For partner leaders, one of the hardest questions isn’t identifying your best-performing partners. Most organizations already know who they are. The harder question is: Who should you invest in next? That question sits at the center of my conversation with Kenneth Fox, CTO and founder of ChannelScaler. Kenneth has spent his career in channels and partnerships, and his perspective combines the technology side of partner management with the practical realities of running partner programs. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We talked about AI, co-selling, technology alliances, partner journeys, measurement, and why human relationships remain essential even as more of the partner experience becomes automated. One idea came through repeatedly: technology is most valuable when it helps partner teams focus their limited resources on the activities and relationships most likely to produce results. The Channel Has Become a Complex Ecosystem Traditional partner program fundamentals aren’t going away. Kenneth still sees incentives, marketing, tiering, rebates, deal registration, portals, and content management as table stakes. What has changed is the environment around them. Partner ecosystems now involve many different types of partners and increasingly complex sales motions. A single enterprise opportunity might involve a vendor, a reseller, a services partner, and potentially others. That makes co-selling much more than simply sharing an opportunity. “The channel has become a very complex ecosystem of partners.” Kenneth described the challenge of coordinating multi-partner deals where each participant may be operating from a different CRM and even using different names for the same end customer. The critical questions become remarkably operational: Who owns which part of the deal? What’s the next step? Who owns that step? When is it due? And what can the vendor do to move the opportunity forward? For partner leaders, that level of visibility becomes increasingly important as ecosystems expand. AI Should Make Partnering Easier Kenneth divides ChannelScaler’s application of AI into three broad areas: reducing friction and improving ease of doing business, removing operational obstacles through automation, and generating better insights. The first two can address some very practical problems. An AI agent can help determine whether a deal being registered may already exist. It can surface relevant content during deal registration. It can automate elements of MDF claims and flag transactions that require human review. The objective isn’t simply to add AI to a partner platform. It’s to remove work. Kenneth sees that eventually changing the partner experience itself. “It will become an agentic-led experience for partners and vendors.” Instead of requiring partners to navigate through a portal looking for what matters, an agent can potentially surface what needs attention: an open deal, an expiring fund request, a rebate claim, or a certification required to maintain status. That connects directly to one of Kenneth’s core principles: “Ease of doing business is the single biggest pain point in the channel.” And his conclusion is equally direct: “If you are the vendor that is easiest to work with, you will be the vendor that wins.” Build What Differentiates You - Partner for the Rest As CTO, Kenneth also has to make a decision familiar to many technology companies: What should we build ourselves, and where should we partner? His framework starts with knowing what the company is actually good at. “We know what we’re good at, and we stick to, you know, our lane.” ChannelScaler uses technology alliance partners where capabilities fall outside that lane. Kenneth cited XTRM for payments, Structured for TCMA, and PartnerTap for identifying ecosystem whitespace. The goal is to integrate complementary capabilities rather than recreate technology that another company already does well. In other cases, such as co-sell functionality, Kenneth believes the capability sits directly within ChannelScaler’s core area of expertise, making internal development the faster route. There isn’t one universal build-versus-partner rule. Each capability has to be evaluated on its own merits. Find the Next 10 Partners Perhaps the most interesting application of AI in our conversation was partner prioritization. Most channel leaders can identify the partners generating the majority of their revenue. Kenneth argues that AI can help answer a more valuable forward-looking question: Who are the next 10, 20, or 30 partners worth investing in? ChannelScaler looks across attributes including revenue, deal volume and value, certifications, participation in programs, end customers, geographies, training, and other signals. “I look at the attribution of my best partner or my best 100 partners, and now I can use AI to scrub that against the next thousand to figure out actually who’s the next best 10 I should focus on.” Once those partners are identified, Kenneth recommends putting them on a targeted partner journey. And importantly, a journey isn’t synonymous with onboarding. It might be designed for a brand-new partner, a mature strategic partner, or a group of high-potential partners. One example Kenneth described was a revenue journey where the vendor and partner establish specific growth objectives, net-new-logo targets, leads, marketing investments, and next steps. That’s a fundamentally different approach from giving every partner essentially the same program experience. Measure Engagement, Not Just Enrollment Kenneth also challenges one of the most common partner-program vanity metrics: total partner count. “You have 500 partners. Well, guess what? You don’t really have 500 partners.” If only 110 of those partners have actually engaged, the other 390 shouldn’t automatically be treated as productive members of the ecosystem. Measurement should instead reveal what partners are doing, how programs are performing, where processes are slowing down, and which behaviors correlate with success. Kenneth’s principle is simple: “You can only manage what you measure.” The bigger opportunity is to connect measurement to action. Identify the attributes of successful partners. Find other partners with similar potential. Put them on a deliberate journey. Track the commitments on both sides. Then continuously adjust. AI Doesn’t Replace the Relationship For all the discussion about AI and automation, Kenneth was unequivocal about what technology doesn’t replace. “It’s not a human relationship. And certainly when you move into the enterprise and you’re doing big deals... people buy off people.” That may be the most important distinction for partner leaders. The opportunity isn’t to automate partnering. It’s to automate enough of the administrative burden, analysis, and process friction that partner professionals can spend more of their time doing what technology still can’t do for them: building the relationships that move the business forward. 🎙️ Inside Partnering is a podcast for ecosystem builders, alliance leaders, and the people shaping the future of partnerships. Let’s build the future of partnering - together. 📌 If you found this post helpful, would you please consider restacking it and sharing it with your audience? 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