It’s “kick off” for the first half of the 2018 Channel Games. If you think of it as a football game, then it may give you a simple framework to plan. Since the goal with most games is to score points, your plan should focus on scoring points to win. In the case of the channel, those “points” come in the form of sales, new recruits, growing partners, reducing cost, customer retention, awareness, education, motivation and improving efficiencies (winning some awards is also a good score).
By now you should have a good channel game-plan. You integrated the top trends into your strategy. You have reviewed your performances from last year. You know what you need to improve to win in 2018. Your team is motivated and ready to play. You have all of the tools necessary to play the game. Channel management “coaches” are ready. It’s game time.
If everything goes according to plan, then you should win. However, be prepared to manage upsets! What happens when your team fumbles the ball. Despite all of the best planning and training, things do go wrong. Actually, this unknown is what makes the game challenging and fun. If it was easy, everyone would be a top player.
We can learn something from what Bill Gates said… “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
Best practices in the past will not necessarily remain best practices in the future! Of course, you could wait and see what the other leaders do and mimic their game, but playing it too safe do not win championships. Sometimes you just have to take some calculated risks if you want your team to win. You need to dig a little deeper and do things that are different. Things that are unexpected by your opponents.
So, what will be your big play to win the Channel Games this year?
Here is one example of our big plays for 2018…
We took our very successful 15-year old ChannelNEXT events and rebuilt it to what we are betting will be the next generation of channel conferences. We did a lot of homework, planning and testing over the past few years (so it is also a very calculated risk). We also realized that name we created 15 years ago is even more relevant today as we build the next generation channel with “ChannelNEXT”.
We basically removed all of the things that were less valuable to the VARs/MSPs and replaced it with more practical things like peer-to-peer networking and top best business practice coaching. It’s a risk because we will reduce revenue from the usual vendor sponsorship and charge VARs/MSPs to attend.
“We believe that Channel Partners need to adopt best practices to truly future-proof their business”
We also understand that there is little chance for VARs/MSPs to get everything they need from simply attending any singular event. Their success requires much more ongoing business support all year long. As such, our events will one component of the 365 days a year support that we will be delivering to VARs and MSPs!
The format will also be different as every attendee will be preassigned to a small group of eight like-minded peers to “work” the entire event. They will attend several “MasterMind” collaborative group sessions as well as multi-group “MasterClasses” and a lot more!
You could call this extreme support, but its what is required to build more channel champions!
Learn more about our Elite 300 Membership program and how you can be one of the Next Top 300 Channel Partners!
Of course vendors will still have a huge role to play at our events, but their participation will be more educational and interesting for the VARs/MSPs. Vendors will be able recruit new and stronger channel partners while leveraging the Elite 300 Mastermind program to help their current channel partners to become champions! They can now do both things at the same time!
We decided to make this big play because we are convinced that the “best business practice” path will help build the next generation of successful channel partners. Players that win championships!
Meet and learn live at one of our upcoming events…We can talk about your big play for 2018! Next up is our Channel Manager Summit, Reseller Choice Awards and Best Managed IT Awards Gala on Feb 1st.
