FRACTIONAL MSP CHANNEL LEADERSHIP
CxOs promote a strong internal leader and bet they'll figure it out. The cost of that learning curve falls entirely on your program.
Bringing in a specialist for a defined engagement isn't a consulting expense. It's a better allocation of capital.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
You built a partner portal, created a margin table, and hired a CAM. Eighteen months later, 90% of your partners haven't closed a single deal. The program looks complete on paper and produces nothing in practice.
Channel conflict is killing your MSP motion before it starts. AEs are over-riding deal registration, undercutting partner pricing, and going directly to end customers your MSPs have already touched. Your CAM is stuck in the middle with no authority to fix it.
VARs resell. MSPs manage. The economics, the partner relationship, the onboarding model, and the success criteria are completely different. If your program was designed for resellers and repurposed for MSPs, it will never produce the results you're expecting.
Distribution gets you listed. It doesn't get you sold. Without MSP-specific positioning, competitive differentiation in the marketplace, and partner enablement designed for how MSPs actually go to market, you're paying distribution fees to be invisible.
Building an MSP program from scratch takes 9-12 months to produce meaningful revenue. The expectation gap between what leadership believes is possible and what the channel actually requires is one of the most predictable ways to kill a program before it starts.
Assessing MSP channel potential as part of M&A diligence requires a different lens than standard GTM evaluation. Partner economics, distributor relationships, product architecture for multi-tenancy, and competitive positioning in the MSP ecosystem all need to be evaluated before you close.
If any of these sound like your situation, you're in the right place.
The revenue argument
Where you are today
Partners actively generating ARR today, not total recruited
Average annual recurring revenue per fully producing partner
Net new fully producing partners added per year
Recruited but not activated partners do not count
Structured recruitment and enablement activates more partners
Generalist-built program
+1 fully producing partner per year
End of year 1
1 fully producing partner
$35,000
End of year 2
2 fully producing partners
$70,000
End of year 3
3 fully producing partners
$105,000
Expert-built program
+3 fully producing partners per year
3 fully producing partners
$157,500
End of year 2
6 fully producing partners
$315,000
End of year 3
9 fully producing partners
$472,500
Year 3 run rate gap
Expert-built vs. generalist-built, before leadership cost
$367,500
Every year after this, the gap widens further
The cost argument
| Promoted internal leader | Fractional channel expert | |
|---|---|---|
| Cash compensation | $300,000 - $400,000+ Base + variable at market rate | Retainer only No variable comp, no bonus |
| Benefits + payroll taxes | $60,000 - $80,000 Health, FICA, 401k match | $0 |
| Equity grant | $105,000 - $200,000 0.35 - 0.5x base, standard SaaS | $0 |
| Executive recruiting | $82,500 - $135,000 25 - 33% of year-one cash comp | $0 |
| Ramp period (9 - 12 mo.) | $127,500 - $200,000 Partial productivity during learning curve | $0 |
| Downside risk | $2M - $5M Cost of a failed executive hire | Terminate the retainer No severance, no equity, no disruption |
| Year-one fully loaded cost | $675,000 - $1,015,000 | Scoped to your program |
Get a scoped engagement cost for your program.
The 7-question MSP Channel Readiness Assessment takes 3 minutes, scores your program across six dimensions, and produces a scoped engagement range based on where you actually stand.
THE PROCESS
Start with the free online assessment. Seven questions. Three minutes. You get a scored MSP readiness report, immediately, no waiting. No obligation. No pitch deck.
We jump on a 30-minute call to walk through your results together, identify the highest-leverage problems, and determine whether and how we should work together. Direct conversation. No upsell pressure. If you're not a fit, I'll tell you that too.
The assessment tells you what's wrong. The diagnostic tells you exactly how to fix it. We take the highest-priority problem your assessment uncovered and go deep on that one thing. Four weeks. One focused engagement. You walk away with a full analysis of the problem and a detailed blueprint for the fix. Execute it on your own or bring us in to run the project.
If we move forward, you get direct access to 13 years of MSP channel experience, embedded in your organization at the depth the work requires. We execute the plan together. When we're done, your team owns the program completely. No dependency on me to keep it running.
WHAT I FIX
All engagements begin with the free MSP Channel Readiness Assessment.
WHO YOU'RE WORKING WITH
I'm Jon Purcell. Thirteen years building vendor-side MSP channel programs at Apple, VMware, and Workiva. I've built programs from scratch, rebuilt ones that were broken, and worked with MSPs ranging from two-person shops to global enterprises.
I started Untapped Channel Strategy because I kept seeing the same patterns: vendors building programs designed for how they want to sell, not for how MSPs actually operate. Programs full of complexity that serves the vendor and friction that kills the partner.
I work with a small number of clients at any given time. That's intentional. You're not getting passed to a junior consultant after the first call. Every assessment, every strategy session, every deliverable comes from someone who has actually done this work. Not someone who studied it.
Based in Austin, TX. Happy to be wrong. Committed to being direct.
13 Years
Vendor-side MSP experience
$100M+
In MSP revenue driven across Apple, VMware, and Workiva
Seven questions. Three minutes. An instant read on whether your MSP program is built to produce revenue or built to look like it is. The assessment scores your organization across three dimensions that determine MSP program success: how your product and pricing actually work for MSPs, whether your GTM motion supports partners or quietly undermines them, and whether your partner experience accelerates activation or kills it. You'll get a maturity score, a plain-language diagnosis of your biggest gaps, and a clear picture of what it would take to close them. No fluff. No generic best practices. Just an honest benchmark from someone who has built these programs from scratch. Book a 30 minute call to walk through your results together.