ASK CHANNELNOMICS: Direct or Indirect?

At Channelnomics, we field questions about best practices, partner strategies, and channel programs every day. In this series, we’ll be exploring the questions we receive most from vendors. For this debut edition, we address customers’ interest in buying technology assets and services directly from vendors.

Question: Should vendors consider shifting more sales away from the channel to adapt to customer preferences?

Here’s some background. Gartner G2 says that 70% of end customers prefer buying technology products and services directly from the vendor rather than going through resellers. The same report says only 8% of buyers prefer sourcing products through resellers. Is the market truly shifting from direct to indirect sourcing?