A sales channel is a system of business relationships through which you sell your product; for instance, partnerships with consulting firms and VARs that themselves have salespeople. An agreement with Best Buy would be a channel relationship. AT&T is key channel for Apple.
The methods you use to build a channel largely revolve around meetings with other companies, so, no, I don't think age matters as much as knowing how to sell a product to a reseller; how that deal is structured (markups, inventory, spiffs for hitting numbers, sales support, subsidized marketing, &c), how you generate and groom channel leads (pilot programs, pull-through from shared direct customers, tie-ins to services or 3rd party products, &c).
Channel sales managers are more like bizdev than like salespeople (although really, bizdev, channel, and account manager salespeople all share most of the same DNA).
Maybe, but for example, perhaps today completely different things matter? In the past perhaps it was important to get on TV or cooperate with some supermarket chain, whereas today you should have a billion Facebook followers and be pushed by Amazon.
Just playing devil's advocate, anyway... I am all for senior people, getting old myself...
The methods you use to build a channel largely revolve around meetings with other companies, so, no, I don't think age matters as much as knowing how to sell a product to a reseller; how that deal is structured (markups, inventory, spiffs for hitting numbers, sales support, subsidized marketing, &c), how you generate and groom channel leads (pilot programs, pull-through from shared direct customers, tie-ins to services or 3rd party products, &c).
Channel sales managers are more like bizdev than like salespeople (although really, bizdev, channel, and account manager salespeople all share most of the same DNA).