Have you ever been in a meeting where all departments think that sales department is letting them down? That they are all doing their fair share but sales isn't selling enough?

People, I have news for you: Sales is Tough! And keeps getting tougher.

Social media, online ordering, pricing comparison sites, UGC (user generated comments like user reviews), etc. makes the job of sales tougher and tougher. Why?

The customer is more educated today. It skews the sales process.

Seth Godin wrote in 2006, "I know you'd like to get rid of me and just take orders on the web. But that's always going to be the low-hanging fruit. The game-changing sales, at least for now, come from real people interacting with real people."

Keep that in mind. If selling is so easy, go do it! "Selling is hard. Harder than you may ever realize."

Nothing happens until a sale is made. Sales revenues pay for everything (unless you have VC dollars).

More and more companies are looking to the channel to drive sales. Why? Because a lot of cloud services rely on relationship selling - and they don't have the cash to pay sales people.

But the channel isn't a faucet which you can just turn on for sales. A lot of factors enter in to a channel partner relationship. The channel manager, ease of business, reliability, features, pricing, packaging, marketing, customer support, margin, compensation -- these are just a few of them. And most channel partners are looking to add services that compliment their current sales plan and customer base.

"Sell only by solving problems and creating profitable opportunities" is good advice from Tom Peters.