Here at Crimson we continue to be fascinated by technology vendors’ love affairs with their products and services and the disbelief that vendors have when their alliance/channel partners do not share their exuberance over the latest software release or hardware refresh.

Why are vendors and channel partners so far off? It all comes down to a lack of business model alignment between technology companies (vendors) and solution providers (the channel) as to how they view the world.

Vendors see their specific offerings as the center of the known universe. Unfortunately, whether software, hardware, or services, these offerings are (at best) a piece of the Solution Providers (channels) world view.

The key to unlocking the hearts and minds of the channel is for technology vendors to re-think their value propositions on the basis of the “Channel/Segment business models”.  ID the critical care-abouts in each of the SP Segment’s businesses. Perhaps that’s something as simple as, grow the SP’s sales pipeline, or offer a highly differentiated solution. But NOTE it has nothing to do with what product the SP might want to sell or market on the vendor’s behalf.

As the chart below depicts, the closer the vendor value proposition gets to the SP’s business model, the greater is the alignment (and ultimately share of mind and wallet) that the vendor will get by going to market with the SP.