A routes-to-market strategy sets out how and through what channels a business reaches its customers: its own direct sales team, inside sales, digital and self-service channels, and partners such as resellers, distributors, OEMs, and referral alliances. These conversations often start when a business wants to enter a geography it doesn’t cover, so it begins by reaching out to geographic distributors. The same can happen if vertical or sector-specific domain-expert partners (Value Added Resellers) can deliver broader market reach.
A mature strategy chooses each route deliberately, for a defined set of customers, and manages the routes so they support each other rather than compete. A less mature one grows route by route as opportunities appear, until several routes end up competing with all of them pursuing the same customer. Routes to market and partner channels is one of the seven sales categories in the SM3 assessment, scored on the same five-level scale as the rest of your commercial operation and set against average performance and best practice.
What does a routes to market strategy cover?
Most B2B businesses use several routes.
Direct field sales. Your own people are selling to larger or more complex accounts. High control, higher cost to serve.
Inside and remote sales. Your own people selling by phone and video, suited to smaller or faster deals.
Digital and self-service. Customers researching and buying online, with little or no contact with a salesperson.
Partner channels. Resellers, distributors, value-added resellers, OEM arrangements where another company sells your product, possibly under its own name, and referral or alliance partners. The SM3 glossary defines channels as the organizations and activities needed for products to reach the end user.
Marketplaces. Platforms that bring buyers and sellers together. Or geographic and/or sector-specific specialist resellers.
The strategy question is not which of these to use. It is which customers each route serves, what each is expected to deliver, and how they fit together.
How do you choose the right route for each customer?
Four factors usually decide it.
How the customer wants to buy. Some buyers want a specialist in the room. Others want to research and order without speaking to anyone.
Deal size and complexity. A high-value sale with many stakeholders can carry the cost of a field team. A low-value, repeat purchase usually cannot.
Cost to serve. Every route has a cost per sale. Knowing it by route shows which routes contribute margin and revenue.
Control. Direct routes give you control over price, message and customer experience. Partner routes give you reach, in exchange for some of that control.
Where does channel strategy break down?
Channel conflict. The SM3 glossary calls one form of it ambulance chasing: several partners and the direct sales team all pursuing a single deal, which erodes margin and creates false competition for your own product.
Rules of engagement. Without a written definition of which route owns which customers, each route can reasonably assume it owns all of them.
Partner support. Signing a partner is the first step. Onboarding, training, marketing support, and regular reviews help partners sell.
Marketing for the channel. Campaigns built only for direct buyers leave partners with little to sell on your behalf.
Performance by route. Total revenue is visible; the cost, delivery and margin of each route often need more work to see.
SM3 can also be used to assess the sales and marketing capability of existing or potential partners before you invest further in them. Choosing the right sales and marketing partners explains how.
A partner channel strategy assessment: questions to ask
- Is there a written definition of which customers each route serves?
- Are there agreed rules for when two routes meet the same prospect?
- Do you know the cost of sale and the margin for each route?
- Are partners trained, supported with marketing material and reviewed regularly?
- Does marketing plan campaigns which partners can use?
- When a route underperforms, is there a process for improving or ending it?
These questions can highlight areas worth reviewing. They are not a scoring method. The SM3 assessment provides the structured scoring needed to establish your maturity level.
The five levels applied to routes to market
The level definitions below are the SM3 levels. The examples are illustrative, to show what each level tends to look like, and are not the scoring criteria.
Basic. Low maturity; the system may function but lacks sophistication. Illustrative example: one route used for every customer because it is the only one tried.
Reactive. Self-supporting units that react fairly well but sit behind the curve. Illustrative example: partners added as opportunities arise, without territory rules.
Conforming. An average, reasonably well-run organisation, though sales and marketing may still operate largely separately. Illustrative example: defined routes and partner agreements, with marketing support for partners still limited.
Optimizing. Effective and efficient, coordinates across functions, makes real use of automation and AI, and meets targets consistently. Illustrative example: each route matched to a customer segment, cost of sale known by route, and marketing supporting partners as well as direct sales.
Mastery. Excellence throughout, agile in a changing world, an example to others. Illustrative example: routes adjusted quickly as buying behavior changes, with partners treated as an extension of the business.
Why is routes to market a sales and marketing question?
Routes to market sits on the sales side of SM3, but it depends on marketing. Segmentation decides which customers and markets each route should serve. Market awareness and branding shape how much demand each route receives. Communications decide what partners have to sell with. Scoring both functions on one scale shows whether a route-to-market issue sits in sales, in marketing, or between them. Sales and marketing alignment explains why, and brand and market awareness covers the marketing side.
How SM3 assesses routes to market
A group of people from sales and marketing answer the same questionnaire independently and confidentially, in 20 to 30 minutes each. Routes to market and partner channels are scored on the five-level scale alongside the other six sales categories, and compared with average performance and best practice. Consistency indicators show whether your people agree on how well the routes are working; the direct team and those managing partners can see the same channel quite differently.
Common questions
A plan for how and through whom a business reaches its customers, covering direct, digital and partner routes, which customers each route serves, and how the routes work together without competing.
Channel conflict occurs when two or more routes compete for the same customer, often eroding margins. The SM3 glossary calls one form of it ambulance chasing.
Check whether each route has defined customers, agreed rules of engagement, known costs and margins, and proper support from sales and marketing. A maturity assessment scores this against defined levels.
It is one of the seven sales categories, alongside strategy, process automation, culture and communication, recruitment, training and leadership. The effectiveness framework sets out the full model.