What is the career progression of a channel chief?
Jay McBain
Chief Analyst - Channels, Partnerships & Ecosystems - Canalys - Channel Influencer of the Year
It is fascinating to watch the career progression of over 10 million channel, partner & alliance professionals. As of today, there are 15,000 partnering professionals using "ecosystem" in their title on LinkedIn with an incredible 826,000 using the word to describe what they do!
At the top of the leadership chain, Canalys recognizes 35,000 "channel chiefs" across the vendor community. There is a long-tail (north of 20k) of chiefs who don't have any direct reports while some the largest vendor organizations have Chief Partner Officers with thousands of employees.
I had the pleasure of working with Kelly Sarabyn and Scott Brinker (from HubSpot), and Asher Mathew (from Partnership Leaders) on a report focusing on the partner organization of the Top 50 Software companies. Only 17% of partnership leaders at the top 50 software companies report to the CEO. More commonly they report to the CRO or the Chief Sales Officer.
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Why is the partnering organization reporting to sales or marketing when the job role may be more focused on building technology integrations, and recruiting consulting and implementation partners to support a platform business model?
Previous research by Canalys showed that sales people outnumber channel people at vendors by a 3:1 ratio industry-wide. Not surprisingly, partner teams are much smaller than sales and marketing teams due to the economies of scale that come with partnering.
What is surprising, is that most business application software companies do not rely on resellers or MSPs the way that hardware, infrastructure, and security companies do - but still have a reporting structure through sales.
Join Kelly, Scott and I in one week - January 16 @ 2pm ET - to dig deeper into this data and debate platform business models, the future of marketplaces, cross-ecosystem collaborations, and the internal alignment needed to optimize outcomes in this platform ecosystem. Sign up: https://lnkd.in/gKfpvkDv
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11moElle Hogan
SVP Partner Ecosystems, Advisory Board Member, Strategic Advisor, Consultant and Podcast Host
12moInteresting research as always, Jay. What I look for in a Channel Chief is someone who can be an Ecosystem Chief. Do they have a combination of business acumen, strategic thinking, and unrelenting drive to grow revenue and customer success leveraging partners of all types. Looking forward to seeing the full report!
Co-founder at eWAY | Partner Management | Helping businesses grow with partner relationship management and Business intelligence Solutions | Business Strategy Consultant
12moThe stats highlight how big and complex the partner scene is. Looking forward to the panel with as it's set to be a powerful talk needed for success. Thanks for sharing this Jay McBain
I thought you were going to talk about longevity in role. Like with all channels ... there's a lot of churn in roles too. It's not a bad thing. It's just the nature of (almost any) career progression.
Founder @ Arys - Helping Tech Solutions Providers Grow Faster and More Efficiently With On-Demand Channel Partner & Ecosystem Support
1yHow do we increase that 3:1? How do we impact that economy of scale to effect change? Who do we need to directly influence to bring about the necessary changes of good for all? Vendors, customers, leadership, partners, sales teams? They would be my questions for the cast Jay 👍