Can we imagine a business without revenue? What a stupid question. Right?

Revenue is a goal for businesses of all sizes. However, every income growth is hampered by time at some point. Even if salespeople sold a product every second for 24 hours a day, they would reach a productivity ceiling. Then you have two options: recruit more salespeople or form a channel sales relationship.

Most firms choose the second option to save time, money and expand their market. However, channel sales is an idea worth investigating, with 60 percent of organizations reporting higher annual revenue from channel partners.

In this article, we'll talk about what channel sales are. We'll also go over its benefits, challenges, channel sales strategy, and what types of channel sales models are available.

What is channel sales?

A channel sales is a sales strategy in which a company sells products or services through partners and third parties such as referral partners, affiliate partners, wholesalers, distributors, managed service providers, marketplaces, or value-added resellers. In contrast, a traditional direct sales strategy depends solely on your company's salespeople to sell products to customers.

While direct sales rely on your reps to expand your business, a channel sales approach can provide you with more boots on the ground, allowing you to reach clients who would otherwise not or be unable to buy directly from the vendor.

What are the benefits of channel sales?

Many businesses integrate channel sales into their strategy, even if they have a successful direct sales program. Let's jump to why businesses use a channel sales strategy:

• Lower marketing and Sales Costs

Having an in-house sales team has a lot more overhead than selling through a channel. A lot of selling costs can be avoided if someone else has a brick-and-mortar business, staff, and inventory. Channel sales also take advantage of the partner's drive to grow their business and clients, making it a cost-effective approach to join or expand a market without having to invest as much in your campaign.

• Reduced Risk

Channel sales are a relatively low-risk technique to examine and try out a new market due to decreased costs and better efficiency. You can experiment with new items, packages, promotions, and campaigns with a partner without putting your direct sales business at risk.

• Streamlined Onboarding and Customer Service

If you collaborate with partners who can provide clients with training, onboarding, and customer support, you can move your service process to them and focus more on sales. While they handle client deployment and any issues that arise, the right partners will free up your time to focus on new business.

What are the challenges of Channel Sales?

Although channel sales can transform a young firm, there are a few stumbling blocks to be aware of.

• Profits are reduced as a result of revenue sharing.

Different channel partners receive a percentage of your sales income through channel sales. It can be painful to lose out on profits that would otherwise be all yours from direct customers, whether it's 10%, 25%, or 50% (and sometimes more). However, when it comes to ongoing customer service and account management, you're likely to save money in the long run. After all, seventy percent of anything is preferable to one hundred percent of nothing.

• You'll have less overall influence over your company.

You can't control what your indirect sales team says or does when they contact target clients across numerous touchpoints, no matter how thoroughly you vet and educate them. So if they make a mistake or mess up, you may have to deal with the consequences through proxy.

What are the various types of channel models available?

The good news is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution for channel sales, so you have plenty of options. Here are some of the options accessible to you to assist you in selecting the best one for your business:

Distributors, Marketplaces, Resellers who give value-added services, Retailers, Dealers, and Influencers are all examples of affiliate partners.

What is a Channel Sales Strategy?

A sales channel strategy is forming business agreements with third parties to enlarge a product's market. More clients can try your product if you use a sales channel strategy in your organization. You must perform extensive research and plan accordingly to implement your sales channel strategy.

To accomplish this, follow these steps:

• Examine your present sales procedure.

The foremost step is to double-check that you're in the right stage for sales channels. Next, consider whether your available bandwidth is sufficient for sales channels. The end goal is to increase the number of people that buy your product, so make sure you don't mess up the current sales process before moving further.

• Examine your business associates

Double-check with your partners to ensure that they are a good fit for your company. Before doing business with a potential sales partner, get as much information as possible about them. You'll need to create an ideal companion profile in this case.

• Train and empower your partners to help you increase sales.

Now that you have partners give them the authority to execute to help you increase sales. In addition, inform a freshly acquired third party about the benefits of working with you. This will further motivate them to work as hard as or even harder than the direct sales staff to reach more customers.

• Engage the services of a channel sales manager.

Finally, for the seamless operation of the business, appoint a channel sales manager to handle partner interactions. Every partner will receive the attention necessary to carry out their responsibilities efficiently. The channel sales manager you hire will keep a close watch on results and supply the required resources.

Channel sales are a vital component of business growth in practically every industry. If you currently have a sales process in place and want to expand faster, don't be hesitant to start looking for partners as soon as possible to assist you to target different areas or demographics. In any situation, make sure you have a good handle on your company's data and a thorough understanding of your sales performance at every level so that when it's time to grow, whether internally or through channel partners, you're ready to go.