Partner Strategy
The Real Cause of Channel Conflict
Channel conflict is rarely just a rules problem — it's an incentives problem. Until you address how people are measured and rewarded, no ROE will fix it.
Channel conflict came up in a couple of conversations with partner leaders this week, and ways to address it.
Channel conflict can take many forms:
- Direct Sales and Partners Co-Selling
- Two partners engaged on the same account
- Indirect partner vs direct sales
The list can go on and on.
Our instinct may be to go right into the mechanisms: rules of engagement, RACIs, and escalation paths.
Before we spin up another set of ROEs, let’s take a step back and observe the behaviors driving the conflict.
More often than not, it’s incentives, both monetary and non-monetary. People are responding to how they are measured, paid, and recognized. If we do not address this first, we will face a significant uphill battle to mitigate our channel conflict.
The ROEs, RACIs, and other mechanisms still matter; they are among the last steps.
TL;DR: Channel Conflict mitigation:
- Observe the behaviors
- Diagnose what’s driving them
- Correct the driver (incentives, coverage model, ops, etc)
- Then build the ROE, RACI, and escalation paths