2. Look At Both Channels To See What Works

After an acquisition, vendors need to talk to partners and be realistic about what’s working with their own channel programs — and what isn’t.

For instance, Cate said that partners that Zebra talked to in both channels said they liked the deal registration program of Motorola Solutions’ enterprise group channel.

“We introduced the deal registration to PartnerConnect because partners said it was a successful program on the Motorola side,” said Cate. “Partners liked it for two reasons: the price exceptions and protections for invested partners. We implemented the deal registration across our common suite of 20 categories, including wireless, printing, RFID, services and mobile computing.”