I'm Your Partner, Not Just Your Reseller

VARBusiness

Fast forward to today. I was sitting in my office discussing the finer points of the relationship between an integrator and a manufacturer. Unfortunately, I was using several expletives. I had just heard one of our longtime partners was thinking about dropping us because they felt we weren't "adding value."

"We did seven figures with them just last month," I yelled. "They are part of an integrated offering we're about to release that will bring in a ton of business for them!"

What were they thinking? I wanted to know.

And this brings me back to those 12 commandments, specifically commandments three, four and seven. For those that don't have them memorized commandments memorized-and our vendor partners all should-here are the relevant ones in all their glory: No. 3. Thou shall be easy to do business with at all times; No. 4. Never covet thy partners' accounts; and No 7. Honor those who helped you grow.

I'd love to add two more: No. 13. Thou shall share the pain when pain happens; and No. 14. Your partners are your customers.

Let's take a look at our history with this particular manufacturer. It is not Cisco. That alone often makes its products more difficult to sell. We have been working with them since 1999 and have a good ability to espouse their value proposition. We have brought them into several of our largest accounts, selling seven figures worth of their products into one account alone. We have supported them when they experienced growing pains, making sure customers were taken care of and didn't replace the equipment.

Over the past couple of years, we have seen several local account executives come and go. It appears as if corporate memory becomes cloudy as people leave. I just heard from the customer that we generated seven figures of business with and brought this Manufacturer X into. This customer has to bid out all procurements valued at more than $10,000. "Yep", he said, "Manufacturer X was in here today. They asked who we bid to and said it didn't matter to them who we went with since all three companies were great."

I later asked the manufacturer for a few additional points on the opportunity to ensure our win and allow us to make money, and we were denied.

I found out today that another of our vendor partners approved a deal registration--you know, one of those programs that allows us to actually make a decent margin on selling someone else's product--for one of our deals at one of our customers. The only problem is that they approved someone other than us for the registration. Oh yeah. They also approved us first a week ago. And, by the way, this manufacturer also has Dell as a partner, and it gets to bypass deal registration altogether. "We'll have to figure this one out," the vendor said. Yes, it does have to figure this one out.

Some organizations are schizophrenic. We have a partnership with one company where one of the local account executives is unbelievable in a good way: We partner.

What does that mean? We find as many opportunities for him as he does for us. When we have an opportunity, he supports us by selling our skills and capabilities to the prospect. We're important to him. So why is this organization schizophrenic? Because another one of the account execs doesn't care whether we sell their product to a prospect or a different company sells their product to the same prospect. It's all about them, not our partnership.

I recently ran a contest within my organization entitled "What people want." Seth Godin, a marketer and speaker, wrote in his blog that people want to feel special. For example, they want more attention than the person sitting next to them. They want a seat at a sold-out movie. They want to be noticed, but not too noticed. I asked everyone in my company: "What do our customers want?" The best answer was, "Customers want to hear about us from our partners." In other words, customers want to know they are making the right choice when they buy through an integrator or VAR.

I think we all realize that to be successful you must maintain a balanced relationship with your partners. It seems that, today, all too often, manufacturers look at their channels as necessary evils, and they treat them as such.

I'd like to ask a few questions of manufacturers. How do you compensate your regional account executives to build successful long-term relationships with your regional partners? How do you measure the satisfaction of your complete partner base? How do you ensure corporate knowledge of where accounts came from is maintained as you experience turnover within your ranks? Who is your customer? Is it the end user or the integrator, or both?

I often find myself wondering why selling $2 million of one of our vendor partner's products gains less notice than when a single end user buys a quarter of a million dollars. I find myself wondering why our vendor partners are more than happy to extend a few extra percentage points of discount to a D&D end-user customer, but not to D&D. I find myself curious why a vendor partner is offering free classroom training seats to an individual customer as opposed to my consulting practice. I would like to know why it's not important to our vendor partner what integrator our customer buys from, but it's supposed to be important to us that our customer buys only from a specific manufacturer vendor "partner."

I don't ask for much from our vendor partners. At least I don't think I do. I ask that while we educate ourselves about their products, they educate themselves about our solutions. I ask that when we bring them into opportunities they fully support us, as we do when they bring us into opportunities. I ask that they share the pain of lowered profit margins when we're trying to win a deal as opposed to us having to feel all of the pain. I ask that they appreciate my account executives when they sell a quarter-million-dollar deal as much as they appreciate the end user. A simple "thank you" will do. I ask that our partner's C-level and V-level people introduce themselves to our C-level people and V-level people, as they do to our end users.

Manufacturers have partner programs. They list a series of steps a "partner" needs to take in order to be authorized to sell their products. This may include training, the procurement of lab or demonstration gear and a dollar volume commitment.

I submit that this is not a partnership, it's an agreement for resale. A partnership goes much farther. It includes an agreement by both parties to market each other's solutions. It includes a way for both organizations to increase profitability and to be financially motivated to work together. It includes an interest by both the account executives and by the management of both parties to be successful and accountable.

So I would like to pose a challenge to manufacturers' CEOs and people responsible for the channel. Instead of just talking to your highest volume integrators, who probably have a great relationship with everyone at your organization, talk to your lower producers and find out why they aren't doing more. They can tell you what's not working. If you are truly committed to a successful channel program, provide financial incentives to your regional account executives (not just your channel teams) to build lasting strategic relationships with regional integrators. And lastly, treat your integrators as customers. They really are.