I'm not sure if the economy truly is turning around but if the increased number of job openings for the channel is an indication, we are certainly on the road to recovery.  In the past month, I've been asked for a valuable channel professional to fill an opportunity by at least a dozen companies.  Is it that all areas of the IT market are rebounding or are good channel professionals just that hard to find?

I think it's a little of both.  While I can't do anything to help the market rebound...other than shopping...here are some suggestions for finding or becoming a quality channel professional:

1.  Remember ALL of your audiences:  you don't just have one customer like your corporate counterparts.  You need to worry about the end-customer and their pain points that will drive sales of your company's products as well as your partners and what will help them sell said products.

2.  Find your joint value proposition:  While your company may have the best widget in the world, your partners aren't just going to promote that product without wanting to highlight their own value proposition as well.  It's important in any programs or support for your partners, that you make space for the JOINT value proposition.  Your product with their services or your product with their product or your product with their product and services or....you get the idea.

3.  Never create programs in a bubble:  if you're developing tiers, communications, incentives, or sales programs and you haven't spoken to a partner in months...STOP.  Get out there and talk to partners of all types and sizes.  Surveys are also a great way to get a ton of feedback.  If you're looking to change your program entirely make sure that survey includes solution providers outside of your current eco-system.

4.  Quality over Quantity:  It's funny to me when vendors brag about how many partners they have.  Okay great!  So from the partners' perspectives there's that much more competition.  When recruiting be sure to get the right type of partners who will enhance and grow your business not just grow your number of partners.  If you do have a ton of partners in one specialty or region, make sure each partner knows how they are going to be successful even with the large number of competitors.

5.  Know your partners:  similar to the first point it's important to understand your partners and their business.  If you make it a requirement that all partners run national integrated multi-touch marketing campaigns and 20% of your partners are tech geniuses but wouldn't know an email campaign if they tripped over it, then no one is going to be successful.

It's so important that channel professionals truly "get" the channel but with so many brilliant marketing, sales, and management people out there on the market I think the channel DNA is something that could and should be taught!

What do you think?  Any success stories of turning a marketing/sales/management person from corporate into a channel guru?