Informa just had Mike Bauer of Scansource on their podcast. (I listened because Intelisys is one of my TSDs, but listening to Mike is hard.)  AireSpring is doing it’s TSB round table – Telarus, Intelisys, Sandler Partners, AppDirect and Avant – on June 5th with Informa’s Craig hosting.

The channel partners have indeed seen an influx of investors. Yes, MSP M&A has been going hot and heavy for over 6 years. Scale works in an MSP business. However, the MSP business model is very different from other channel partner models.

There are less than 60K MSPs in North America and about 100K VARs. There are about 5,000 agencies.

Agencies have seen an influx of investors, but the offers are not that great for stakeholders looking for an exit. The owner can get some chips off the table, but can’t walk away. After the 3 year tie-up, we are seeing the principles coming out of “retirement”, taking a W2, or starting a new agency.

Mike thinks there will be growth. That’s funny since most ARPU in the major products is flat or declining.

The TSB heads like to talk about how AI and CyberSec are great areas for partners to get into (invest time and resources in). If so, why don’t they break out the percentage of sales by category? Oh, right! Network and simple voice are still 85% of the orders.

The TSB execs like to talk about the education they offer. Trust me on personal experience that it isn’t worth the time. How could it? It is vendor powered. It rarely involves use cases or sales forensics. It rarely involves the partner who is actually selling it.

The model – for webinars, presentations, even for meetings with channel managers – is a vomit of the portfolio of the vendor. At least, that is my experience. Follow up is crickets, by the way.

TSBs have extensive line cards. Some have over 500 vendors. And they are adding more! Why? MDF. They need the dollars.

Many vendors want to use the channel and the TSBs are happy to take their money. The outcome or future sales are not guaranteed.

Honestly, when I see AppDirect buying vendors aimed at enterprises, I have to wonder if they are equipped with any data. Or is it all on a whim.

When you get a chance to interview an exec at a TSB, could you stop throwing softballs? Ask for some real data.

How many partners are closing 10K per month in MRR deals? How many are closing $100K?

Intelisys data showed just 21% of their partners were top tier (making six figures or more in commissions). If Mike is saying there are 4000 TAs, then 840 agencies/VARs/MSPs/SIs are making bank from one TSB. Most will have at least 2.

BTW, investors will be targeting that 21%!

Mike said we should ask what we want from our TSBs. First and foremost, commissions paid accurately on time. Everything else is gravy.

1. How many partners actually use the tools?
2. How many log in to the portal weekly?
3. What percentage of partners take advantage of in-person education?
4. How does that effect their sales? Do they close something big within 30 days?
5. How many partners are actually selling AI?
6. How many partners sell network AND  SaaS?

At CVX Expo 2025 in Phoenix, there will be a session with TSBs. What questions would you like to have asked?

It is a Friday night and I am picking up food from 2 pizza parlors. Both are empty. No pile of boxes filled with steaming hot pizza waiting for Uber or pickup. Just Owners wondering why they are empty.

Marketing. That’s Why. Or a lack of marketing is why you are empty.

Marketing is made up on many things. And I am not saying to do all of them; but I am saying do something!

Most small business try one ad one time, one coupon, one trial in marketing – and if they are not crowded, then obviously marketing doesn’t work.

Marketing is being consistent.

Marketing is experimentation until you have data. Data like who is your customer? How do I reach them? Direct mail? Ads on Nextdoor? Social media? If SM, which platform? Facebook? Instagram? Tiktok?

What have I tried? How did it work?

How much will it cost? Can I hire someone reasonably priced to help?

Auto insurance companies, personal injury attorneys and drug companies are my best examples of marketing. These 3 types of businesses run hundreds of TV ads every week. Some of that is branding to become top of mind which is a different type of marketing than lead generation or Public Relations. They also are on social media, direct mail, and magazine ads! Drug companies run ads on Reddit and Twitter.

As a VoIP company or ISP you don’t need to be top of mind, but you do have to let people know you are available. What are you offering, who is best served by buying it and where do I click?

Robin Robins teaches MSPs how to use direct mail to get business. Why? Because it can still work effectively.

I often wonder why small business doesn’t market well and then I think about the many freelancers who probably didn’t do fundamental work to find out who the customer base was and the value proposition. And just took the money and ran the ads and nothing much happened. Maybe the freelancer didn’t know better. Maybe the business identified the customer as Everyone.

Ask a business owner what their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is. Many won’t know. So they don’t really know if spending $3000 per month to acquire 5 customers per month paying $150 per month is worth it or not.

There is also the tracking. How are you tracking your website? Visitors, chat, contact page? When someone sends a contact page request, where does it go? Is it logged? Who responds? How?

If you have a chatbot, who is replying? Who is monitoring it?

If you got an email or phone call from an ad, is it tracked?

and so on…

There is No Build it and they will come. There is only build it and go to market! Or sit in an empty place and wonder.

There is a post on LinkedIn talking about the best salesperson. The author sums it up with calling the best salesperson a Trusted Advisor. We have been doing that in the channel for a while.

The points that are accurate are:

It is pulling instead of pushing.

Asking instead of Talking.

Comments suggest that Sales Engineers are better than Salespeople. In Discovery and Closing, yes, they can be. But that isn’t the whole sales process. And most humans do not have all the sales skills necessary. The author talks about being a Jedi. There were very few Jedi.

There are even fewer organizations that can support the Jedi sales person.

Demos win when the Discovery is done correctly. When the Buyer has been interviewed and listened to — and the demo reflects that. When the Demo looks like a features display, it fails.

When the prospecting is automated, when the contact is too salesy, when the follow up is basically “Ready to buy yet?”, there are so many steps in the sales process – the whole SDR process; discovery; demo; proposing; objections; follow up; listening; budgeting; and so on. It would be difficult to find someone with all of those skills and who is motivated by a 6 months sales cycle and still likes to prospect.

The sales engineer doesn’t prospect. They skip the whole Rejection-Experiment process of finding a Prospect. The SE doesn’t usually do follow up.

So when you talk about a Jedi, are we talking about someone who just has to get in the Jet Fighter for one target while getting air support from the cannon fodder?  Put another way, to have a Jedi salesperson, you would have to have an organization with an SDR team and sales support (for proposals, paperwork, CRM, follow-up and other tasks).

And you saying that ALL sales require a SE/Jedi/Closer, which isn’t necessarily how all sales close.

You have to look at your org, your Buyers, your products, your sales cycle, your sales process and put the right people in place in order to facilitate your sales goals in your Target market.

There aren’t enough Jedi to go around. There aren’t enough organizations that can support the Jedi. And some Jedi turn to the Dark side and destroy the org that they are a part of.

As I was writing the obituary for my father, I realized I only knew him from one or two perspectives, but he was many things to many people. He was a son, a nephew, cousin, a grandson, a father, coach, teammate, friend, husband, grandfather, great-grandfather, salesperson, employee, retiree, and probably so much more.  Everyone who knew him over his 83 years on this planet and 61 years of marriage experienced a different perspective.

The Channel is kind of like that. It is moored in its roots of Microsoft and Cisco servicing the small business, but there are so many different types of partners now that vendors will have different perspectives on the Channel.

Most people think of it as one Channel. It isn’t. Agent, VAR, Inter-Connect, ISV, systems integrator, MSP, MSSP, influencer, referral, affiliate – there are a number of business types that comprise the channel.

A majority of partners – probably 85% – are great at selling mass market. In other words, broadband, voice, Internet Access, POTS Replacement, cell phones. Replacement services that are well known quantities in the market. These services don’t really need an introduction. The demand was already there, which is important because the Channel does NOT create Demand; it merely supplies it.

If, as a vendor, your services need an introduction, an explanation, if your services aren’t in demand or are not for every business, well, then 85% of the channel isn’t going to work for you.

The vendors with a Brand – AT&T, Cisco, RingCentral, Microsoft – do well in the channel because there is Demand and product knowledge in the market. When you consider that Broadband was actually launched in the market by VC-backed companies (Covad, Northpoint and Rhythms), it is no wonder that all three went under. They had to build those networks AND create demand. hard to do both. Yet, today, 24 years after those 3 DSL pioneers blew through $1.7B, everyone knows what DSL was – and buys broadband either as 5G, 4G, DSL, cable modem or fiber.

SD-WAN, CCaaS, CX, UCaaS, CPaaS and so much more are unfamiliar terms to the Buyer. The only reason AI is known is due to science fiction movies and a $40B investment round.

Many vendors come to me about getting in the channel  (and recently a few are thinking that I have talked myself out of a job). That isn’t what I was trying to do when I was trying to lay down realistic expectations for products that are made for Enterprise or are not a small business play.

If you are mass market, the channel is a great play. If you are not, then you need to be realistic about your strategy, your Target Audience, your Message, the time frame and the expense before you see the results. Not everyone wants to wait three years to see the faucet come on. Just ask Verizon, InterNAP, NEC and Office Depot. Two were out of the TSD based channel in 2 years frustrated and the other two were in and out of the channel a bunch because they didn’t like the results.

For Verizon, a $100B+ revenue company, or NEC, a $50B+ global company, if a product doesn’t hit $100M in revenue fast, it gets shuttered. Most companies are not multi-billion dollar companies. Most would be very happy with $10M in channel revenue, but the small vendor without a $1M annual budget for channel isn’t going to make $10M in channel sales.

Usually the small vendor has multiple stories to tell (multiple and diverse products) and an undefined target market. Usually the vendor has a non-simple explanation of what the product does. Usually the product is not a replacement of anything (like AI). Usually the product is not a band-aid or a torniquet for any kind of easily identified pain. (It is more like a mystery illness, like NaaS).

The issue with AI, CPaaS, and CX is that you need specialists to consultatively sell it. Luckily for CCaaS that there have been contact center experts for many years willing to take CCaaS and CX in to their portfolio. (Also, luckily Avaya, Mitel and a host of other vendors in that space have stepped on their own shoelaces and face-planted).

Much of the new technology entering the marketplace will require use cases, stories, explanations, proof of concept, trials, and a sales cycle longer than 6 months. That eliminates 85% of partners who do not want to sell in that way. Many pundits think these partners are dying (and have been singing their funeral for 10 years) but there is still demand in the market and vendors want to supply that demand.

That leaves 15% of the channel partners who can consultative sell and/or do sell to large business. However, the vendor still has to fins these partners, get their attention, tell their story, negotiate a partner agreement and get in their portfolio. THEN the partner has to tell their Customers about this vendor and then the sales cycle begins, which is longer than 6 months. SO it can be a year before a single sale hits the legal department.

When I explain this to vendors, they balk.

I have literally had 5 vendors tell me they needed sales in 90 days! Can you imagine? They would be lucky to ink one partner agreement in 90 days.

One of the things I do for my clients is set realistic expectations. The other thing I do is help them with their story. That becomes a problem when they have marketing that doesn’t want any outside input, but marketing to channel is different than marketing to the market.

When you think of your message, think of it as one photo in a Gen Z’s iPhone 16. They take 50 photos or more a week and at any given time have over 2000 photos on their device. Now imagine a partner getting hit with messages from the 400 vendors who have entered the channel since 2020. Your message is just one photo on the whole device. It better be clear, memorable, and Remarkable.

Are you bothered by the number of ads with the GEICO gecko and the Liberty Mutual emu? Insurance companies do massive amounts of ads to hammer home a brand that is basically the same brand: we are cheaper, better, easier. They need to repeat it often because no one believes them. That repetition is creating branding. Most tech companies do NOT do this.

Personal Injury lawyers have to advertise a lot to remain top of mind for when a accident victim has an accident. Then they have to answer the phone when the victim calls and assess the situation. Only about 1 in 6 calls result in a case.

Vendors without much marketing presence tend to do poorly in the channel, unless their product has great market fit.

There are a number of factors that will have an effect on the success of a partner program: product/market fit; pricing; compensation; partner support; messaging; marketing; target market; Buyer Persona. Truthfully, many vendors don’t have enough marketing support to have identified Buyer Personas,, Value Proposition and other foundational marketing elements that support a strong partner program.

Often for the vendor, the view of The Channel is as a cheaper sales effort, but it isn’t really. Recruiting partners, on-boarding them, supporting them, managing them, co-selling with them, paying them all require vendor talent and budget. [You can read all this and more in my new book, Channel Myths on Amazon for Kindle and in paperback from Lulu.]

I can certainly help you figure this stuff out, map out a strategy, craft a message, design a Partner Profile and launch a partner program (or re-vamp a stale one). Just give me a call  (813) 963-5884

“Most of the people who work at Yale don’t teach classes, and airlines have a very small percentage of pilots among their staff. We create organizations to deliver value, and we add complexity to coordinate and amplify the skilled work that people trade time or money for.” Seth Godin

No, I don’t be AI.

Does anyone remember PGi and their GlobalMeet product? Siris acquired PGI in 2015 for $1B! PGi was in the video meeting, webinar, collab space. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, they were nowhere to be found. Kind of like Webex. When was the last time you received a Webex invite? Except for my clients that own a BroadWorks, I never receive a Webex invite.

At CCA, all the talk was about AI.

At Enterprise Connect, much of the talk was about AI.

No one is talking about service delivery or customer pain.

During the pandemic, it was Zoom and Microsoft that took hold. Neither were on any quadrants prior to that.

As I look at the cloud communications arena, I am almost sure it will be an outside horse that takes the market by storm.

There are dark horses already: Content Guru, Sprinklr, Gladly, Kustomer and so many more.

There are platforms launching aimed just at very small business.

Everyone is looking at AI.

The business software platforms like Hubspot, Zoho, Freshworks, Zendesk and of course Salesforce and Adobe – are all making noise in Agentic AI. All have added Voice and chat. These platforms alongside Amazon are eating away at the market that was dominated by Avaya and Mitel.

Ultimately, the UCaaS providers have to realize that voice is why people are buying from them – along with a sense of “replacing the PBX” while remaining close to that experience.  They need to RE-IMAGINE what cloud comms mean.

Prior to the pandemic, UCaaS was a solution without a problem. It still is. Hybrid communications, Work from Anywhere or as Cavell has coined, “Intelligent Workplace”. It all is still in the UC&C bucket. The problem is what pain point is the Buyer searching for?

At CCA25, the analysts said that the use cases were generic and the AI was generic. This industry should have Gone Vertical years ago. But they all thought they would be the next AT&T or get acquired. How did that work out?

Even with AI, the lack of Differentiation is a large problem.

Sales are getting bogged down by AI.