CPM provides the framework. The PAD Method® makes it operational.
Channel Performance Management is the discipline that professionalises the management of indirect business. The PAD Method® models its best practices to make them operational. ChannelPerf digitalises them and industrialises their implementation and steering.
Stop being opportunistic.
Indirect business is a powerful growth lever. Yet many networks remain under-exploited for lack of method, prioritisation and steering: inactive partners, scattered resources, Business Plans that are barely steered, ROI that is hard to measure.
The consequences can be considerable:
Our conviction: a partner network is a strategic asset. Like any asset, it must be selected, developed, valued and steered with method.
Why not steer your partners with the same rigour as your customers and your other strategic assets?
CPM: a framework for steering partner performance.
Managing a partner network is not just about recruiting, training and running partners. You also need to know where to invest, which partners to develop, how to measure their contribution and how to steer their performance over time.
That is exactly the role of Channel Performance Management (CPM): professionalising partner management by providing a common framework to structure, develop, measure and steer indirect business.
CPM is to partners what CRM is to customers and ERP to resources: it provides a framework, a shared vocabulary and common rules to structure, develop, measure and steer indirect business.
3 objectives
- 01
Perform
Grow partners’ revenue, margin, engagement and contribution.
- 02
Optimise
Focus resources and investment on the partners and actions with the highest potential.
- 03
Steer
Give teams and the executive team the visibility they need to measure, decide, prioritise and anticipate.
CPM: a new discipline that turns the partner network into a genuine strategic growth asset.
5 domains to structure indirect business
To move from intention to a real management approach, CPM structures indirect business around 5 complementary domains:
- Strategy
Defining the strategy
Define the ambition, the Go-To-Market and the expected contribution of indirect sales.
- Organisation
Aligning the organisation
Align skills, resources, processes, governance and tools.
- Network
Building the network
Identify, select, recruit and onboard the right partners.
- Development
Developing partners
Engage partners, develop their potential and focus investment on the most promising.
- Performance
Measuring performance
Measure their potential, activity, contribution, engagement and profitability.
9 principles to guide decisions
Beyond processes and tools, CPM rests on a few simple convictions that should guide the company’s decisions:
- 01
Executive sponsorship
The executive team sets the ambition and the impetus.
- 02
Strategic asset
The partner network is developed and steered as a company asset.
- 03
Strategy before recruitment
The Go-To-Market determines which partners the company really needs.
- 04
Prioritisation
Not all partners have the same potential or the same strategic value.
- 05
Investment
A partner consumes time and resources whose return must be measured.
- 06
Mutual profitability
A lasting partnership must create value for both sides.
- 07
Shared performance
Targets, action plans and commitments are built together.
- 08
Measurement
Potential, activity, engagement, performance and profitability must be measured.
- 09
Cross-functional alignment
Executive team, Channel, Sales, Marketing and technical teams must be aligned.
From framework to action
CPM says what needs to be structured, measured and steered. But a framework is not enough: you still need to know how to put it into practice. That is exactly what the PAD Method® brings.
CPM provides the framework. The PAD Method® provides the method to implement it.
The PAD Method®: from framework to action.
The PAD Method® answers the question of how to implement. It models CPM best practices and turns them into directly operational methods, tools and practices. It has been proven on more than 200 partner networks.
It covers the whole value chain, end to end, from defining the strategy to steering performance. It underpins our ChannelPerf and Vision & Strategy Workshop offers, and our training courses.
4 prerequisites for a successful indirect strategy
Indirect sales is a strategic choice. Leadership must carry the ambition, set priorities and commit resources.
A mature, differentiated, repeatable and profitable offer that partners genuinely have an interest in selling.
Make the relationship as simple as possible: contracts, pricing, pre-sales, ordering, support, training and tools. Simplicity is a competitive advantage.
Awareness, reputation, customer references and differentiation must give partners the confidence and desire to associate their image with yours.
These four prerequisites are the foundations of the PAD Method®: giving partners good reasons to invest, sell and succeed with you.
10 golden rules to guide action
With the PAD Method®, CPM principles become simple, directly applicable rules:
- 01
Every recruitment fits the Go-To-Market.
- 02
Every strategic partner has an assessed potential.
- 03
Every partner benefits from a differentiated Value Proposition.
- 04
Every new partner follows a structured onboarding.
- 05
Every strategic partner has a steered Business Plan.
- 06
Every investment meets objectives and a measurable ROI.
- 07
Every Channel Manager steers a segmented, prioritised portfolio.
- 08
Every strategic partnership is subject to performance reviews.
- 09
Engagement, satisfaction and convergence are measured regularly.
- 10
The executive team has a cockpit for steering indirect business.
The seven symptoms of an unmanaged network.
They come up in almost every network we audit. They are never isolated: each one feeds the next. For each, the PAD Method® offers levers, and the platform puts them to work.
01 The blind allocation trap 80% of your partners account for just 20% of revenue… yet consume 80% of your resources. Time and budget allocated on gut feel. See the diagnosis
Typical case You have no overall view of how your network is structured.
Without mapping, your resources keep feeding the 80% that do not deliver. Every quarter that is margin invested in the wrong place, and revenue that better-organised competitors capture instead.
- Where should we recruit, and how many? Who should we invest in?
- Where should resources go? What ROI can we expect from each?
- How do we steer our partners with any precision?
- Map the network
- Tailor the programmes
- Measure ROI by category
- Decide on development plans
by reallocating effort towards the right partners in the right quadrants
02 The hidden cost of a bad signature Only ~40% of your recruitments succeed. Wrong casting from the start, then onboarding endured rather than run. See the diagnosis
Typical case Opportunistic approach, with no formalised criteria.
Six recruitments out of ten fail, and each failure costs over €20k. Recruiting on instinct means repeating that loss at every signature — and committing months of resources for nothing.
- How do we recruit partners who will genuinely commit?
- How do we make sure they match the right criteria?
- Recruitment plan
- Recruitment criteria
- Application file
- Scoring
and tens of thousands of euros saved
03 The first-deal chasm One in two new partners drops off before their first sale. Frustration on both sides, internal resources consumed with no return. See the diagnosis
Typical case Opportunistic approach, onboarding without structure.
A partner who has not closed their first deal within the first hundred days probably never will. The recruitment investment is lost, and the relationship fades without anyone deciding it.
- How long passes between signature and first deal?
- Who supports the partner, on what, and for how long?
- Structured onboarding
- Win the first deal as fast as possible
- A journey per partner category
partners operational sooner
04 The opportunistic revenue illusion Partners barely committed, relationships built on individuals. Indirect revenue becomes hard to forecast. See the diagnosis
Typical case No shared quantified objectives, no formalised resources.
Without shared objectives, each partner moves at their own pace — or not at all. You discover the missing revenue at year end, too late to correct. A year without a plan is a year of growth you do not get back.
- How do we improve our partners’ performance?
- How do we get them committed for the long run?
- How do we retain our strategic partners?
- Partner business plan
- Shared vision and joint roadmap
- Shared objectives and commitments, signed by both leaderships
- Annual plan, quarterly review, monthly pipeline
for partners with a business plan that is actually steered
05 The silence of disengagement Partners feel less committed. Relationships tighten — and sometimes you are not even told. See the diagnosis
Typical case Perceptions of strategy and resources are completely out of step.
An untreated gap in perception worsens in silence: the partner disengages month after month. Re-engaging them later will cost far more — in time, in sales effort and in trust — than aligning them now.
- How do we align both sides’ strategies, organisations and resources?
- How do we quickly increase the partner’s involvement and performance?
- Alignment analysis
- Identify strategic gaps in perception
- Work together towards better alignment
through rapid realignment — better alignment, better trust
06 The executive blind spot Nobody can say, in two minutes, whether indirect is ahead or behind. Decisions are made on instinct. See the diagnosis
Typical case Intuition-led decisions and fragmented data: no credibility.
Without solid consolidation, indirect stays invisible to the executive committee — and what is not measured eventually stops being funded. Every budget cycle without data or ROI means less budget.
- What does a partner actually cost?
- Do you know, and do you communicate, the ROI of indirect?
- Do you share recruitment and onboarding transparently?
- Executive steering cockpit
- A shared dashboard
- The 10 key executive KPIs
- Analyse, decide, align
through better allocation and better predictability
07 Strategic stagnation You have never stepped back to review the year. Justifying your budgets and decisions to the executive committee becomes difficult. See the diagnosis
Typical case No objective measurement against the market’s best practices.
Without a review, every year replays the same trade-offs, learning neither from past mistakes nor from successes worth repeating. Progress goes unrecognised and priorities stay dictated by urgency rather than strategy.
- Is your Go-To-Market still up to date?
- Are your offerings well positioned in a market that keeps moving?
- Is your model still attractive to your partners?
- 360° Review
- A freeze-frame with the team
- Benchmark yourself
- Take objectively grounded priority actions
on the objective attainment rate
Orders of magnitude observed on our engagements. Not contractual.
A method designed to deliver concrete results
The PAD Method® takes the 5 CPM domains and turns them into operational lines of implementation.
- Strategy Where do we want to go? A Vision, a Go-To-Market and 3-year targets.
- Organisation How do we professionalise the organisation? Clearly defined roles, skills, governance and processes.
- Network With which partners? A target network, priority profiles and a Value Proposition.
- Development How do we make them productive and develop them? A recruitment process, onboarding, sales tools, a partner map, Business Plans and shared action plans.
- Performance How do we measure the value created? KPIs, profitability measurement and an executive cockpit.
The PAD Method® in action: the Vision & Strategy Workshop and ChannelPerf
CPM principles and the 38 levers of the PAD Method® are at the heart of our Vision & Strategy Workshops and of the ChannelPerf suite.
More than 200 companies supported by PAD.
PAD adapts to your maturity.
You can start with PAD at any stage. The right entry point is not the first on the list: it is the one that answers your most pressing need.
- I am starting my indirect business Structuring · Go-To-Market · Value proposition
- I already have a network Mapping · 360° Review · Prioritisation · Development plan
- I want to recruit Recruitment plan · Selection · Onboarding
- I want to develop my strategic partners Business Plans · Commitments · Convergence analysis
- I want to accelerate my overall performance 360° Review · Mapping · Executive KPIs · Consolidation · ROI
Many companies believe they are established when in fact they grew opportunistically. We do not ask you to self-assess: the 360° Review measures it, using your own data.
Where should you start, in your case?
In 60 to 90 minutes, let us identify together your maturity level, your untapped potential and the best entry point.