Why Indirect Sales Strategies Stall — and How Demand Gen Leaders Can Fix Them

Introduction

Indirect sales should be one of the most scalable and cost-effective growth engines in a technology company’s go-to-market strategy. At their best, partner ecosystems extend reach, unlock new markets, and multiply selling power beyond what internal teams can accomplish alone. However, for many demand generation leaders, the reality looks very different: leads transferred to partners that never receive follow-up, events that produce registrations but not attendees, and MDF funds that go untouched simply because partners lack the operational support to activate them.

This disconnect isn’t due to a lack of channel potential — it’s due to a lack of execution. Modern marketers are recognizing that indirect sales motions don’t stall because the model is flawed; they stall because partners are expected to deliver outcomes without being equipped to execute consistently. The companies solving this problem are moving toward a performance-based approach that strengthens partner programs with real outbound support and measurable results.

What Indirect Sales Means for Demand Generation Marketers

For today’s technology marketers, indirect sales is no longer an auxiliary channel — it’s a strategic component of the revenue engine. Instead of serving merely as a reseller network, indirect sales has become a way to amplify demand generation efforts, expand into targeted accounts, and accelerate sales cycles when partners are properly activated.

This shift places demand generation leaders squarely at the center of indirect sales success. Their campaigns, events, assets, and workflows feed partner ecosystems, but only produce revenue when partners engage consistently and at the right level. That engagement depends heavily on the partner’s capacity to run outbound motions, follow up on leads promptly, and support campaign execution with discipline.

The gap between what vendors expect from indirect sales and what partners can realistically provide is widening — and it’s pushing marketers to rethink how the channel should operate. Indirect sales is no longer about distributing leads; it’s about enabling partners with the execution muscle they don’t naturally have.

Common Challenges Marketers Face

Ask any channel, partner marketing, or demand generation leader about the friction inside indirect sales and the themes are unmistakably similar. Partners are often enthusiastic about campaigns but lack the internal resources to handle the volume of outreach required to convert interest into meetings or opportunities. Even with strong intent, partners juggle numerous vendors and responsibilities, which pushes lead follow-up to the bottom of their priority list.

Event sponsorships show another layer of this challenge. Marketing teams generate registrations and hand them off, but without structured outbound confirmation, attendance rates suffer and partners miss the chance to engage prospects while interest is fresh. And although MDF and co-op funds are available to fuel partner-led activation, many partners underutilize them simply because they don’t have the infrastructure to execute consistently.

Visibility becomes the final obstacle. Once leads enter the partner’s system, marketers often lose sight of what happened — who was contacted, when, and with what result. These blind spots make forecasting difficult and undermine the credibility of indirect sales efforts internally.

These issues don’t stem from poor strategy. They stem from the absence of a reliable, repeatable execution layer.

Solutions That Work

Organizations seeing the strongest returns from indirect sales are treating partners not as independent executors but as part of a shared performance engine. Instead of expecting partners to take on the heavy lift of outbound outreach, qualification, and event recruitment, demand gen leaders are introducing white-labeled execution that supplements partner capabilities without replacing their role in the process.

By supporting partners with outbound-powered appointment setting, vendors begin delivering completed meetings with director-level stakeholders directly into the partner’s pipeline — eliminating the bottleneck of inconsistent lead follow-up. Event recruitment gains similar strength when outbound calling and SMS workflows are added, ensuring registrants convert into attendees and that partners can engage prospects in meaningful conversations during the event window.

Lead qualification offers another layer of stability. Instead of handing partners lists of cold opt-in leads, vendors provide partners with qualified, sales-ready conversations that shorten sales cycles. This execution-first approach gives partners the confidence, time, and clarity they need to focus on selling rather than operational tasks.

The broader market is shifting toward performance programs for a reason: they create predictable outcomes where indirect sales motions were once unpredictable.

Actionable Steps for Marketers

Modernizing indirect sales begins with re-centering the strategy on shared pipeline outcomes, rather than isolated partner activity. The most effective teams start by aligning vendors and partners on the same ICP and buying group expectations, ensuring outreach targets decision-makers who have the authority to move deals forward.

From there, the focus shifts toward making participation easy. Partners should be able to activate co-branded outbound campaigns, event recruitment workflows, and lead qualification support without absorbing the operational responsibility themselves. When vendors take on the execution backbone, partners become far more engaged — and far more successful.

Visibility then becomes the connective tissue. Real-time reporting that shows meetings completed, registrants secured, lead conversion progress, and partner performance creates trust and allows teams on both sides of the relationship to adjust strategy proactively rather than reactively.

The result isn’t just better indirect sales performance — it’s a channel motion that feels predictable, scalable, and aligned with the revenue expectations of modern demand generation marketing.

Comparison of Market Solutions

Marketers typically approach indirect sales support using one of three strategies. Some rely heavily on partners themselves, hoping their internal sales teams can convert leads and registrants consistently. While this offers control to partners, it often results in unpredictable outcomes. Others turn to outsourcing models that provide scale, but these programs often operate on fixed-fee structures, rely on offshore execution, or focus on activity metrics rather than the results marketing leaders need to report on.

A more modern approach blends the strengths of both models: performance-based partner activation. This solution integrates U.S.-based outreach, director-level targeting, white-labeled execution, and real-time reporting — creating a structure that partners embrace and marketing teams trust. It removes risk, improves pipeline predictability, and strengthens the vendor–partner relationship by delivering measurable, repeatable outcomes.

Conclusion

Indirect sales has always held enormous potential, but potential alone doesn’t drive revenue. The companies winning today are the ones that treat indirect sales as a performance channel, not a passive one. By giving partners access to the execution layer they’ve historically lacked — outbound calling, event recruitment, lead qualification, and white-labeled outreach — marketing teams transform indirect sales from a hopeful strategy into a predictable pipeline engine.

If you’re ready to bring consistency, accountability, and measurable results to your indirect sales motion, now is the time to act. Contact Site Ascend