from the desk of ELLEN LINKENHOKER

January is my favorite time of year because of the sense of change in the air. People setting personal goals (mine is to send a piece of snail-mail once a week) and organizations preparing for what they want the new year to look like is refreshing and inspirational.

In the spirit of new year planning, I've spent the past few months digging into how the market is changing and what that means for our client’s programs and ITA Group’s channel solutions. Here are few trends I’ve earmarked to focus on that may help you.

1. Doing More with Less

Many channel leaders expect to increase channel sales by over 10% in 2023, but most are not reporting an increase in headcount or budgets. 2023 will be a year of proving investments and shifting dollars around inside channel programs to the things bringing the highest return.

Incentive programs continue to be the easiest choice for funding because of their flexibility and ease of measurement. There is opportunity to explore a broader range of incentive types to achieve your goals.

2. Partner Experience & Engagement

Partner experience has become a competitive differentiator across partner ecosystems and often leads to higher engagement inside programs. Technology will be a crucial area of investment to achieve this.

A way to tackle this trend is by personalizing the experience, motivation and rewards based on factors like industry, route-to-market and role. Based on our research, doing so will increase the amount of products and services partners sell or influence from a vendor.

3. Service-Related Revenue & Non-Sales Participants

As more and more industries focus on servicerelated revenue, improving the customer experience is more important than ever. This has led organizations to focus on the hallmarks of outstanding customer experiences: retaining clients, creating growth in existing accounts and providing exceptional service levels. This area of focus for channel programs shifts the need for strategy towards support roles (technicians, repair, account managers, etc.) inside the partner organization and non-sales related activities (e.g., training, performance metrics, growth and cross-sell).

Enablement is a key investment area to support the role partners play in early buying stages like build, influence, sell (i.e., pipeline, revenue, renewal) and later buying stages like service and support (i.e., customer satisfaction score, customer retention).

Ellen Linkenhoker ITA Group Solution Line Leader, Channel Partner Solutions