Signed partners are not a channel.
Fractional Channel Chief
The work is building a program partners can make money on, then getting it in front of the people who actually place business. Whether the program is new or has been signed for a year and is not producing.
Built for vendors with a direct sales motion already working and a product a partner can sell without a six month ramp.
A seat, not a longer contract
Standing calls, a fixed block of hours, direct contact with your partners and vendors, and decisions made rather than recommended. Engagements have a defined end, because the point is to leave behind a program someone else can run.
What the work covers
- Margin and rebate structure
- Partner tiering
- Deal registration and channel conflict rules
- Partner onboarding
- Distributor and TSD relationships that carry volume
It runs as an operating role inside your company, with your company name on the outward-facing conversations.
Where the recommendations come from
Dave works the buying side of the TSD channel every week, placing real client business with vendors. That is the part most fractional channel executives cannot offer. The recommendations come from watching which vendors get shortlisted for live deals, and which ones quietly stop getting quoted.
On conflicts of interest
Elk Run advises organizations buying technology and is compensated by providers through the TSD model on that side of the business. Vendors engaged for channel work are named and excluded from advisory shortlists for the duration of the engagement and for 12 months after it ends. That policy exists so both halves of the practice stay credible.
Start where it applies
You are launching a partner program and have never run one
You have partners signed and none of them are producing
Direct sales and partners keep landing on the same deals
Your competitors are in the TSD channel and you are not
Program Design and Economics
A partner program is a compensation system before it is anything else. If the math does not clear a partner's cost of selling, no amount of enablement fixes it. This is where the engagement starts: margin, tiers, and rebate mechanics you can still afford at volume.
Build the economics
- Base margin, tier uplift, and rebate thresholds a partner can hit
- Whether tiering rewards volume, certification, or new logos, and not all three
- Partner cost versus direct list price, and who approves discounts
- Commission liability modeled against churn, and when payouts actually land
Most common finding
A margin structure built to be competitive on paper, with a payout timeline long enough that most partners stop tracking it before the first check arrives.
The number that decides adoption is not margin percent, it is time to first commission payment. Partners rank vendors privately by how fast and how accurately they get paid, and that ranking governs where the next deal goes.
Partner Recruitment and Onboarding
Signed is not recruited. Most vendors count agreements and end up with a roster of partners who took the meeting and never sold anything. Recruitment has to run against a profile, and onboarding has to end at a first deal rather than a portal login.
Recruit for fit
- Partner profile written from customer base, not from logo size
- Days from signed agreement to first registered deal, per partner
- Who owns the first 90 days of a new partner
- Onboarding that ends in a sourced opportunity, not a certification badge
Most common finding
A partner roster with hundreds of signed agreements and a handful of producers, with no defined process for telling the difference before year one of the relationship ends.
Twenty engaged partners outproduce two hundred signed ones, and the two hundred cost more to carry. Prune the roster on a schedule, because an inactive partner still absorbs support hours, portal seats, and the attention of the one person who could be working a producer.
Enablement and Deal Registration
Channel conflict is not a personality problem. It is what happens when nobody wrote down who owns which account and what a registration actually protects. Published rules, enforced the first time they are tested, settle it.
Write the rules of engagement
- Registration approval window, protection period, and the conditions that void it
- Named account list, and where partner territory starts and stops
- Quota neutrality so direct reps do not fight partner deals
- MDF tied to committed activity with proof of performance required
Most common finding
A deal registration policy that exists in a partner portal and has never been tested by a conflict between a direct rep and a partner on the same opportunity.
The rules matter less than the first exception. The first time a large direct deal overrides a valid registration, every partner hears about it inside a week, and your registration volume shows you exactly when it happened.
Distributor and TSD Relationships
Getting a TSD agreement signed is the easy part. Being quoted is the hard part, and it turns on what happens after the contract: back office responsiveness, commission accuracy, and whether the agent's client survived the install.
Earn the line card
- TSD and agent agreements: rate, term, evergreen commission language
- Sub-agent structures and how splits get paid downstream
- Back office capacity for quoting, ordering, and commission reconciliation
- Which TSD partner managers can describe your product without help
Most common finding
A TSD agreement signed six months ago with two named contacts, neither of whom has responded to a quote request.
The vendors that get put in front of clients are rarely the ones with the best product page. They are the ones whose quote came back in a day, whose commission posted correctly last quarter, and whose engineer stayed on the call when the install went wrong.
How the engagement runs
Diagnose
The first six weeks: the agreements, the numbers, the people, and what has already been tried. It ends in a written assessment, not a status call.
Design
The economics, the rules, and the operating calendar get written down and agreed before anything is announced.
Operate
We run the function under your name, on a standing cadence, with direct contact with partners and vendors.
Transition
The function is documented well enough that a hire can run it, and we help write that role and sit in on the hiring.
What you walk away with
A program economic model you keep: margin, tiers, rebates, and payout timing, with volume scenarios
A written deal registration and rules of engagement policy, ready to publish to partners
A ranked target list of partners, agents, and TSDs, with named contacts and approach order
A 90 day onboarding sequence from signed agreement to first registered deal, with owners and dates
Questions we get
The first conversation is a scoping call, not a pitch.
We ask what your program looks like today, what partners are actually producing, and what has already been tried. Then we tell you whether there is work here worth doing. If Elk Run is not the right fit for the decision in front of you, we will say so.