Contradictions in the Channel: What 1,400 Partners Really Say

Channel Mic Check is straight talk on the realities in today's IT channel. In our first episode, your hosts Jessica McDowell and Calhoun McKinney unpack the latest TD SYNNEX Direction of Technology report. Get unfiltered takes on market impressions vs. reality, the roles of specialization and scale, the AI execution gap, and how customer experience is your new competitive moat. The mic's hot, so listen in.

What is Channel Mic Check?

Channel Mic Check — where distributor DNA meets digital swagger.

Hosted by Calhoun McKinney — Vice President, Go to Market — and Jessica McDowell — Sr. Vice President, North America Marketing and Digital Customer Success — this podcast brings fresh energy to the B2B tech channel. From market updates and TD SYNNEX insights to candid interviews with vendors, partners, and innovators, Channel Mic Check cuts through the noise with real talk and real impact.

This is where connection meets conversation. Each episode tests the mic and turns up the volume on what actually matters—growth, innovation, and the stories shaping today’s channel ecosystem.

Forget the corporate jargon. Expect insights with edge, stories with substance, and voices that lead with purpose. Whether you’re a partner, vendor, or industry insider, this is your all-access pass to the conversations driving the channel forward.

Tune in. Turn it up. Channel Mic Check: it’s not just talk, it’s a movement.

Well, Calhoun, here we go, our very first episode of Channel Mic Check. That's right. Super excited to launch this.

And you know, I was, I'll be the first to admit, I was kind of like, do we really need a podcast? There's a lot of podcasts out there, yes. But started listening to some and I realized we do have something unique to say. And I want to, I want to explain the meaning behind the name.

So let's talk a little bit about why Channel Mic Check. Well, when we talk about channel, it's about keeping us, that's what keeps us grounded. We, it's about connecting our partners and our solutions and our value in the ecosystem.

And there's a lot of mediums, you said it, there's a lot of ways that we can get our message out. This is another way that we can bring our message out to the channel. That's right.

And I think about that moment when you're about to go present, you step up to the mic and you've got to do that mic check and the whole room's like buzzing and everybody's excited. They know something's about to happen and you, you know, step up to the mic and you say, you know, mic check and everybody just pauses and kind of gets silent and they, it's exciting because you know, okay, we're about to start, we're about to begin. And it's really a signal to everybody.

That's right. It is, it is a moment, right? And then from there you're taking the stage, you're having a conversation and we're amplifying what it means to be part of the B2B channel. Absolutely.

All right, Jessica, mic's hot. Let's jump right into our first topic, which for our inaugural episode is going to be Direction of Technology Report. Of course.

Yep. Can't think of a better topic. So this is something, we've covered it in a lot of different ways, a lot of different places, but today we really want to talk about some of the surprises in there.

Maybe even some of the market contradictions that we're seeing, some of the big changes year over year. And just a reminder for everybody, this report is, we surveyed over 1400 partners and it really goes out and digs in pretty deep into, you know, partner sentiment, partner reaction to different things, trends in their business. So covers a lot of ground, a lot of different tech segments.

A ton of really good insights, a ton of good insights. I think when we talk about it, probably the best place to start is overall growth. And when we looked at the overall growth before the report came out, we were hypothesizing and thinking, okay, what's the sentiment going to be, right? What's the optimism outlook going to be? And we were kind of estimating that optimism might be down for a lot of reasons, a lot of reasons.

I mean, and there's a lot of distractions in the channel right now. If you look at what partners are navigating with tariffs, trade wars, prices reacting to all of that, margin compression, lots of M&A activity out there. So it's just a lot of change that partners are navigating, which kind of indicated to us, okay, they're probably going to be feeling that, right? That was what generated our hypothesis, but gladly we were wrong here because the report showed that on an index of a hundred, the net optimism score was actually 110 for North America.

So that was, people are optimistic, people see opportunity. So that was good news. It was.

And I think that's really such a like just indicator of the channel overall. Our partners are confident. And I also think that's really why we exist is even though there's distractions, even though there's these things that kind of give us every reason to not be successful in the channel, that's really where distribution comes into play and what we wake up every day to serve our partners at TD Cenex, trying to solve those things with them.

That's right. And so I think that that's really a good, good indicator. I agree.

Okay. So for our second topic, I would like to talk about this idea that came out of the report that basically says specialization beats scale. And I think, I think that is so because strategy and clarity are becoming even more important now than they ever have been before.

And what was interesting is we kind of asked this qualifying question in the report that basically says, what type of business are you? We asked our partners, what type of business are you? And in the past it was very heavy, well, I'm a, I'm a VAR, right? I'm a value added reseller and it was pretty heavy there. What we saw this year was, was partners are, it's a little bit more evenly spread out between I'm a VAR, I'm an ISV, I'm an MSP. And I think a lot of that is because partners are really getting more services oriented.

I mean, the, the pace of technology is, is increasing at a rapid rate as we know. And I think partners are really seeing, hey, I can meet the market from a services perspective better now than maybe I have been able to in years before. And this is interesting.

I think, yes, and this was confirmed even more recently at Canalys Forum. They threw out a stat around, you know, on average a partner identifies with three different partner types now. And I don't necessarily think that that means, hey, everybody's just trying to be everything to everybody.

I actually think it means the opposite. Yeah. I think, I think it means partners are trying, trying on different hats.

So to speak, to figure out where are they going to get the best response, where can they service their end customer base the best, and where there, there was actually a recent Gartner report that I was looking at where CIOs are even kind of shouting this and they're saying, hey, the old one size fits all operation model isn't really working anymore. These services that we've historically done for many years maybe aren't going to carry us forward. So I think, I think everybody's head is, is in that direction.

Yeah. And, and it, it kind of goes back to this adage of, you know, the, the channel community has a lot of experience, but with everything changing so fast nowadays, the adoption cycle is so much faster. I think it's about how do you take something that you have a lot of depth in and then how do you specialize further in, in a kind of a new direction, but still pulling on those same strengths.

So I think looking at our MSP community, you know, offering, you know, hey, now, now is it time to really get into a new customer vertical that you weren't really entertaining before? Or, you know, maybe you've been, you know, going really deep on different integrations. Maybe it's time to start factoring in security as you do those things. And so I think that that's really where we win a lot of partnerships because we have such a deep bench of subject matter experts and we cover over well over 25 different specializations out there.

And so we really meet partners where they are and, and help guide them to where they might want to go. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a huge piece of what we can, what we can offer to the market.

So we're talking about specialization. I think that's a really good segue into our third topic, which is AI. Because when people think specialization, I think their minds are jumping to that like immediately.

I think, I think their minds are jumping to AI no matter what word comes up. Right. I think you're right.

I think AI is, is, is everywhere as we know. And I think one of the really interesting things about this report is we surveyed the partners. 80% of them said, yep, AI is critical, mission critical, got to do something about 80%.

And then conversely, when, when we asked them who is implementing AI this year, who is, who is investing 36%. That's pretty big gap. Pretty big gap.

Pretty big gap. And in the report, we didn't get to see, okay, why, why are you so confident that it's important, but unconfident when it comes to doing an implementation. And so we've spent a lot of time having those conversations with partners to figure out what, you know, what is that? What's at the heart of that? And what we've learned is that they're really intimidated by the pressure that comes in to deliver outcomes from these different solutions because they have huge price tags in most instances.

And, you know, a lot of that pressure, you know, the reason why I think they're having a hard time alleviating it is because of the complexity that comes with these deployments. And that's really where we've spent a lot of time trying to help partners overcome that. Yeah.

I, I, our partner, we got a lot of smart partners. Our partners know how to manage their business. They know how to manage their end customer environments.

And I think AI has thrown a lot of people for a loop because there's kind of this, this thing of, of, I don't know what I don't know. And that's what we've spent so much time building enablement practices around, right? You've got, we've got destination AI, AI accelerator, and, and, and that is what we do. We go meet a partner where they are in their AI journey.

We teach them how to implement AI. What does it mean for their business? And then it doesn't stop there, right? I mean, we're, we're kind of locked arms with them the entire way, no matter what they need. So that, that is the value that we feel we can bring to the market based on this type of response that we, that we got in the report.

Yeah. And, and you have a lot to lose when you, whether you deploy AI or you don't, because if you, that's a great, yeah, if you don't, you're going to miss out on the opportunity, of course. But if you do, there's also a lot of risk that comes with that as well.

And we're really focused on helping partners be able to address, not just having an effective solution, but also having a solution that follows governance and compliance and all these other aspects that come into the game when you're looking at some of these really sophisticated offerings out there. There's, it's, it's not just AI. Thank you.

Have a nice day. It's, it's AI and a million other things, and that's what we've got to be there for, for our partners. Absolutely.

Okay. So let's, let's talk about the next point. Let's, let's talk about hardware, because I think when there's a ton of talk about AI, and I think there, there could be a misperception that the rise of AI is going to, is going to mean less focus on hardware.

And I really don't think that that's the case. No. And our partners agree with you.

Yeah. And so they have seen that there's still a priority in hardware. And I think at a, maybe more of a, a kind of basic level is, yes, you're seeing these thin point devices with, you know, this optimization coming from AI that's pushing some growth in the PC.

And driving some refresh. Exactly. AI refresh cycle.

Yeah. Exactly. So we've got that going on.

Yeah. But even bigger opportunities are coming out around data center. And so we're seeing this huge need, obviously, for more support from an infrastructure standpoint, billions of dollars going into data center build outs here in the U.S., all over North America, really.

And so I think that that's going to be a big, big area of focus for not just going into 2026, but really beyond. No, I absolutely agree. And I think that that's a lot of what our destination AI, AI accelerator practice builder programs are built around is, is helping people assess those environments, helping them understand where they can plug in based on the maturity of the environments that they're supporting today.

So I absolutely think it's going to be something that carries forward. And I think services are going to be a big part of that. Oh, yeah.

You know, whether it's, you know, hey, they're going with an on-prem solution, whether they're going with a hybrid, I think partners are really going to need help, need to help those end environments navigate that. And having that ongoing monitoring, having that migration support, making sure that there's good backup and recovery plans in place as well. Yeah.

It's really important. It's definitely a blended approach, right? It's, hey, how can I layer my services into what I'm doing from a hardware and a software perspective? I'm not going to abandon anything. It's, it's, it's more, it's, it's more, it's, it's, it's always more, especially when we're talking about AI.

Yeah. And it really goes back to a point, you know, a few trends back, which is partners really entering different types of functions in the channel community. And I think that's where we're going to see more co-partnerships build out.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're hearing that a lot.

We've been to a lot of events this year. That's a common theme. So I agree.

Last and final trend. Okay. Can I save the best for last? Okay.

So we asked partners, hey, what is it when a customer is assessing who they're going to choose to work with on a deployment? What are they prioritizing in that decision-making process? And 71% of partners said that their customers prioritize customer experience over price and product. Yeah. Same thing when we asked them the question about distribution, hey, when you're trying to select a distributor, what's the priority in your decision-making process? 47% of partners said customer experience over price and product.

So that really, to me, translates when we're talking about the customer experience, yes, we're talking about platform, but we're also talking about people. Yeah. You did save the best for last.

I like that. So that step makes me really happy. I think that lends itself to the power of people, which is something that we talk about all the time.

And even Gartner is saying that fewer than 50% of digital initiatives actually meet expectations. So what does that mean? It means our partners are looking for guides. They're looking for help with navigation.

They're not looking for necessarily a point product. And I think that just means that humans buy from humans. Platforms are table stakes.

You've got to have a good customer experience from a platform perspective. But I think the value comes from human to human sales. And for years, the channel's edge came from what they sold, right? How low of a price can you get me and how quickly can you get the product to me? And now I think we're really seeing a shift to more about how it's being delivered than actually the product that's being sold.

Agreed. And I think it's about really engaging with a partner at every life cycle, every stage of the deal life cycle. And when we look at our own experience and how we go about that as a company, everything that we're doing is so informed by partners.

And so yes, we have a very powerful platform. We just launched Partner First. But all of that was really built from partner input, partner testing even.

We did a huge, huge beta of that with over 100 partners and made some pretty significant changes to it based on their feedback and their input. So even when you're talking about a digital experience, it's still something that's very heavily involved with people for us. And you keep using the word partner, which I love because it's partnership.

We can't solve problems that we don't take the time to listen and understand. So I think that's exactly the human to human piece. All right.

When we talk about people, that is a great way to kind of round out this conversation because Channel Mic Check, our aim with this is to support our customers on their journey and be a resource for them. Absolutely. And so to anyone who's listening right now, follow along, like this episode, give us feedback on what you want to hear more about.

We really like bold ideas, so bring it on. And speaking of bold ideas, I think we need to end this. Every time we do this podcast, I want to end it with a tradition.

I want us to do... I like a tradition. Yeah. I want to do like a mic drop moment.

Okay. Yeah. All right.

Let's have our guests do like a bold statement to round out every single episode of like, this is my final... Let's do it. Final word. Yes.

Let's do it. We're not actually going to drop the microphones to our production team. Oh.

Yeah. We're not. Yeah.

Okay. I'm still interested, but... Yeah. Okay.

Can't have nice things. Okay. What's your mic drop statement? My mic drop for today is, you cannot wait for the perfect conditions to start implementing AI.

The time is now, and I'm tapping in the Destination AI team. Call it out. Call it out.

Bus is leaving. Yep. We got to go.

Jump on. What's yours? We talked about customer experience. We talked about specialization.

So, my mic drop statement today would be, know yourself. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I love it. Know who you are. Know what you're good at.

Know where you're going. Love it. And I'm going to tap in our Marketing as a Service team.

All right. Because they can really help partners get to the heart of that, and then talk about themselves and differentiate themselves out on the market. So, Marketing as a Service team, you're up.

All right. Awesome. Thank you guys, everybody, for joining our first episode here.

More to come. All right. All right.