Channel is an overloaded term: Why the confusion matters

I recently spotted what I considered an odd hashtag on LinkedIn -- #savethechannel

The channel is an interestingly overloaded phrase. It’s used to refer to the indirect sales path for technology, which takes technology and the resulting services delivered not from the vendor themselves through sellers to those end customers. There’s a lot of pieces in that “channel” – the vendors, the distributors, and the services companies, and even within three. There’s the channel chief – a vendor employee – and the channel team, which are sales or marketing staff who deal with partners… who are also the channel.

Let's dive into the different channels, why the confusion matters, and why ecosystems are the future.

About Business of Tech: The daily MSP news and analysis podcast for managed service providers and IT services leaders. Host Dave Sobel covers AI for MSPs, MSP pricing and profitability, MSP M&A and private equity, vendor partner programs, MSP cybersecurity and liability, and MSP operations — and answers the question every story raises: Why do we care? Produced by MSP Radio.

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