I recently travelled to Boston for work and had some fascinating conversations about the basic principles of go-to-market strategies: mapping the channel, building and editing the channel continuously, and aligning and influencing the channel value chain. 

While people can talk about best practices until they’re blue in the face, they’re often done in an empty vacuum without real-world examples. As you’ll see below, I’ve taken it a step further to show you how we mapped the new AMD Fusion Partner Program back to these fundamental principles.

Map the channel: Mapping is a great starting point for any go-to market strategy, including building a new channel program.  It provides a broader view of what other companies in your industry are doing. I like to think of this as a really detailed SWOT analysis that will help reveal gaps in your own channel system, as well as identify opportunities and threats you should recognize.

Undoubtedly, mapping can be quite an undertaking.  It involves in-depth analysis about your industry and your organization.  However, it can also be as simple as just candidly talking to your business partners about their needs.  No one knows the end users better than your business partners.  And, involving them in your planning process is the best way to help ensure you’re meeting their needs.  When we were designing the AMD Fusion Partner Program, we made sure to involve our partners and we believe it’s really strengthened our program and our relationships.

Build and edit the channel continuously: This step allows you to create a value chain that is designed to put customer needs first. Building and editing is an ongoing process that helps prioritize needs and evaluate channel options to find the best fit for customer needs. While you build certain programs and practices at the onset of any new channel program, it’s important that you continuously evaluate what you have in place and revise your program as market conditions and partner/customer needs evolve.  This will help ensure that you have a flexible program that works within a dynamic market.

At AMD, we uncovered during our mapping process that our former channel structure wasn’t really helping us and our partners realize our full potential.  We found that we needed to customize our program more to ensure that our different kinds of program partners were meeting their customer needs.  We did this by dividing our partners into tracks that focus on their business models—for instance retailers’ customers are often quite different from volume resellers’ customers so they each have their own track. This allows us to provide them with tailored resources designed to effectively bring their products to market in a way that their customers will react to.

Align and influence your channel value chain: This final step relies heavily on transparency and open communication between vendor, partner and customer. Alignment ensures that all the participants in the value chain are working together toward a common goal of providing the customer what he or she needs.  From there, you must influence your channel to help ensure you’re bringing products and strategies to market that can meet that common goal of servicing the customer.

For example, in the PC market there’s quite a focus on graphics.  It’s no longer just about processor speeds and feeds, but also what kind of visual experience your computer can provide.  At AMD, we’ve worked hard to bring the latest and greatest graphics products to market, and now we’re helping our partners understand the opportunities that lie within the graphics market – whether it be selling individual cards to upgrade existing PCs to take better advantage of Windows 7 or up-selling monitors because customers are utilizing graphics card with multi-monitor capabilities.

As with most things that involve lots of moving parts and interactions between key players in the value chain, the best approach is often the one which eliminates the most complexity.  We want to build a program that addresses customers’ best interests and helps drive profits for our channel partners.  We’re still in the early stages of the AMD Fusion Partner Program, but these go-to -market strategies will play an influential role in how we build and maintain our channel program.  As I reflect back on our approach and the work we have done over the past year, I’d tell you that the most critical element of all of this was the amount of documentation we performed.  It is critical to document all of your key assumptions and hypotheses, so that as reality plays out post launch, we can quickly make adjustments and revisit our plans.  It is also important to make sure you check your assumptions, as even the best channel professionals don’t account for all the changes in the market and partner landscape these days.

I’m very interested in what you think of these strategies.  If you have thoughts or ideas, comment on the blog to let me know.

David Kenyon is VP of WW Channel Marketing for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.