Conor Macfarlane

Inspiration and lessons from a goofy old dog

October 4, 2017 By Conor Macfarlane 2 Comments

Sometimes inspiration comes from unexpected places, and sometimes you find it in moments of profound sadness. Today was one of those days…

With great sadness, my wife and I put our dog Duke down today. Both of us are huge animal lovers and dogs have always held a special place in our hearts and played important roles in our lives. I’ve made sure that 3Eye is a pet friendly office as I know the joy that animals can bring. Sometimes work can be tough, stressful, tiring, and monotonous. Looking over to see a loyal companion can bring a spark to your day, a smile to your face, perspective to your outlook.

As I reflected on Duke’s time with us, I kept remarking how he put his heart and soul into everything he did…in such a BIG way. Over the years, I had many dogs, all unique, but none who lived with as much zest and passion as Duke. He had a big personality and an even bigger heart. As I have been grieving our loss, I’ve tried to draw inspiration from it, and here’s the lesson I’ve learned: whatever you do, put some love into it.

Put some love into your work, put some love into your relationships, both today and every day. You will be rewarded richly when you do.

6 Factors of Channel Success

July 12, 2017 By Conor Macfarlane 3 Comments

The most frequently asked question I hear from vendors is:

What do I need to do to be successful in the channel?

First, some background on what has shaped my perspective. I spent eight years at CDW, with exposure to channel programs from vendors of all sizes. I then started 3Eye, where our focus is on vendors who fall into one of these two categories:

1. “Emerging” – what I define as new or relatively new to selling through indirect channels
2. “Mid-market” – what I define as less than ~$50M in annual channel revenue.

Disclaimer: I’m not going to go into detail on the pros and cons of selling through the channel in this post, rather I’m just going to focus on the characteristics demonstrated by successful emerging and mid-market vendors. For now, if you’re interested in a brief read on the pros and cons of the channel, check out this write-up and stay tuned to this blog a future posting on the topic.

Whether you are selling hardware, software, or cloud services, you need a critical mass of customers who have already bought your product. You’ll need some customers to go on record stating that your product helped them achieve a better business outcome. Before you engage with the channel, you’ll also need a well-defined sales process that is clear and straightforward….and you must be able to translate it into something your channel can easily digest and repeat.

According to CompTIA, “Estimates suggest that 65-75% of IT products and services sold to businesses in the United States are delivered through or influenced by the indirect channel…Channel-influenced sales then equate to $350-400 billion of IT product and service sales in the United States.”

If you focus on the customer experience, many customers prefer to purchase through a channel partner. There is often less friction for your customers to buy through a channel partner, perhaps due to contracts, supplier consolidation, the difficulty of new vendor setup, pricing, or relationships. The channel helps you meet your customers where they are.

With that said, channel partners are not market makers. They are best viewed as demand amplifiers. You have to be able to generate demand that your channel partners can fulfill. Channel partners want to work with established technologies that have defined markets. Many vendors think they don’t need to market through partners, but they are mistaken. You’re going to have to invest in through-partner marketing and demand gen activities. Which leads nicely to my next point…

Like any go-to-market, selling through the channel takes time and money. Signing up resellers is the easy part (and signing up resellers is no small feat). Activating those resellers takes time, money, and a focused strategy. In addition to margin for your channel, you’ll need to invest in programs, to-partner and through-partner marketing, content development, and staffing. If you want to check out our approach, here’s a page that shows how we funnel programs to our partner community.

This should be obvious. However, there are a lot of ambitious sales and business development execs who try to build their own partner networks without executive buy-in. Your executive leadership needs to be aligned with your channel strategy, plain and simple.

Companies that are serious about succeeding in the channel take the time to get their sales compensation plan aligned to a pro-channel model. This is often referred to as “comp neutral” when your sales rep is paid the same commission no matter which channel the deal is sold through. Many channel leaders even create a “channel uplift” where their sales force is paid a higher commission for partner sales.

Some companies transition to a 100% channel model, where all sales flow through their partner network. The bottom line: if you compensate your sales reps more for deals they take direct, it will add a lot of friction to your channel engagement, and often create conflict between your channel and your direct sellers. Your channel partners have a long memory – the perception that you compete with them is a very tough one to overcome. Take the time to plan your sales compensation model now, with the channel in mind.

Just like the 50/50 raffle at the Friday night ballgame, you must be present to win. You have to engage with your partner network. Capturing mindshare is an ongoing battle. Like Woody Allen said, 80% of success is showing up. Of course, aligning with your channel partners’ strategies, bringing the right enablement tools and knowing how to engage across the organization all helps too. But it starts with being around.

In Summary
These strategies have been used by channel leaders both large and small to grow their business. Channel success, while not easy, is not a mystery – embracing these concepts will increase your probability of success.

I hope you found some helpful advice and/or inspiration! I’ll be back with another post soon.

References
CompTIA. (2016, October). 5th Annual State of the Channel. Retrieved from CompTIA: https://www.comptia.org/resources/5th-annual-state-of-the-channel

What’s in a name?

April 3, 2017 By Conor Macfarlane

As 3Eye continues to mature, we’re making some enhancements to our branding – slight updates to our logo and color scheme, a new website, and new digital content…for starters. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to look back and share the story behind the name of our company.

I get asked a lot, “How did 3Eye get its name?” My team has become well-versed at telling the story, and as we grow, I don’t always get the opportunity to tell everyone individually. When I started the company, I knew a couple of things:

1. Our broad strategy was around the distribution of mobile technology. We set out to focus on verticals where there is high concentration of critical business functions being performed in the field.

2. In this industry, change is inevitable. I didn’t want to pick a name that pegged us to one particular type of technology or industry, only to regret it later.

I knew I wanted something that sounded generically “techy”. I started brainstorming, both alone and with friends. With every new idea, I was constantly checking to see if the domain was registered. Much to my dismay, just about everything I could think of was already spoken for. Then I read somewhere that there were no available domain names left using a two-word combination from the English language. Wait…every two-word combination in the English language has already been registered as a domain?!?!

Now, I have no idea if this is true; my guess is that it probably isn’t, but at the time it prompted me to approach this challenge from a new angle. I started thinking of numbers. My first thought was about the number 3. It’s a lucky number in Chinese. And a triangle, which has three sides, is the strongest geometric shape. I started to think we might be able to do something with a logo around these concepts.

One thing that remained constant from conception to current-day is my view on a distributor’s role in the channel. Distribution should act as a channel steward and enabler of technology and sales. Simply put, we watch over our partners to help them achieve success. We keep an “eye” on our partner. Aha! 3Eye…that sounded catchy. I checked the domain 3eye.com…it was parked. Bummer. 3eyetech.com was available. That was the shortest domain yet, so I jumped on it and 3Eye was officially born. Shortly after, I would be offered the 3eye.com domain in a sale, but passed on it. (Oh, the joys of bootstrapping a startup!)

Next up was our logo….

Now that I settled on a name, I moved into designing our logo. My super talented friend helped me out and we came up with the concept of the interlocking 3 and E.

The joining of the two characters represents partnership. The space between represents the channel and the flow of products and services as they travel from vendor to user.

When I look back, I’m reminded of how proud I am of our logo. I feel the concept still resonates very strongly today. I’m also reminded of how lucky I am to have creative friends who were willing to help (Jill, I hope you are reading this!). And of course, we wouldn’t be where we are today without our customers and partners.

So there you have it. A real world example of how a name and logo came to be.

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Conor Macfarlane