The snag is that you'll still have to make an investment in helping the reseller, training him, supporting the end-customer through him, etc., but you'll take a

The snag is that you'll still have to make an investment in helping the reseller, training him, supporting the end-customer through him, etc., but you'll take a hit on your margin. Worse still, he'll own the customer and you'll have had to create scale in an area which won't be strategic for your organization - unless you decide resellers are the way to go. Developing a sales channel is definitely a valid strategy, but unless you extend it beyond one reseller (i.e. go big or go home) then it probably won't pay off for your org. We run a wholesale sales channel of more than 10,000 resellers in over 110 countries and I can tell you that it definitely works, especially in markets where someone else has a stronger likelihood of owning the customer relationship. In reality, some sort of a hybrid approach to the channel - direct and indirect, is probably the best approach, presuming you can balance the channel conflicts.