A direct rep and a distributor once came to me in the same week about the same account

A direct rep and a distributor once came to me in the same week about the same account.

Both thought they owned it. Neither had asked the other. The customer had been contacted four times by two different people representing the same company.

The customer called me directly to ask what was going on.

That's not a channel conflict. That's a rules problem. There were no rules about who owned what.

I wrote the deal registration policy the following week. It was one page. It ended that specific problem immediately.

Most channel conflict is just an absence of clarity written down before anyone needed it.