Vendors want volume. Partners deliver value. More than 20 years ago, author and Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter laid out a strategy framework that can explain why this tension shapes so much of the channel, and why it so rarely gets named.
Porter argued that companies build advantage by choosing clear strategic positions. In the case of the channel, vendors and partners have chosen two different ones. While vendors compete on scale — market share, unit sales, and growth targets measured quarter by quarter — partners compete on what they do for the customer. That includes understanding the problem, designing the solution, integrating the pieces, and standing behind the outcome long after the sale closes.
Neither stance is wrong, but they pull in opposite directions. When vendors push partners to sell more, and faster, they draw partners away from the consultative, high-touch work that makes them valuable in the first place. Partners that give in to the pressure to sell the high-volume way risk becoming order-takers, while partners that resist can look like underperformers on a vendor’s scorecard.
In this episode of “In the Margins,” Channelnomics CEO Larry Walsh checks in from Delray Beach, Florida, to discuss the push-pull dynamic and explain that the gap can be bridged once both sides see it clearly. Vendors need to recognize that partners are value-based businesses and design programs that reward outcomes. Partners need to accommodate vendors’ volume goals by finding ways to scale their value. Only then will the two strategies stop competing and start reinforcing each other.