Many tech channel managers are sitting in an uncomfortable place right now.  If you're in a fiscal year, budgets are not fully allocated yet and you're stuck waiting in limbo not sure how much you'll get this year. Why not take advantage of this time to pull together your "Good-Better-Best" scenarios?

Paint a picture of what you'd like to do this year and START with the BETTER scenario.   Starting with BETTER gives you a balanced position that can be easily bumped up with extra funding  or lowered in scale to account for cost-cutting steps you'd take to your get to "good" scenario. 

Let's say this year you are tasked with recruiting a new breed of partner into your programs:

Your "better" scenario might include a success-story-based approach where you gather interesting stories using video, audio and written accounts from new-breed partners already in that new space, then extend that message with the traditional media you already use today and offer an incentive to those who qualify by a certain date.

If you were asked to cut your budget, you might lose the video and just go with audio and written stories that are easy to capture by phone. 

If you were given more budget than you expected, you might add a reach into non-traditional media (such as social media) and even sponsor some conferences (or un-conferences).

Better yet, make your extra allocation of budget "performance-based" and challenge your agencies to tap into extra funding if they exceed your goals. 

And, don't forget to ask agencies like us for ideas, we like to get involved in your early stages of planning so we can understand your business all the more and serve you better. 

When we do this approach with our clients, there is a great synergy and results are notably more impressive.  

Call us if you need help.