Startup CXO

Chapter 66Expanding Distribution Channels

My experience has been primarily in B2B businesses and in other companies it will differ, but in my experience when you're starting out, you start out as a direct seller. As a direct seller, you really understand the dynamics of the market, what resonates with customers, and you create your own positioning, messaging, branding, pricing, and packaging, that gives you a very refined and comprehensive understanding of what's important in order to be successful in selling.

Soon thereafter, it's really important if you want to expand the reach of your message to align with partners, to expand and develop your channel. By aligning with the right partners for your product, you'll amplify your partner's products, helping them sell more or helping them reduce customer churn. Channel business is not really about generating revenues for the partner from your product—it's great if it happens—but the real advantages are that you get access to a channel for your product that you wouldn't otherwise have, and you're helping someone else be successful.

If you can find partners where your product is additive to theirs, they'll be highly motivated to work with you. The incentive can't just be to sell more of your product, it has to be making their business better. If you can find those partners, I've seen it be incredibly successful, but not without conflict.

At Voxy, I had a small direct sales team of about 10 people but we could never hire fast enough ...