Lawford adds: "If you ask them why they missed the target, they will blame their partner accounts. ‘It is not my fault, they’re just all over the wall, I can’t do anything with them!’ will be the typical response."

Her solution was to give channel sales people a very clear framework. This starts with the job title.  Interestingly, Lawford hates the normal ‘channel manager’ label. "What does channel manager mean?  To me, it is a nonsense.  I don’t get it. How can you manage a channel? In what way ‘manage’?"  Instead, she prefers titles like business sales manager.

Salespeople are told that they are responsible for end-user sales via certain named partners and that they will be measured and judged on this. 

"Given half a chance, the sales force will spend all its time with tier 1 resellers"

Within this framework, salespeople must take responsibility. "If they blame a partner for not achieving sales target, I say: ‘No, that won’t wash. If you have real issues with a partner, let us know about it and together we will sort it out or change them. But you are accountable to me for the sales level."

Spell out precisely what you expect them to do
Few suppliers spell out what they want from channel salespeople. Often they are even sent on the same training courses as their direct colleagues.

This, for instance, was the case at RSA when Lawford first arrived there. As a result very little of the training they underwent had any direct relevance.

Lawford decided that it was vital to really lay down precisely what salespeople were expected to do in different situations.

So she introduced a seven stage partner methodology (see table, on previous page).

"What does ‘channel manager’ mean? To me, it is a nonsense. I don’t get it. How can you manage a channel?"

Lawford explains: "This takes the salesperson through the entire process from the discovery of a partner through to replicability. At each stage, I expect the salespeople to do certain things and to behave in certain ways. That includes stepping back when the partner reaches a certain competency level." 

She says that, at first, she met resistance. "People felt I was interfering in how they did the job. But, gradually, they have come to see that this approach can help them to see what they need to do at each stage.  This is very important. Without this, many salespeople struggle to identify the appropriate action and behaviour with different partners."