotions may land you there within 4 years.


8. Prepare your career (and family) to be somewhat transient

The average tenure for a Channel Chief is 4.2 years. If you remove the Fortune 500 sized companies, where the stays are much longer, this drops down to the 2-3 year range. Moving jobs and moving cities is very common in this group of 337 people. Very few are employed in their hometown or college town.

9. Don't be too concerned if you haven't worked in the channel previously

Half of the Chiefs came from different backgrounds including sales (most common at 50%), general management, marketing and product management. While the progression of Channel Account Manager (CAM) to Channel Manager to Channel Director to VP Channel to SVP Global Channel is the most common, it is not the only way. Reference #6 above on how to make those jumps faster.

10. Be careful on size of company you work for

If you are looking to be a Channel Chief at a Fortune 500 company, jumping to smaller companies to get higher titles doesn't seem to work. The better bet is to start in the mailroom and plan for a 20+ year career of linear progression. If you want to be a Chief at a midsize company, multiple jumps as a VP (especially in the same product category) seems to be the best path. I can see a recruiting trend here, where they seem to target the Chief of their competitors.

If you haven't figured out by now, the title of this article was meant as click bait. There are no guarantees in life, or in the channel.

However, if you do know what you want, there are certain tactics you can deploy to elevate your chances of success. Luck plays a role as well - fast growing companies in exploding product categories tend to hire underneath their current employees. This results in rapid career progression. 

At some point in this growth, usually after a sizable round of financing or IPO, the company will hire a senior, recognized Global Channel Chief to play the adult in the room. This person usually comes from a Fortune 100 company.

Well, there it is. For those of us who have spent our careers in the channel know that it is an equally exciting and frustrating place. Under-recognized, under-funded but filled with some of the best people I know. 75% of all world trade goes indirectly, and these are the heros that make it happen.


Good luck on your indirect journey!

Have Channel Sales Executives Forgotten Why We Have a Channel?

Have channel industry sales executives forgotten why we need a channel to build business? Is this even a legitimate question to be asking? Of course, we all know the reason for a channel. It is to expand a vendor’s reach in the market through capable, enabled, and motivated business partners that can generate new customers for our brands.

Partners provide vendors a multiplier effect by cross-selling a vendor’s brand to many of a partner’s current customers. This working relationship is a win for both parties because when a partner sells a vendor’s brand they also can sell additional partner-delivered services. At the same time vendors gain new sales they would not have generated on their own.

So why do so many channel sales executives seem to misunderstand this basic concept of the purpose of a channel? Let’s better define the problem.


Why Channel Sales is Off Track with Their Channel Strategy

The Partner Sales Manager Role - Given the intense pressure of quarter-to-quarter sales targets at public companies, many have transitioned the traditional role of a Channel Account Manager (CAM, PAM, RCM, etc.) to a 90% direct sales role and 10% and fading role of a traditional channel manager. This traditional channel manager role as a business consultant, enabler, trainer, and motivator has morphed into a part-time or even smaller role to make way for a shorter-term focus on closing deals - today, tomorrow, and the next day. More channel executives have turned the focus of their teams on developing and closing deals for their partners vs. the role of activation, enablement and sales-assist of partner developed opportunities.

The pressure of delivering short term channel sales sacrifices the development of enabled and motivated partners that are capable of developing sales opportunities on their own. As a result, partners have become too dependent on the PSM to identify, develop, and close most or all the opportunities within their client portfolio. This process is crippling the multiplier effect of having a channel and reducing the self-reliance of a partner organization to become a competent and motivated seller.

The Channel is More Important Today than Ever Before 

It is important to take a step back. The channel organization’s role in a company has steadily increased in visibility and value over the past ten years. In the past, many channel departments would be buried under layers of sales, marketing, operations or financial management.

With over 75 percent of world trade flowing indirectly across all industries, many CEOs have elevated the role of the channel chief directly into the boardroom as a key member of the management team. One of the consequences of this added exposure is the pressure to drive KPIs that are directly reported to the board in private companies, and publicly in listed companies.


The New, More Complex Role of Channel Managers

The channel organization has a myriad of responsibilities to their partners that include sales, marketing, operations, support, finance, legal and supply chain. In fact, the average channel professional has 75 distinct roles.

The Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-sales-role-multinationals-need-in-emerging-markets) recently stated that the most successful channel managers look more like general managers than sales managers. We know that channel managers often don’t have direct control over the sales process of a partner, they use other skills to enable, engage, and drive revenue. This includes:

1. Strategy

Understanding the nuances of a specific territory, including competitive strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which allow a channel manager to build a strategy with a partner on a deal-by-deal as well as macro level. Sales managers tend to be much more tactical in nature, and most strategic planning is at a customer or deal level.

2. Coaching 

Good channel managers understand that enabling a partner is critically important and so they spend their time ensuring that they are covering the details such as solution creation, logistics and compliance. It is more than just selling a deal, it is ensuring that all the ducks are in a row so that many downstream deals can be closed as well. This is the multiplier effect of having a channel.

3. Finance 

The economics of running a channel territory are much different that running a sales territory. Beyond things like revenue targets, contract profitability, and pricing strategy, channel managers must also focus on areas such as inventory management, partner cash-flow, and distribution terms.

There is a real danger in focusing a channel team too much on revenue and tactical deal flow. While the win rate per opportunity may be higher in the short term, the multiplier effect of self-sufficient channels will hurt long term success. Striking the right balance of a channel team between driving deal revenue and channel enablement, engagement and strategic planning is imperative. It is the classic “teach a person to fish” analogy.

There are a few difficulties in the measurement of this channel role, especially as it is reported to the senior management team. Many of the KPIs are soft by nature, and that doesn’t play well in a boardroom where sales and marketing professionals are managing now to the seventh decimal point. As it is a longer-term investment, it doesn’t play well in the daily/weekly targets that businesses are being driven against.

Another danger in focusing a channel team too much on sales is that they may miss the changing dynamics of the partners they are working with. Channels in all industries are going through a major transformation brought on by multiple factors including digital transformation, demographics, new competitive pressures and economic realities post 2008.

In the IT channel, for example, there has been a roughly 30 percent decline in the number of partners since 2008, with an additional 40 percent of remaining partners looking to retire in the next seven years, according to CompTIA. By the end of that seven year window, over 75 percent of the channel will consist of millennials. An effective channel manager would see these shifts happening and refine programs, incentives, messaging and even coverage to support it.


End Customer Buying Process is Forcing More Changes in the Channel


Another major shift in channels is being driven by changes in the customer buying journey. Ten years ago, the CIO made 90 percent of technology decisions in an organization. Gartner is forecasting a complete reversal by 2020, where 90 percent of those decisions will now be made by business professionals in the lines of business. For example, the VP of Sales or VP of Marketing is now the main buyer of technology solutions – not the IT department.

This new buying journey, once called rogue or shadow IT has generated new areas of influence called the shadow channel. (http://www.jaymcbain.com/2016/10/the-rise-of-shadow-channels-5-new.html). A channel manager will understand that a customer VP of Marketing may not have IT in the room during a technology decision - and there is a good chance their traditional partner won’t be in the room either.

Having a macro level strategic view will guide a channel manager to make sure their organization is in the right customer discussions and exerting the right influence. This could involve getting closer to accountants, digital agencies or legal firms. It could also include diving deeper into other company’s ecosystems, building an independent software vendor (ISV) program, or even participating in the startup arena around the solution areas.

Having a channel manager focused too much on sales will hinder the multiplier effect of channels, drop the satisfaction of current partners who are looking to brand themselves and become more self-sufficient in the marketplace, and miss the ever-changing partner and alliance ecosystem.

[This blog was originally posted with 10K+ views on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/have-channel-sales-executives-forgotten-why-we-gary-morris]

Celebrating US Citizenship at CompTIA AMM 2017

Thank you Annette Taber and the entire team at CompTIA - The Computing Technology Industry Association for celebrating my U.S. Citizenship this week at the Swissôtel in Chicago.