The Channel Driven Business Environment reflecting the overall leadership role that the channel partner plays in this environment.

In the Channel Driven environment, there are different characteristics including:

A relatively larger number of individually smaller end customers.
Simpler purchases and/or less frequent purchases.
The involvement of fewer end customer sites.
Standard purchases, typically largely involving off-the-shelf items.
Channel organizations manage end customer relationships and orchestrate sales transactions.
The channel partners in a support role, helping to create values.
The channel partner must manage its customer relationships to foster channel leadership with the end customers.
The channel partners must establish the basis of product differentiation and create a strong brand position to create interest and help ‘pull’ end customers and compliment the brand and relationships initiatives.
"Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses."

Within the Channel Driven environment, channel partners have the lead role in working with end customers. The channel partners are typically small relative to the end customers that populate the environment. The Channel Driven business is frequently a transaction based business, selling mostly from inventories held by these channel partners.

The following table suggests the overall framework that we have found to be most successful for managing the Channel Partner and Reseller roles within the Channel Driven environment:

Role Description Channel Partner Reseller
Marketing & Promotion
Leads Generation
Product Demonstration
Proposal (Pricing, Bids, Quotes)
Selling & Negotiations
Collection
Installation
Implementation Management
Implement Services
End User Training
Pre-purchase Licenses
Manage Inventory
Manage Staff for Sales & Support
Patch Updates
Support