As the old saying goes, nothing lasts forever, even in the channel. A new survey by networking vendor Enterasys finds one in four solution providers have fired a vendor in the last 12 months over the poor quality and availability of leads, intra-channel competition, and poor business goal alignment.
The number shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, as churn is a constant in the channel. In reality, though, the number – and problem – is probably much worse as vendor firing isn’t the worse consequence of these issues.
The Enterasys study touches on the core points of contention between vendors and solution providers – business development and predictable outcomes. Forty-three percent of solution providers cite the lack of sales leads provided by vendors as the reason for leaving a channel program. One-third cited channel conflict or over-distributed channels that lead to too much competition for too few sales. And 31 percent cited poor support.
The 
