Why we need a culture of greater collaboration in the channel
It’s a challenging sales environment today - businesses are looking to cut costs, product categories are shifting all the time, and economic and geopolitical uncertainty can act as a brake on decision-making. In the channel, we’ve responded to this by adopting a transactional mindset - often regarding each other as competitors first, hoarding information, and even adversarial relationships.
This will get us nowhere. In order to get through uncertainty, and make the most of the new growth opportunities on offer, we need a mindset shift in the channel. One that emphasises collaboration over conflict, information sharing and good-faith partnership over zero-sum competition. If we don’t, we will see increasingly strained relationships between partners, leaving us unable to meet the evolving demands of customers - ultimately, everybody loses.
There are two important shifts that have happened over the past few years that mean our operating model as an industry needs to transform: changing buyers, and changing go to market models.
