The reseller sells at 28% off list. The direct team keeps losing to it.

When your own channel becomes your toughest competitor, the problem is rarely the discount: it's what the discount was supposed to buy.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The reseller sells at 28% off list. The direct team keeps losing to it.

A familiar scene: a partner is appointed to open a market the direct team can’t reach. Eighteen months later, the partner’s biggest deals are in the direct team’s own postcode, at 28% off list, and the sales director is asking why the company is competing with itself. The instinct is to treat it as a pricing problem: tighten the discount, police the list. That usually makes it worse, because the discount was never the cause. The cause is that nobody defined what the channel margin was payment for. Channel margin…

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