A webinar held last week took a deep dive into what it takes to build a successful channel program in Canada.
Topics covered included what makes Canada unique, what fails and what succeeds here, how to build, find, recruit, and support channel partners, as well as recipes for success in the Canadian market.
Jim Love, the CIO and chief content officer at IT World Canada and host of the daily news podcast Hashtag Trending, was joined by Mark Collins, the president of the Canadian Channel Chiefs Council (C4) and the CEO of consultancy F2Factor.
F2Factor, said Collins, who has been involved in the channel in some way for more than two decades, is “effectively in the business of helping high tech companies grow, working directly with them helping develop and execute their strategies and pathways to drive growth in their business.
“Throughout that entire 20-plus years, I never lost touch with the channel. I was in the channel, I worked with channel partners, I marketed through channels, I ran channel operations to channel teams. I was always fascinated by the channel and channel managers because I see every channel manager as kind of being a virtual CEO when they are at their best, because they are actually helping people design and grow their businesses.”
Prior to the webinar, in an interview with CDN, Collins described Canada as 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 neighbours to the south, is that with the exception of the few cities, we do not have the level of economic concentration in one area.
“In Canada, you really need to understand the art of small medium business (SMB), or you are going to be missing 60 per cent of the opportunities. And it starts there.”
He spoke about the implications of that, and how best to achieve success, during his Q&A with Love.
“The reality is that channels fundamentally exist to help manufacturers scale their business and effectively be the glue between them and the customer,” said Collins.
“Channels start when manufacturers are seeking paths to scale their business – it is really all about that. Nobody can afford enough people or find enough people to introduce new innovations out there in the business universe.”
To listen to the entire webinar, click this link.