ASK CHANNELNOMICS: Mitigating Risk When Disenfranchising Partners

At Channelnomics, we field questions about best practices, partner strategies, and channel programs every day. In this series, called “Ask Channelnomics,” we answer some of the questions we receive most from vendors.
Question: We’re adjusting our partnership requirements and tiers — resetting the revenue thresholds and requiring partners to get certified to sell certain products. The changes are causing anxiety among smaller partners, as they’re losing the ability to sell higher-level products and already don’t produce enough revenue to qualify for the partner program. Our salespeople are concerned about losing business. How can they keep those partners from defecting to competing vendors and taking their customers with them?
Answer: Every vendor must take the measure of its risk tolerance during a period of change. Each channel strategy and model change will incur a certain level of par...