A lot of companies in any industry have ignored indirect sales for a very long time. Twenty years ago, CRM and sales enablement tools have revolutionized the way people sell today. The same thing happened with marketing automation for marketers ten years ago. Now the third big change is the channel. Most people know that investing in the channel drives more amplification than the other 2 big changes.
The next 10 years will be the decade of indirect sales. But the channel has hurdles, one of them being the sources of data. On top of this, the channel is complicated, it is not something that can easily be automated. There is also a people’s problem as well as the channel does not get the respect it deserves.
Check out Jay’s Channel Software Tech Stack at: https://go.forrester.com/blogs/channel-software-tech-stack-2019-infographic/
There is some movement now to build larger, more robust companies that have much more in terms of engineering and dev ops talent. According to Jay, there is 21% of SMB and mid-market companies that outsource their IT to about 50,000 service providers that serve this market. So this is a significant opportunity for MSPs. So not only can they sell TO these customers but they can also sell THROUGH them. For the other 79% of customers, they can sell WITH them.
Nowadays, ease of installation makes it more difficult to sell services. But the average SMB company now has hundreds of SaaS companies involved in all lines of business. That becomes more opportunities for MSPs to provide help with implementation, integration, compliance and continuity.
To find out more, check out Jay’s previous podcast here: http://new.e-channelnews.com/podcast-with-jay-mcbain/
