Get Your Vendor Partners to Help

"Tap into them as much as possible," Garcin says, especially if there is an opportunity to co-market a vendor offering, or to seek market development funds from them.

Karen Walker, chief marketing officer at Cisco Systems, told the networking giant's partners recently that it will even go so far as to teach a channel partner how to write a whitepaper that can go viral, and how to engage target customers via timely email campaigns.