Got Marketing Savvy?

Everyone seems convinced that solution providers are 100 percent loyal to them, that little or no channel conflict exists, and that they can discern which partners are capable of actually providing value,despite the fact that a particular reseller may be moving a ton of their competitor's products.

The latest bit of omniscient nonsense to emanate from vendors concerns the need for these executives to justify their existence by creating lead-generation programs that they intend to manage. Alas, most of these efforts seem doomed.

Some folks apparently have forgotten that time is indeed money. By the time most vendors get a hot lead into the field, it's as cold as ice because the customer has moved on with another purchase. These leads are rarely qualified, so most provide little more than wild goose chases. Besides, it's virtually impossible for a vendor to create and maintain a level playing field when it comes to distributing leads.

The overriding goal of these efforts is to spur demand as efficiently as possible. The problem is that most vendors are two to three degrees removed from the end customer. So the best they can do is launch carpet-bomb marketing efforts in the hopes that they might actually hit something. At the other extreme are solution providers, who almost uniformly are marketing-challenged.

So the question is how does the channel get to the middle of these two extremes. The answer is for distributors such as Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex, Avnet and Arrow to step up. They need to work with their solution provider customers to educate them,and, in many instances, actually run their marketing efforts. This way vendors will get what they are looking for in terms of bang for their channel dollars, and solution providers will get a service from distributors that has tangible and immediate value to their businesses.

Until we solve this issue, vendors will continue to live with delusions of lead-generation grandeur while business opportunities for solution providers will remain restricted to how many new people they can actually see and talk to in any given week.

What's your solution for spurring leads? I can be reached at (516) 562-7477 or via e-mail at [email protected].