Picking the right distributor is half the work

Picking the right distributor is half the work. A lot of companies treat signing the contract as the finish line. It's the start.

What happens in the first 90 days after signing predicts whether the partner produces in year one or quietly drifts.

Here's the structure that works.

Onboarding. Week one is alignment. Joint commercial plan, named contacts on both sides, escalation paths, training schedule. Week two is enablement. Product, positioning, who they're up against, deal support process. Week three is field. First joint calls, first deal registered, first proof of motion. Skip any of these and you're trying to fix the relationship at month nine.

QBR cadence. Quarterly business reviews are the operating heartbeat of a real channel program. Not a status update. A working session. What's in the pipeline? What's at risk? What support do they need that they're not asking for? What's the joint plan for next quarter? If your QBRs are slide decks read out loud, you're not running QBRs.

Scorecards. Each partner has measurable KPIs that connect to their compensation. Pipeline coverage. Deal velocity. Attach rates. Renewal rates. Reviewed quarterly. Transparent. No surprises in the annual review.

Compensation alignment. The partner makes more when they do the work you actually want done. If you want service contracts attached, pay for it. If you want longer terms, pay for it. If you want renewals, pay for it. The behavior follows the math.

Removing underperformers. The hardest part. A distributor who consistently misses scorecard targets after coaching, support, and two quarters of patience is not a partner. They're a drag. Replace them. The market doesn't punish you for cutting weak partners. It punishes you for keeping them.

Signing the partner is a procurement event. Managing them is a discipline. Most B2B companies run the first, skip the second, and blame the channel for the result.