If you’ve never learned to gold pan, try it sometime and you’ll understand why people can catch “gold fever”. 

In my day-long lesson in panning for gold this summer from an expert living on an isolated mountain in Oregon, I drew some conclusions for channel management that seemed appropriate and might even lend some guiding principles.  Gold, in this case are HiP Partners (High-Performing or High-Potential Partners)

1.   First, find a good vein where you are likely to find gold
Heavy, liquid gold was brought down mountains thousands of years ago with other heavy, liquid minerals and it typically “hangs out” near quartz and iron pyrite but no one REALLY knows how to predict with accuracy the presence of gold

When you’re seeking your best partners, who might they be “hanging out with”?  Maybe a complimentary vendor like HP, Sophos or Kaspersky?  Maybe in an association of likeminded individuals like CompTIA or IAMCP ?  Find the pyrite and you might find the gold. 

2.  Classify with care

What I didn’t realize until my lesson was the importance in breaking down the pile of dirt you speculated might have gold in it and gather into like-sized groups.  Called “classification”, this step ensures that the proper searching technique is applied.  You look for gold nuggets differently in the large-rock pile than you do from swirling sand and water in a pan.  Different approaches to the same challenge of finding gold.
 
How are you classifying your partners so that when you recruit or engage them that you’ve sorted them into the appropriate categories that are meaningful?  Do you treat your large resellers the same as you do your system integrators and hosters?   What matters most-- the size of their business or the type of solutions they provide? 

Take one example, Channel Champions Award-winning Trend Micro uses a simple classification:  Technology, Platform or Consulting partner.  Pretty straightforward and orthogonal I’d say.  Compare to this organization by competency that Microsoft is trying on this year.  Which is closer to your biz model? 

3.       Don’t dump out the little guys

In a “swirl” of your pan, you can accidentally drop out an assortment of small gold flakes which, additively, can amount to a collection of gold that exceeds the elusive big nugget you could find in 1,000 tries. 

Vendors notoriously pay more attention to the handful of “big partners” that seem to generate their revenue  but what if you had 1,000 little guys each selling $150K/yr, would they outpace the others?   If you can set up to do both, give it a try.  If you’re still starting out, then maybe all you can do is have a Backyard BBQ approach to managing your top partners, where you are small enough to have all of your partners together personally.  But set your aim on the breadth channel too.

Yes, the early lessons from our historical Gold Miners still apply in many ways.  However, I would encourage you to be a “Cackler”, or what the gold miners referred to a miner who let others do the heavy work.  We’re happy to shoulder the load.  Give us a call. 

PS:  That's me and my daughter in the photo