Ask any reseller which vendor they lead with and they'll name one without thinking. That vendor gets mentioned first, registered first, and certified first.
Your channel partners already have a favourite vendor. The question is whether it's you.
A preferred vendor is the supplier a channel partner leads with when a customer needs a solution in that category. It gets registered deals early, more of the partner's certified staff, and a bigger share of the partner's services work.
Signing a partner doesn't mean it will sell for you. In the GTIA State of the Channel 2025 survey of 404 North American channel firms, 54% said they participate in one to nine vendor programs. In earlier years, many firms joined 10 or more. This guide covers what a channel partner is, what decides partners' priorities, and ten do's and don'ts to reach the top of their list.
It isn't a guide to designing a partner program; for that, see How to Build a Channel Partner Program Your Partners Will Love. Nor is it about portal and workflow friction, which our partner experience guide covers. It's about how you behave toward partners you've already signed: the daily decisions that make a partner choose you over the other vendors in its portfolio.
What Is a Channel Partner?
A channel partner is an independent company that sells, delivers, or recommends another company's product to its own customers, and gets paid through margin, fees, or commissions. Resellers, distributors, managed service providers (MSPs), systems integrators, referral partners, and affiliates are all channel partners. Unlike your own sales team, a channel partner has its own customers, priorities, and P&L, so you can't assign it a quota. You have to earn its attention.
In 2021, Microsoft said partners influence more than 95% of its commercial revenue. Omdia estimates well over 90% of tech purchases are partner-assisted in some way, and its 2026 forecast shows partners deliver most of the IT market in every region:
Each type of channel partner earns differently, so each prioritises vendors for different reasons:
For a full breakdown of partner models with examples, see What Are Channel Partnerships? 20 Types of Channel Partners.
What Makes Channel Partners Prioritise One Vendor Over Another?
Partners prioritise the vendors that make them the most money with the least risk and effort. The first is about why they leave. GTIA asked 404 North American channel firms, surveyed in December 2024, about their reasons for changing vendor relationships:
The second is about what keeps them. A 2021 Canalys survey of 130 partners found partners rate vendor programs at eight out of ten for importance to the relationship, and it ranks program benefits in three tiers:
Many vendors build in the opposite order: a branded portal and collateral first, deal protection and lead flow later. As one US partner told Canalys:
"Without deal registration or support we will not consider selling the product."
Who Inside a Partner Decides Your Priority
"The partner" isn't one decision-maker. Each role weighs vendors differently, and losing any one of them can push you down the list:
How to Become a Preferred Vendor: 10 Do's and Don'ts
To become a preferred vendor, protect partners' deals, make your product profitable for them beyond margin, send pipeline back, make every deal easy, and pay predictably. Each step answers a question partners ask themselves, consciously or not, when they decide where to spend their next sales hour. For each one, there's a short explanation and a table of what to do and what to avoid.
1. Measure Your Share of the Partner's Business
Most vendors track what a partner sells for them. Few know what share of the partner's business they represent, which is the number that tells you whether you're a priority or a line on a price list.
2. Make Your Product a Services Business for Them
Partners prioritise the vendor they can build a business on, and for most of them that business is services. An Omdia study for AWS found partners can earn up to US$7.13 for every US$1 of AWS sold, and only US$0.34 (4.8%) of that comes from resale margins, rebates, and procurement. AWS's partner profitability framework cites Canalys research putting managed-services gross margins at 30–40%.
3. Protect Their Deals From Your Own Team
Nothing drops a vendor down a partner's list faster than losing a deal to that vendor's direct sales team. As one US partner told Canalys: "Without deal registration or support we will not consider selling the product."
4. Send Pipeline Back
Partners keep score. If they bring you deals and you never send any back, you're one more vendor they have to sell. With 66% of partners in the Canalys survey ranking lead generation in their top five benefits, sending leads back is one of the strongest signals you can give. See how to get more lead referrals from partners and 12 lead generation channels.
5. Arm the Rep Who Chooses What to Pitch
A partner's leadership signs the agreement, but individual reps decide which vendor to mention on a customer call. Partners in the Canalys survey put individual sales rewards in the lowest tier, so incentives alone won't win reps over. What does win them is being the easiest product to explain and the safest to recommend.
6. Remove the Effort Tax on Every Deal
In GTIA's survey, 26% of channel firms cited preferring fewer vendors as a reason for changing vendor relationships. When partners consolidate, the vendor that takes the most effort per deal gets cut first. Measure that effort per transaction: time to quote, approvals per discount, and days to payout.
7. Back Their Engineers in Front of the Customer
A partner's reputation rides on every deployment. If your product makes their technical team look bad in front of a customer, no margin will win them back. Technical readiness starts in onboarding; our B2B partner onboarding checklist covers it.
8. Help Them Enter New Markets
In GTIA's survey, 30% of channel firms cited entering new markets as a reason for changing vendor relationships. A vendor that helps a partner grow into a new vertical, region, or buyer persona becomes hard to replace.
9. Give Earned Advantages, Not Favours
Preferred partners want something their competitors don't have, but it has to be earned in the open. Perks handed out quietly breed resentment.
10. Make Every Payout Predictable and Provable
Back-end rebates were the top-ranked benefit in the Canalys survey, but a rebate only motivates a partner who trusts the calculation.
How Do You Know If You're a Preferred Vendor?
You're a preferred vendor when partners register deals early, lead with your product, and build services around it. Use these signals to judge where you sit:
Where to Start: A 12-Month Plan
You don't need all ten steps at once. Sequence them by how quickly partners feel the change:
Where Does a PRM Fit?
Every step above depends on shared, trusted data. Past a handful of partners, spreadsheets and CRM workarounds can't keep it consistent, which is where partner relationship management (PRM) software comes in, alongside your CRM (PRM vs CRM). Compare the 7 best channel partner management platforms. For the strategic side, see our channel partner management strategy framework.
Journeybee is an AI-native PRM with deal registration, onboarding, an integrated LMS, CPQ, and incentives in one platform, connected to Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRM integrations. Its headless design lets partners work in a branded partner portal or directly in Slack, Teams, and email. See how Journeybee works or book a demo.
