Has Partnering Now Become Redefined?

If I were able to recall every word that has been said to me, or uttered by me, since I entered the channel in 1981 to now, I have no doubt that the one word I’ve heard and said the most often is “partner.”

It has always been the fabric of our channel community. And well, it should be. None of us can possibly be good at all the things our customers need from us, so we need to find others who can do the things we ourselves cannot. It’s like building a house. You wouldn’t expect one person or firm to do all the carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, sheetrocking, foundation building and other crafts required to build a house. You engage a general contractor who recruits partners with each of those skills.

For a long time, I referred to myself as an ITGC, an IT general contractor, for just that reason. That reality hasn’t changed, and neither has the nature of “P2P”, partner-to-partner partnering. Channel partners who grow and thrive know this, and are very, very good at it.

What I’m talking about here today is not P2P. I guess you could say it’s “V2P” or vendor-to-partner partnering. That has changed tremendously because the dynamics of the relationship have changed.

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve heard repeatedly what Microsoft wants me to do, or what Microsoft expects from partners. I just skimmed another article about that yesterday. There’s a whole cottage industry that has grown up in our channel devoted to teaching you how best to give Microsoft what it wants.

That’s where the dynamic has changed.

There may still be some partners who believe they generate a substantial portion of their profits from the sale of Microsoft products, but that community has been eviscerated by the realities of the market. Nobody survives on basis points. I truly don’t believe that Microsoft, or any other vendor, has anything resembling the leverage they used to have with us.

We just don’t depend on sales of their products anymore. And they cannot depend upon us to sell them.

So, where does that leave us?

This is not new. For a few decades now we’ve been witnessing the emergence of the enabling vendor-partner. This is the vendor who has recognized that their channel partners can no longer generate sufficient profits from the sale of their products, so they need to create another value proposition.

That value proposition is founded in enablement. They develop products and platforms partners use to build and augment their customers’ networks. They provide the building blocks of every MSP’s stack and help those MSPs get the most out of those products for themselves and their customers.

Along the way, they work slavishly to help those partners promote their own practices, leveraging how they use the products to share in the recognition.

Long ago, I referred to them as the “Toolsmiths” of the channel. Today, they are really the only viable partners an MSP will benefit from partnering with. Knowledge, expertise and functionality are the currency of this new relationship, not margin performance.

To my mind, this is the best of all possible outcomes. Instead of partners serving merely as a “sales arm” of the vendor’s organization, we are now fully engaged partners in producing and promoting the value that our work with their products delivers for customers.

Some of these vendors are constantly innovating new ways in which we can benefit our customers by deploying their products. These vendor-partners improve us, expand our value to our customers, and thereby help grow our business. These are the vendors to seek.

So now the word “margin” is a bright, red, glowing flare, warning us to walk away and avoid involvement with any vendor who utters it. If they’re talking to you about their product’s margin, they are fantasizing. There’s no such thing. We, as a channel, have seen to that long ago through our insistence on discounting. That die is cast. That game is over.

When a vendor offers to show you how much more you can do for your customer, that’s when you stand up and pay attention.

Welcome to the driver’s seat.

Posted by Howard M. Cohen on October 06, 2026