channel-economics

channel-economics

Purpose

Help Head of Commercial / RevOps / VP Sales answer three questions at the quarterly channel review:

1. What does each channel actually cost to serve, fully loaded? (direct headcount, channel manager attribution, partner discount, MDF, enablement time, support load, allocated overhead)
2. What is the ROI of each channel under three lenses? (cash ROI year-1, LTV-adjusted ROI, marginal ROI — next dollar of investment)
3. What is the optimal channel mix subject to our strategic constraints? (minimum direct floor, maximum partner concentration ceiling, sensitivity to CAC shifts)

The skill emits per-channel verdicts (DOUBLE-DOWN / MAINTAIN / DEFUND / EXIT), a sensitivity-tested mix recommendation, and the diminishing-returns inflection point. It does not pick the strategy — humans do, with the numbers loaded honestly for the first time.

When to use

• Quarterly channel review: pipeline is 60/40 or 50/50 direct vs partner and you don't actually know which one is profitable
• Considering hiring a channel manager — need to know if the channel can clear the loaded-cost bar
• Partner program ROI question from the board ("we spent $X on MDF — what did we get?")
• A segment is over-indexed to one channel and you suspect mix dogma is blocking the other
• About to expand into a new region and need to decide direct-first vs partner-first
• M&A diligence: target company claims "partner-led at 70% gross margin" — need to validate after loading

Do not use for:

• Designing partner tiers, joint GTM motion, revshare splits → partnerships-architect
• SDR-to-AE routing, lead scoring, MQL definitions → business-growth/revenue-operations
• Strategic CRO decisions ("should we hire a VP Sales?", comp plan design) → c-level-advisor/cro-advisor
• Quarterly close, GAAP revenue recognition, channel-level P&L for historical reporting → finance/financial-analysis
• Per-deal discount approval → deal-desk
• Pricing model design → pricing-strategist

Workflow

Step 1 — Intake channel data

Fill assets/channel_data_template.md (≈ 20 min). Capture per channel: deal count TTM, ARR TTM, avg deal size, gross margin %, CAC, sales-cycle days, retention rate, expansion rate, partner discount %, all attributable costs (SDR / AE / SE / channel manager / CS / support / marketing / partner MDF / tooling / overhead allocation %).

The template surfaces the costs teams most often forget: partner enablement time, certification investment, channel-conflict resolution overhead, channel-manager headcount cost.

Step 2 — Compute cost-to-serve per channel

Run scripts/cost_to_serve_calculator.py --input channel.json --output markdown.