Canada can provide many avenues for success for those in the channel, assuming, of course, the right steps are followed.
According to Mark Collins, the president of the Canadian Channel Chiefs Council (C4) and the CEO of consultancy F2Factor, step number one is realizing that the so-called rules for success that might work in the U.S., or the U.K., or any other industrialized nation for that matter, will likely not work here.
There is, he says, “the long standing impression that Canada is, on the one hand, a great place to innovate – we have good ingredients in terms of a willing public sector – a government that wants to innovate – and we have an excellent education system.”
Those, says Collins, are both positives. However, one thing that hasn’t changed is that “Canada is still a massively distributed country; it is huge, with somewhere between nine and 11 large cities, and then many, many, many small communities.
“What that all adds up to is many, many small businesses. In order to build a channel in Canada, one thing that you have to come to terms with, which makes us very different from our good neighbors to the south, is that with the exception of the few cities, we don’t have the level of economic concentration in one area.
“In Canada, you really need to understand the art of small medium business (SMBs) or you are going to be missing 60 per cent of the opportunities. And it starts there.”
On Feb. 28 at 1 p.m., he and Jim Love, CIO and chief content officer for IT World Canada, will host a webinar that will examine what it takes to build a successful channel here. Topics covered will include what makes Canada unique, what fails and what succeeds here, how to build, find, recruit, and support channel partners and, last but not least, recipes for success in the Canadian market.
There are, says Collins, “four pillars you need to build a successful channel and this is what I’m going to talk about in the webinar – talent, tools, investment capacity, and a process. If you do not have those four things, you are not going to be as successful as you could be.”
To register, click here.
