The difficult questions

The four or five hard ones, with answers the channel can use — the material that matters and is almost never provided.

The deliverable

What it is

Every buyer asks the same four or five awkward questions. A channel without answers improvises, and the improvisation is what the customer hears.

The answers have to be usable rather than defensive. An answer that requires the partner to sound like a marketing department will not be used.

One level in

Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.

The questions
What buyers actually ask that is hard to answer.
3 attributes: Question · Frequency · At stage
Learn
The answers
What the channel should say.
3 attributes: Answer · Concedes weakness · Tested
Learn
The escalation
What the channel does when it cannot answer.
3 attributes: Escalate to · Response time · What not to guess
Learn

Collect the difficult answers from the direct sales team. They answer them daily and nobody has written them down.

What the offer is, who it is for, what it costs — in a form someone will actually read.

What the channel actually says when asked to describe the offer — because that is what customers are hearing.