Direct Selling vs Channel Selling

When we talk about go to market generally with startups we’re talking about direct selling and in most cases it’s the founder(s) selling direct to customers.

There are so many different go to market opportunities and one of those under-utilized strategies is using channel partnerships.

You need to decide what works for you and your startup, see below for what it means at a high level to direct vs channel sell:

Considering your go to market strategy:

• Who are your customers?
• How is your channel partner helping your sales process?
• How do we create a direct line of feedback from the customer using the channel selling method?
• Using direct sales do we have a big enough sales team to service our target market?

What can you do with a channel seller?

• Obtain leads (obvious)
• Joint case studies/PR
• Take some time back for your sales team
• Lead tracking through your channel
• Seller incentives

I’ve included a few examples above of things you should consider and what you can do with a channel seller - but this only just touches the surface of what is possible so it’s best to dive deeper into the subject once you know if it’s a good option for your startup.

Little shameless Microsoft for Startups plug: we do channel selling with startups really well — you can read more about it here and contact us via startups@microsoft.com to get into one of our startup programs.