What The Best Channel Vendors Survey Can Teach Us

By The Business Solutions Network

Ever since we kicked off our Best Channel Vendors survey eight years ago, we’ve included the results in our January issue. This year is no different (go back to page 16 to see the results). The survey, by its nature, provides a lot of data that we’ve found useful beyond simply computing the winners.

For instance, a few years ago, I took to evaluating the scores of the winners to see if there was a trend among all of their scores. Turns out, there was. Since I’ve been tracking this data, the lowest scores — in all but a few instances — have fallen in the category of “Adequate Margins.” Now, before I go further, understand that these are the scores of the winners, so even though the margins scores might be lowest of the seven categories, the winners’ scores are higher than those who weren’t named a Best Channel Vendor. These companies have nothing to be ashamed of, but this observation is still worth exploring since this is the fourth year of this trend.