Off the top of my head, what are the expectations of the various folks along the flow of vendor to end user of a typical IT Product or Service? I’m sure i’ve probably missed some nuances, and if so, what is missing?

Vendors

• Provide Product and/or Services for Resale
• Accountable for Demand Creation
• Minimise costs at scale by compensating channels for:
  • Customer Sales Coverage and Regular Engagement of each
  • Deal Pipeline, and associated activity to increase:
    • Number of Customers
    • Range of Vendor Products/Services Sold
    • Customer Purchase Frequency
    • Product/Service Mix in line with Vendor objectives
  • Investment in skills in Vendor Products/Services
  • Associated Technical/Industry Skills useful to close vendor sales
  • Activity to ensure continued Customer Success and Service Renewals
  • Engagement in Multivendor components to round out offering
• Establish clear objectives for Direct/Channel engagements
  • Direct Sales have place in Demand Creation, esp emerging technologies
  • Direct Sales working with Channel Partner Resources heavily encouraged
  • Direct Sales Fulfilment a no-no unless clear guidelines upfront, well understood by all
  • Avoid unnecessary channel conflict; actively discourage sharing results of reseller end user engagement history unless presence/relationship/history of third party reseller with end user decision makers (not just purchasing!) is compelling and equitable

Distributors

• Map vendor single contracts/support terms to thousands of downstream resellers
• Ensure the spirit and letter of Vendor trading/marketing terms are delivered downstream
• Break Bulk (physical logistics, purchase, storage, delivery, rotation, returns)
• Offer Credit to resellers (mindful that typically <25% of trading debt in insurable)
• Centralised Configuration, Quotation and associated Tech Support used by resellers
• Interface into Vendor Deal Registration Process, assist vendor forecasting
• Assistance to vendor in provision of Accreditation Training

Resellers

• Have Fun, Deliver Good Value to Customers, Make Predictable Profit, Survive
• Financial Return for time invested in Customer Relationships, Staff knowledge, Skills Accreditations, own Services and institutional/process knowledge
• Trading terms in place with vendor(s) represented and/or distributor(s) of same
• Manage own Deal Pipeline, and associated activity to increase one or more of:
• • Number of Customers
  • Range of Vendor Products/Services Sold
  • Customer Purchase Frequency
  • Product/Service Mix in line with Vendor objectives
  • Margins
• Assistance as needed from Vendor and/or Distributor staff
• No financial surprises

So, what have I missed?

I do remember, in my relative youth, that as a vendor we used to work out what our own staffing needs were based on the amount of B2B revenue we wanted to achieve in each of catalogue/web sales, direct sales, VARs and through IT Distribution. If you plug in the revenue needs at the top, it gives the number of sales staff needed, then the number of support resources for every n folks at the layer before – and then the total advertising/promotion needed in each channel. It looked exactly like this:

Looking back at this and comparing to today, the whole IT Industry has gotten radically more efficient as time has gone by. That said, I good ready reckoner is to map in the structure/numbers of whoever you feel are the industry leader(s) in your market today, do an analogue of the channel mix they use, and see how that pans out. It will give you a basis from which to assess the sizes and productivity of your own resources – as a vendor at least!