According to the new study, nine out of ten hiring managers find it difficult to recruit and hire direct sales professionals, with more than half (57 percent) reporting that the problem has intensified over the past year and a half. These hiring challenges directly prevent companies from reaching revenue goals, according to roughly three-quarters of those surveyed.

The biggest single driver behind this hiring difficulty is a lack of candidates with relevant experience (cited by 46 percent of respondents). Other reasons include a shortage of candidates who understand the company's solutions (22 percent), high compensation requirements for qualified candidates (16 percent) and increased hiring competition from peer organizations (16 percent). 

Despite a number of actions to boost hiring with better recruiting tools and increased compensation, hiring challenges are still holding back the bottom line.

That's where indirect sales comes into play.

"The golden age of the channel has arrived," said Dave R Taylor, CMO of Impartner. "In a business climate where qualified enterprise sales candidates are costly and in short supply, companies can't put all their revenue eggs in the direct sales basket. Why struggle to hire direct sales people in an extremely competitive market that's stifling your ability to increase revenue, when the indirect sales channel provides an immediate avenue to growth?"

However, Taylor notes that to continue to scale, companies that already have a channel need them to work harder than ever before to make up for the inability to grow their direct sales teams, and companies without a channel need to create one at the risk of being left behind in the market.

In either case, contemporary PRM solutions like Impartner's play a critical role:

1. For companies with an existing channel, if they're still struggling to manage a partner program on spread sheets, using a dated, home grown portal with limited functionality, or using a myriad of point solutions which create a frustrating user experience for partners, they will underperform competitors who have an updated PRM solution. On average Impartner PRM customers see a 31 percent increase in revenue and a 23 percent decrease in administrative cost in the first year of use alone by being able to automate administrative processes and optimize partner performance at every step of the partner journey.

2. For companies without an indirect channel, they will fall behind competitors who do because they lack the additional "feet on the street" they need to be able to make up for the lack of enterprise sales talent available in the market. A contemporary PRM solution helps companies ramp their partner programs 46 percent faster and their partners to revenue productivity 37 percent faster.

In the past, Taylor notes that many companies have resisted indirect sales because of a perceived lack of oversight and visibility. However, solutions like Impartner PRM erase that concern, but making it possible to manage indirect channels with the same level of visibility and control as they have over direct sales.