Women In The Channel: How's That Working For Them?

By Dede Haas, CA-AM, Channel Sales Strategist, DLH Services, LLC

Part I: The Beginning

I started in the channel 30 years ago, working for a Novell and IBM VAR followed by a stint for Novell Platinum Partner, LANSystems. When Intel acquired my division at LANSystems, I moved to the vendor side of channel partnerships. Since my time at Intel, I have been managing the channel for SMB vendors and partners.

For the most part during my channel career, with experience on both sides of the aisle, it has been me and the guys. Many times I was the only woman or one of very few women in the room for company or partner face-to-face meetings, customer visits, channel training (giving and receiving), and in-person channel events and conferences. I can understand — sort of — the lack of women in the channel when I started out in the 80s, but now I wonder why women have not made significant inroads in today’s channel profession for the vendor or the partner, especially in executive management.

This past summer, two events sparked my curiosity on women’s progress in the channel: one was a Women in the Channel (WiC) gathering in Washington, DC; the other was the publication of the Channel Partners 2016 US Channel Compensation Survey. During the WiC function, many speakers talked about how far women have come in the channel, how far they have to go, and what they have to do to be on par with men. Tina Gravel, senior VP of Strategic Alliances for Cryptzone, in her article Gender Inequality in Telecom: What can you do?, echoed the sentiments of WiC speakers, writing, “While the glass house has cracks, there’s room for improvement.” She also mentions, “New research by the University of Maryland and Columbia Business School shows that, in firms that already have a woman in a top management, the odds that another woman will also have a top position are actually lower. A company under pressure to promote women may think the problem is ‘solved’ once they have one female executive.” Obviously, there is much room for improvement.

As for the compensation survey, it found, “While men make an average of 24 percent more than women in reported 2016 salaries, that’s not the whole picture. When looking at the distribution of salaries, men and women are more aligned at the high end of the salary spectrum, above $100,000. Still, almost twice as many women compared with men fall in the lowest pay range, making $60,000 or less.” The report states, “One possibility is that women are concentrated in more administrative roles, which may pay less than technical slots even though the channel model demands business management skills.” At least that one woman at the top is compensated adequately — I hope.

With this information in hand, I decided to reach out to women working for vendors or partners to get their perspective and insight for a four part series that will explore the challenges they face. I will also ask them to share their thoughts on what they think can and should be done to help women be accepted and successful in the channel field. I am betting that what they say will be very enlightening.

Don’t miss Part II in early December, which focuses on women working for the vendor. If you want to join the conversation and add your two cents, please contact me directly at Dede@DLHServices.com.

Dede Haas is an award-winning, high-tech sales professional and founder of DLH Services where she creates innovative and successful channel sales solutions for the vendor and the partner. She has developed and managed channel partner programs for enterprise and cloud based products and services for SMB, and for industry leaders such as Intel Corp. For the partner, Dede has managed the vendor relationship, created business opportunities, and developed and conducted product training. She has her Certification of Achievement-Alliance Management (CA-AM) from the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. Have a question, comment or story you would like to share with Dede? If so, please contact her at Dede@DLHServices.com or +1 703-448-1710.