Certified Channel Manager

A channel manager is the person inside a vendor who is responsible for a set of partners: finding them, getting them productive, planning with them and managing their performance. The job exists because selling through other companies is a different discipline from selling direct, and most of the people doing it arrived from somewhere else.

Channel manager certification is how that experience gets turned into something an employer can check. The Channel Institute's Certificate in Channel Management is channel manager training and certification in one: a published syllabus, an exam, and a designation awarded on passing it.

What a channel manager actually does

Recruits partners

Works out which partners are worth having, approaches them, and assesses them against a profile rather than against how keen they sound.

Onboards and enables them

Closes the gap between a partner signing and a partner selling, which is where most partner programs lose their return.

Plans jointly with them

Agrees targets and investment on both sides, with a review cadence, so expectations are stated rather than assumed.

Manages performance and incentives

Knows which partners are growing, which are declining and which have never transacted, and allocates attention accordingly.

Handles conflict

Resolves disputes over accounts and registrations against stated rules. See managing channel conflict.

Represents the partner internally

Which is the part that never appears in a job description and takes up a surprising amount of the week.

Who the certification is built for

Channel managers at vendor companies. People new to channel management, or applying for channel management jobs for the first time, who need to show knowledge they have not yet had the chance to accumulate. And channel teams that need standardised terminology, frameworks and templates so that people can work together without first negotiating what the words mean.

That last case is the one organisations underrate. When every member of a team learned the job somewhere different, a partner plan written by one person cannot be reviewed properly by another, because they do not share a definition of what good looks like.

How to become a certified channel manager

Take the Certificate in Channel Management: ten modules against a published syllabus, online and self-paced, about 20 hours of study, ending in an online exam with a 70% pass mark. Pass it and you hold the Certified Channel Management Professional designation, which an employer can verify. US$1,900, VAT added for buyers in the EU, a full refund within 30 days of enrolment if you have not gone beyond module 5, and a free trial module before you buy.

The syllabus is reviewed and approved by a vendor-independent Industry Advisory Council of 27 senior channel leaders at companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and SAP. The designation itself is covered in more detail separately.

Where the role goes next

Channel management is the foundation, and two directions open from it. Sideways, into channel sales or channel marketing, which are the adjacent disciplines most channel managers end up working alongside. Upwards, into partner strategy, where the question stops being how to run a channel and becomes how the channel itself is changing. That is what the advanced Certificate in Channel Partner Ecosystems covers.

On jobs and pay, research on key skills for channel managers covers what employers actually ask for. Graduates rate the Institute 4.9 out of 5 across 36 Google reviews.