Some 88 percent of solution providers are always looking for new vendors, according to The Channel Company's research.

But do partners wind up happy? The research found that that's hit or miss, with about half of partners saying vendor relationships fall short of their financial expectations.

Technology vendors should show prospective partners how the two sides can align their offerings to cultivate a strategic partnership that opens the door to more business that can generate significant revenue and profits, not just a relationship in which the two sides are doing only a little business together, Dignam said.

Kevin Mitchell, vice president of marketing and product at Alianza, a cloud voice platform provider based in Lindon, Utah, said the data "reinforced some things I felt." Like Couto, he said that better alignment across an organization can help strengthen relationships with channel partners, and create more of them.

"To really scale … you need to get alignment across multiple organizations within the company," he said.

Mark Williams, a senior channel consultant with The Channel Company, reinforced Dignam's points, noting that channel partners are moving toward higher-margin managed services "very quickly" as more solution providers move down the path toward becoming strategic service providers. He specifically cited moves to generate recurring revenue, where partners will sell a vendor's products but only if they can manage them. "Partners are getting to the point where if they can't sell the service, they won't sell the product," he said.

That shift, from focusing on capital expenditures to operational expenditures, is becoming the norm, Williams said.

"Services have really eclipsed product revenue, and we're not going back. The more you're helping partners deliver services, the better off you're going to be," Williams said.

Most channel programs still measure only the sales part of the relationship equation, Williams said. But a well-aligned partnership also brings in marketing, product development, services and technical support, he added, with each of the five functional areas requiring several metrics to gauge how tight a relationship the two sides can develop.

The vendor and the solution provider "need to recognize a mutually beneficial business opportunity," then commit to building a relationship together, Williams said.