A Look Back at the Last 15 Years

This month marks the 15th anniversary of Channel Dynamics. When we started this business in 2004, we didn’t realise how radically the channel would change over that time, nor how much we would have to adapt to remain relevant to our clients. As the industry has matured, so too has the need for vendors, distributors … Continued

Channel Legends Come Out to Play

To celebrate our 15 year anniversary, we had a party at the Poolside restaurant above the iconic Andrew (Boy) Charlton Pool. Located on the fringe of the Royal Botanic Gardens. The venue has a prime position with the leafy precinct of Mrs Macquarie’s Point on one side and Woolloomooloo Bay on the other. CRN were … Continued

Channel Legends look back 15 years

To coincide with our anniversary, CRN hosted all-star panel of Channel Chiefs, to look back at what has changed over 15 years and what might come next. The line-up included Phil Cameron, Paul Harapin, Leo Lynch, Steve Martin, Karen Drewitt, Tasha Soltonovich and Ronnie Altit, and the directors of Channel Dynamics. Moderated by the enigmatic … 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

8 Tips for Partner-to-Partner Partnering

The complexity of modern hybrid cloud solutions provides significant delivery challenges for solution providers. Many partners are finding that the skills and resources required to deliver the solutions they sell, may be beyond the scope of the capabilities they have in-house. Consequently, many partners are teaming up with third parties to deliver a complete solution … Continued

Beware the Other 4Ps

On the 1st of July 2019, the start of Microsoft’s fiscal year, an announcement was made via the partner website on a very inconspicuous page, that this would be the last year that Microsoft planned to provide its Microsoft partners and resellers with internal use rights (IUR) for product licenses, stating the discontinuation of the practice … Continued

Are you Really a Channel Company?

I come across many companies that say they are a 100% channel and they don’t ever sell direct. Firstly, that is probably unlikely, but regardless, even if 100% of your business actually does go through the channel, that doesn’t make you a channel company. It’s how you leverage the channel, and how the channel leverages … Continued

How to Create Greater Sales Loyalty

While the old adages of “customer comes first” and “customer is always right” are often thrown around externally, what gets said (and acted upon) internally within organisations is often vastly different, leading to an entirely different customer experience. This was highlighted in two of our recent consulting projects involving clients asking us to investigate why … Continued

Manage Partners? Then Use PowerPoint Better

Over the last 12 months, the training course I have delivered most often has been our Dynamic Sales Presentations workshop. This has been incredibly gratifying for me personally, as I have long been an advocate of the importance of presentation skills for Channel Account Managers, particularly when dealing with partners/MSPs, where the challenge is not … Continued

5 Steps for Negotiating a Better Margin

It doesn’t matter what our role is within the channel, we are constantly in situations where we have to negotiate… whether it’s with partners, customers, suppliers, staff, management, or colleagues. While we might often strive for a Win/Win outcome, our tendency is to slip into old habits and immediately look for ways to haggle or … Continued