Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect

Could a New Channel Model Lead to Sales Amplification?

Posted on February 13, 2020 Updated on August 11, 2026

Over the years, I have helped successful companies and start-ups improve and strengthen their Channel and Strategic Alliances programs. The results have been good, but could they have been better? Keep reading to learn about the benefits of enhanced business ecosystems.

Most traditional channel models support Distributors, Resellers, OEMs, and ISVs. The business mainly flows upwards to the main vendor. If that vendor has popular, widely used products (think Microsoft and Oracle), partner business can be good because the demand stays consistent. But sales pipelines suffer when that is not the case.

Sales Channel business is not the main source of revenue for most companies, but it does have the potential to become the largest and most scalable revenue source for nearly any business. Just think about the money left on the table by not adopting a growth mindset and executing a new and better strategy.

In the summer of 2016, I attended the “Sage Summit” in Chicago. It was impressive to see the Sage Group’s efforts to build, strengthen, and protect their Customers and Channel Partners community. They tried to foster higher levels of collaboration between the various types of partners – implementation services, consulting, staff augmentation services, complementary product vendors, etc. They had created their own highly successful Business Ecosystem, which is an excellent proof point.

When designing a channel partner program, my focus has always been on finding the balance between promoting and protecting partners’ business and helping ensure that end customers have the best possible experience (and have some recourse when things do not work out as expected). There are a variety of methods I have used to accomplish those goals, including creating a systematic approach to seeding relationships between partners complementary offerings and facilitating an even greater volume of business activity.

Nearly a year ago, I began working with a management consultancy run by Robert Kim Wilson, whose business vision is based on his book, “They Will Be Giants.” Links for this book and other relevant resources are provided at the bottom of the post. Kim asserts that Entrepreneurs with a Purpose-Driven Business Ecosystem (PDBE) are more successful than those without one, providing examples to prove his point. Having experienced Kim’s PDBE, I see how purpose fosters trust and collaboration.

As I did more research, I found that an increasing focus among thought leaders in this space has been placed on Business Ecosystems and Business Ecosystem Organizers (such as Sage in the earlier example). Those findings reinforced the PDBE approach, and external validation like this is always good.

From my perspective, it was just as important that this concept apply to businesses of any size – especially for small to midsize businesses. The fun part for me is exploring a specific business, analyzing what they do today, and quantifying the potential benefits of adopting this new strategy.

So, how does this new type of Business Ecosystem work?

• The Business Ecosystem Organizer expands the overall network, vets new “Business Ecopartners,” and provides a framework or infrastructure for the various Business Ecopartners to get to know one another, exchange ideas, and discuss opportunities.
  • This can become an incredibly sustainable revenue source for companies willing to invest time to collaborate and share ideans in order to grow and support the Business Ecosystem.
• Business Ecopartners will have access to trusted resources to augment existing business and take on new, bigger projects by leveraging the available expertise.
  • Suppose that you have products or services that work with commercial CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or SCM (Supply Chain Management), and have seen a growing demand for functionality that relies on highly specialized technologies like:
    • Cryptocurrency support.
    • Blockchain for financial transactions and things like traceability in your supply chain or IoT data.
    • AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to detect patterns and anomalies – such as fraud detection, Deep Learning/Neural Networks for image recognition or other complex pattern recognition.
    • Graph databases to better understand a business and infer new ways to improve it.
    • Knowledge Graph/Semantic databases to create deeper meaning and understanding with data from multiple sources – assisting in deeper understanding and Transfer Learning (which also has an AI tie-in).
  • Building these practices in-house would not be practical or cost-effective for most businesses, so partnering becomes very attractive to your company.
    • This type of business relationship can also be very attractive to a Business Ecopartner because someone else handles prospecting, sales, billing, account management, etc.
• Other Business Ecopartners can leverage your products or services for their projects and engagements, thus expanding their addressable market and becoming additional sources of revenue for the other ecopartners.
• By actively participating in this network, any business can now compete on imagination and innovation – providing a more comprehensive solution that could become a major source of differentiation from their competitors.

Value realized from this New Business Ecosystem model:

1. These new sources of business and talent can become a real competitive advantage for your business.
2. This becomes the source for Sales Amplification because each business is, directly and indirectly, expanding its reach and growth potential.
3. The weighted (based on capabilities, capacity, responsiveness, and Ecopartner feedback) Business Ecopartner network model could lead to exponential business growth – a winning strategy for any business.

Next Steps

If this sounds interesting and you would like to discuss how it could look for your business, contact me to schedule an exploration call.

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