Channel Economics
Use when reviewing or rebalancing direct vs.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
That's a smart business question. To really understand channel profitability, you'd need to look at several factors: customer acquisition cost for each channel, the fully-loaded cost to serve customers acquired through that channel, lifetime value differences, partner discounts or commissions, support load per channel, and even overhead allocation. Different channels have different retention rates and deal velocity. The challenge is that most companies don't actually track all these things precisely, so you might need to do some estimation. What channels are you currently using?
CHANNEL ECONOMICS ANALYSIS COST-TO-SERVE BREAKDOWN (per new customer) • Direct sales (enterprise): 18,000 (high support load, pilots) • Self-serve web: 450 (onboarding automation, minimal support) • Partner-led (reseller): 8,500 (partner commission 20%, lower support) • Affiliate/referral: 2,100 (commission only, viral loop) CHANNEL ROI VERDICTS • Direct sales: DOUBLE-DOWN (LTV 95k, 5.3x ratio, sticky) • Self-serve web: MAINTAIN (LTV 12k, 26.7x ratio, scale ceiling) • Partner-led: DEFUND (LTV 22k, 2.6x ratio, margin compression) • Affiliate: DOUBLE-DOWN (LTV 18k, 8.6x ratio, low CAC) SENSITIVITY INFLECTION (WHEN CHANNEL BREAKS) • Direct: Breaks if average deal size drops below 45k • Self-serve: Breaks if support costs rise above 600 per customer • Partner: Currently unprofitable; needs 35% margin boost • Affiliate: Sustainable above 200 referral signups monthly RECOMMENDED MIX From current: 40% direct / 30% self-serve / 15% partner / 15% affiliate To target: 35% direct / 45% self-serve / 0% partner / 20% affiliate CRITICAL ASSUMPTIONS → Churn: Direct 5% monthly, self-serve 8%, partner 12% → Support cost: Direct 200 per month per customer, others 50 → Sales cycle: Direct 90 days, others 0-30 days → Retention premium: Direct customers stay 2.4x longer
About this skill
name: channel-economics description: Use when Use when reviewing or rebalancing direct vs.
Channel Economics
Use when reviewing or rebalancing direct vs. partner-led channel economics — computing fully-loaded cost-to-serve per channel, channel ROI with cash / LTV / marginal lenses, and optimal channel mix subject to constraints. For Head of Commercial, RevOps, and VP Sales doing quarterly channel review when pipeline is mixed (e.g., 60% direct + 40% partner-led) and nobody actually knows which channel makes money after CAC, support load, partner discount, deal-velocity differences, retention differential, and overhead allocation are all loaded in. Outputs cost to serve, channel ROI verdicts (DOUBLE-DOWN / MAINTAIN / DEFUND / EXIT), a sensitivity-tested channel-mix recommendation, and the diminishing-returns inflection (e.g., 'which channel actually makes money — direct or partner?').
What you get
- Public GitHub repo (alirezarezvani/claude-skills)
- the channel-economics skill folder with SKILL.md. Part of a 337-skill / 30-agent / 70-command install.
Customize your output
- Fork the repo and adapt the skill's instructions and references to your workflow.
Example output
Activates automatically when your request matches Channel Economics; chains with the other skills, agents, and commands in the collection.
Best for
Creators, builders, and teams using Claude Code.
SKILL.md preview
---
name: channel-economics
description: Use this skill when reviewing or rebalancing direct-versus-partner channel economics, computing fully-loaded cost-to-serve, and recommending an optimal channel mix under real constraints.
version: 1.0.0
category: Sales / Sales and Commercial
author: AgentVolt
license: proprietary
tags:
- sales
- sales-and-commercial
---
# Channel Economics
Runs a quarterly-review-grade analysis of which channel actually makes money once CAC, support load, partner discount, deal velocity, retention, and overhead are all loaded in.
## When to use
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