Slide Show: 2007 Salary Survey

The most startling fact unearthed by CRN's 2007 Channel Salary Survey was that total pay for all tracked positions in the Channel has increased dramatically over the past two years. Business activity in the channel has been increasingly healthy over the past few years, which would tend to boost total compensation, including commissions and bonuses.

An MBA looks to be a good investment for business owners or partners, corporate or executive managers and sales managers. Owners clear an average of 50% more income than average when they have an MBA. For executive and corporate mangers, the premium is 35.7%. For sales managers, it's 34.5%.

What keeps employees around? To non-managerial employees, it's important to provide clear, documented goals with measurable standards of achievement. Companies that do so retain their staff 14 to 30 percent longer than those that don't.

Overall, 96.5% of Channel manager and staff can find at least one reason they'd consider leaving their company. Only 3.5% said they had "no desire" to leave their company.

Vendor-specific certifications don't seem to make a large difference in anyone's salary, while vendor-neutral certifications can make a difference for technical staff, but don't seem to affect compensation of technical managers.