What are the most effective distribution channels to sell SaaS products?

There are several options available which would work for SaaS. The best one I can suggest is Referral Program. The referral program would need to have Training Documentation well defined as well as marketing material. This would allow you to pay other consultants or individuals to pipe leads or signups to your site to get exposure. This is especially effective in SMB market and tends to be targeted to the customer who would purchase. The second is to be more specific in contacting specific demographic targeted customers (be aware in the US you must be subscribed to Do Not Call Registery to Scrub call list for telemarketing or be potentially be fined by US Government). You can engage Lead generators to accomplish this for you but be careful that they are registered and scrub their list against the US Do Not Call Registery. Email Campaigns are good if you have users who have requested to opt into receiving an email and also have opt out options to remove themselves from the list to comply with US and other countries SPAM Laws. Then there are advertising though multiple media types beyond email and banner advertisements such as radio, TV, Billboards, Magazines and other print media.

There are many ways to do it.

One way to do it through more of a "growth hacking" method is to create a profile for your target customer, then build your own proprietary database of target customers by scraping data online.

Once you have contact info added to your database, you should be able to effectively build out a direct marketing strategy using a marketing automation tool such as www.close.io to help automate a high volume direct sales effort.

This will be the most cost effective strategy, but there are many other ways to do it too if you have a budget for customer acquisition.

Have your considered a partner/reseller/affiliate program?

Unlike direct sales force that require a high upfront labour cost, partner programs are highly scalable as partners only earn commission when a sale is generated.

I'd advise that your company be as partner friendly as possible. Commission is rarely the primary motivator for partners who earn the majority of their income offering their own services to your potential clients. If your company is hard to do business with, or the user experience tarnishes your partner's reputation they will stop sending new clients your way.

Cheers,

Mick