Revenue sharing means less profit

[mouakter13]

From reviews to product recommendations and more, your existing customers are a goldmine of information. Less face-to-face time with your customers and end users means less time talking to them and understanding their unique needs, challenges, pain points , and desires, especially since channel partners often don't allow vendor salespeople to directly contact their customers.

However, partners can provide vendors not only with customer feedback, but also with vertical expertise, functional experience, competitive intelligence, beta testing, product planning, and more. As a vendor, you can establish Partner Advisory Boards to facilitate the collection of this feedback and ideas.

Avoiding these pitfalls and conflicts ultimately depends on how you approach sales channels and who you partner with. For example, you still have full control over who your sales channel partners are and what your revenue share is.

In short, adopting new sales channels doesn't have to mean losing control over your business.

As Pipedrive's VP of Channel Sales and Partnerships notes, "At Pipedrive, we're constantly working to ensure product launches are done in a way that allows partners and resellers to sell from the start, confident that we have training and resources ready for partners."

Although, of course, this adds additional costs.

Here's a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of sales channels. As you can see, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Sales channels

Advantages Disadvantages
A new way to grow your business (even if your resources are limited)

Less control over your business as a whole because you're relying on an indirect sales force to represent your brand; if they make a mistake, you could be indirectly affected.

Enter new markets and introduce your products to more customers across different demographics by leveraging your partners' networks and pre-built audiences.

Revenue sharing means less profit, but it could reduce your ongoing support and account management costs in the long run.

Save money on distribution and shipping by leveraging infrastructures that are already operational and optimized (especially if you're in the retail sector).

Less time spent directly with customers can mean less time listening to critical feedback, making it difficult to obtain a comprehensive critique of your products or services. But this can be addressed by working with your partners to gather their feedback.

Boost your brand reputation and recognition by partnering doctor database with established, credible brands.

Allow your sales reps to focus on their strengths by relieving pressure and giving them time to cultivate relationships with their own prospects and customers.

Offers services for complex products, saving you the need for customer support teams.

Create a Partner Advisory Board to gather feedback and insights.





The good news is that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to sales channels, so you have plenty of options to explore. Here are some of the options available to you (some may seem more or less attractive depending on your company's size, industry, and product):