Channel Sales

As B2B buying dynamics evolve, so does the role of channel sales. Read our latest insights to build a channel sales strategy that supports predictable, scalable sales success.

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Insights

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B2B Summit North America 2024: Your Ticket To Turning Disruption Into Growth

Srividya Sridharan January 23, 2024
Explore the strategies and tools needed to drive customer-obsessed growth at our premier event for B2B marketing, sales, and product teams.
Blog

All Brands Need A DTC Digital Strategy, But Not Necessarily Direct Digital Sales

Michelle Beeson January 3, 2024
Should all brands sell directly to consumers online? How should brands work with online marketplaces? What does direct to consumer (DTC) mean for existing retail partner and distributor relationships? Consumer-facing brands still have a lot of questions about their DTC digital engagement and commerce capabilities. But the opportunities are not “one size fits all.” To […]

30+ B2B Trends & Topics In London You Don’t Want To Miss

Join Forrester analysts at B2B Summit EMEA from 7–9 October. Explore new strategy, tech, and process changes to accelerate growth and success.

Blog

Subscription Hardware Puts The Channel At Risk

Naveen Chhabra August 14, 2023
Subscription-based hardware is the emerging model that every hardware vendor is promising to customers, partners, and investors. It’s a significant shift from the classic capex model in which firms spend money for outright hardware purchases. There are several scenarios such as new technology, short-term projects, test-before-you-buy, and infrastructure bundled with managed services, etc., where subscription-based […]
Blog

How B2B Companies Will Win The Competition For Growth

John Arnold July 25, 2023
The competition for growth is fiercer than ever for B2B companies. To win, marketing, product, and sales leaders need to build a growth engine based on three fundamentals that are also simple, powerful, challenging, and achievable.
Blog

Looking Ahead To Forrester’s B2B Summit EMEA 2023

Paul Ferron July 12, 2023
Throughout the year, there is an ebb and flow to the things that I look forward to, often triggered by a certain event. For example, once my family has the winter-sport holiday behind us, I look forward to warmer weather and sunshine. The same happens to me when Forrester’s B2B Summit in North America is […]
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Europe-5 Online Retail Sales Will Reach €553 Billion By 2027

Jitender Miglani March 22, 2023
The Europe-5 markets comprise the top five economies in Europe — in order of size, those are Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. In 2022, total retail sales for the Europe-5 countries continued to grow strongly, but this growth actually shifted from online channels and touchpoints to offline channels and touchpoints. You read that […]
Blog

Ranking And Prioritizing Channel Partners: To Tier Or Not To Tier?

Stephanie Sissler February 24, 2023
Based on evolving B2B buyer needs and preferences, investing and collaborating with your channel partners is becoming increasingly prevalent and important. That said, it is unwise and unrealistic to support all partners in your ecosystem equally. Aligning resources to engage and enable the right ones is crucial. The challenge is how best to segment and prioritize partners accurately, […]
Blog

B2B Buyers And Digital Selling (Part 2): Buyer Enablement And Buying Signals

Rick Bradberry September 2, 2022
Sell something to a prospect, and you might earn a valuable commission. Help a prospect buy, and you might earn a valuable customer. This practice — helping prospects buy — is buyer enablement. And it requires a deeper understanding of purchasing preferences and the buying process itself, particularly with self-service. In this area, B2B teams […]
Blog

B2B Buyers And Digital Selling (Part 1): Self-Service, PLG, And Consumption Pricing

Rick Bradberry June 24, 2022
Digital selling insights from buyers and B2B sales executives, covering self-service purchasing, product-led growth (PLG), e-commerce, and consumption-based pricing. Will they converge or remain distinct practices shaping the buying experience?
Blog

Actionable Insights And Metrics That Unlock Channel Sales Growth

Stephanie Sissler June 22, 2022
Importance Of Channel Sales Metrics Today, actionable insights are the backbone of channel sales organizations. Collecting the right data and transforming it into actionable insights enables channel sales leaders to spot risks, find opportunities for growth, and make smarter decisions. In other words, tracking the right metrics could mean the difference between hitting your channel […]
Blog

Evolving Partnership Dynamics Will Dissolve Channel Conflict Concerns

Michelle Beeson June 17, 2022
When discussing brands’ direct-to-consumer (DTC) digital strategies, I am often asked how brands are handling issues of channel conflict with retail partners. There are a few forerunners to my response: A brand’s DTC digital strategy is not just about direct transactional sales to consumers. All brands need a DTC digital strategy, which derives value beyond […]
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Unlocking The True Business Opportunity For Modern Partners

David Park February 23, 2022
The business opportunity for channel partners is larger than most vendors realize. Transform a linear transaction into exponential growth.
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Prepare Now For Successful 2022 Channel Sales Planning

Stephanie Sissler October 21, 2021
Management and growth of the channel is too important to be left to chance. Here are the five actions to take in Q4 to ensure you and your organization are ready to begin building your 2022 channel sales plan.
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Top 59 Global IT Channel Media Outlets — What MSPs, MSSPs, Resellers, Integrators, And IT Consultants Read

Jay McBain September 2, 2021
Out of the 14 different spheres of influence that we track at Forrester, the channel industry trade press ranks near the top. Smart vendors and distributors know that the magic of finding, influencing, recruiting, enabling, and nourishing a top-performing channel boils down to three simple questions about partners: What do they read? Where do they […]
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Top 143 Social Media Groups For MSPs, VARs, And Tech Channel Professionals

Jay McBain July 8, 2021
The channel is very large, highly diverse, and incredibly decentralized. Channel partners know that to be successful, they need to carve out a niche — whether that be by line of business, by industry (and, increasingly, by subindustry), by size of customer, geographically, technologically, and by business model. These six vectors are not mutually exclusive, […]
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The 100 Best Channel Podcasts Of 2021

Jay McBain April 29, 2021
With more than 2 million podcasts available how do you find the best channel podcasts? Forrester's Principal Analyst Jay McBain has you covered. Check out the list of the best 100 channel podcasts of 2021.
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For Partners, If It Makes Dollars, It Makes Sense: Using TEI To Build The Business Case For Your Partner Program

David Park April 26, 2021
A Forrester channel TEI study highlights the economic metrics and the business advantages to choosing to work with that partner. These studies can explain and break down the economics and the outcomes of a partnership investment in real-dollar terms partners understand — not just gold, silver, and bronze.
Blog

Are Distributors The Future Of Distribution?

Jay McBain February 24, 2021
I made a prediction in January of 2018 that IT distributor disruption would continue. It was obvious that industry consolidation was accelerating, major distributors were diversifying, and private equity was getting more interested in transforming the industry. In the second half of last year, the two largest global IT distributors were acquired by private equity, […]
Blog

Channel And Ecosystem Leaders Are Demanding More From Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Solutions

Jay McBain November 9, 2020
As brands increasingly use different types of partners to reach, influence, transact, and retain customers, partner relationship management (PRM) solutions are being asked to serve both traditional and nontraditional channels at a new level of scale and personalization. Managing these growing ecosystems in a consistent, predictable, and productive way is critical to the success of […]
Blog

Five Tips For Getting 2021 Channel Sales Off To A Fast Start

Stephanie Sissler October 6, 2020
Even in the best of times, starting the new year off fast is important. With the continuing uncertainty and turmoil caused by COVID-19, channel sales leaders must act now to ensure their team can hit the ground running on day one of the new year.
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