Seminar Savvy

Actually, Gilden's company, Acuity Solutions, doesn't throw parties at all, but it does hold a number of events in its native city of Tampa, Fla. For example, a few months ago the solution provider hosted a luncheon that drew between 20 and 30 people--executives and decision-makers from current clients, prospective customers and even vendor partners--at a local Italian restaurant. The topic of discussion? IT security.

Spam, viruses and malicious e-mail dominated the conversations, and that was a good thing for Acuity, which partners with such security vendors as Check Point, Nokia, and RSA Security. Perhaps that's why nearly one-third of the attendees ended up purchasing something from Acuity within a few weeks of the luncheon.

"Our seminar series has been very successful for us," says Gilden, a partner at Acuity. "You meet new people here, and you create relationships. These are the things that generate business."

At first, Gilden says he and his partners were skeptical that the local seminars and luncheon series would draw enough people. After all, Acuity, which specializes in security, storage and network technology solutions, had just gotten off the ground in 2002. How, then, could it be expected to get an audience for tech seminars? Gilden and his crew were undeterred.

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"Sure, we stumbled the first few times, but you can't be afraid to try," Gilden says. "You have to stick with it."

Acuity did, and it has paid off. It has established itself using the seminar series, which the company holds twice a quarter, and has grown steadily as a result.

"It's hard to market yourself if you're a VAR because you're really selling your services and expertise, not products," Gilden says. "In the end, your reputation is your brand."

Acuity joins a number of other successful solution providers that are raising their profiles in the market, finding new customers and closing business. They share how you, too, can improve your branding and marketing efforts this year.

The Main Event
Like Acuity, Networks Plus Technology Group, a San Diego-based technology consulting firm, has been successful with technology events and solutions seminars--so much so that not even the threat of last summer's rampant forest fires could keep people away. According to Networks Plus president and CEO James Kernan, hosting face-to-face events is the best way to find new clients and forge relationships.

"The most productive marketing effort we have is our seminar series," he says.

Given that it was a small networking solution provider with fewer than a dozen employees in 2000, Networks Plus was initially challenged to get its seminars up and running. But soon the events began to spark interest as Networks Plus aggressively courted local decision-makers and CXOs in the San Diego area. Today, Networks Plus can draw anywhere from 15 people to more than 200 to its seminars, depending on the topic, Kernan says.

"I was surprised by how easy it was to get people to the events," he says. "The more we did, the more requests we got. It got to the point recently where we were getting more requests than we could handle."

Networks Plus also offers its audiences some high-profile customer case studies, such as PETCO Park, the new baseball stadium for the San Diego Padres, which is getting network services and cable installation from the solution provider.

"To attract the masses, people like to see big, sexy products," Kernan says. The results? Networks Plus doubled its revenue last year, reaching $16 million in sales.

Lean On Partners
Often, VARs say that branding their businesses around a vendor is fruitless. To a certain degree, that's true; VARs often get lost in the mix trying to generate demand for big-name products, and the vendor's brand subjugates their own. Nevertheless, some solution providers still say the best way to open new doors is to team with vendors and use them for support. The trick, says Amir Sohrabi, is to make sure the vendor plays your game and markets your solution instead of its own products.

"The manufacturers don't need us to brand them," says Sohrabi, executive vice president of Managed Solutions Planning Xperts (MSPX), a solution provider based in Arlington, Va. "We try to tie our marketing to a specific vendor and combine efforts to get more bang for our buck."

A perfect example is the solution provider's recent campaign with Enterasys Networks, which included Enterasys' Dragon IDS but centered on MSPX's network infrastructure assessment service, dubbed Xview. Some vendors, as many VARs discover, like to call all the shots and hog the spotlight, but MSPX has a strong, effective relationship with Enterasys. The joint effort worked so well that MSPX has teamed up again with Enterasys and Single Digits, a Wi-Fi hot-spot provider.

"It takes a little bit more time and energy when there's three of us involved, but it also brings more resources to the table," Sohrabi says.

MSPX has also worked on marketing and branding efforts with Tech Data as a TechSelect member, as well as ASCII, the largest organization of independent solution providers in the industry. In fact, MSPX received some high-profile exposure at Comdex last fall as a presenter for ASCII's solutions seminars, where it promoted its wireless solutions.

Market Intelligence
Not every marketing strategy is universally successful for VARs. Sandy Potter, vice president of business development and marketing at Norcross, Ga.-based Optimus Solutions, says local seminars and vendor events simply don't work as well in her company's region. Atlanta, she says, has become overrun with such events.

"It's about making your marketing message intelligent to the problem. We brand around the issues we can solve," Potter says. "You can't lead with the fact that you carry certain vendors like IBM or Cisco, because so does everyone else."

Like many companies, Optimus often relies on direct-mail campaigns to reach new clients, but the effort is much more targeted and refined than shotgun marketing. Instead, its marketing team takes a methodical approach in identifying prospects by vertical industries, researching their potential needs and then developing case studies for possible solutions. Through a grassroots effort in both the Southeast as well as the greater Chicago area, the company gathers customer references and profiles.

"The first question we get from prospects is always, 'Where have you done this before?'" Potter says. "We probably spend more time developing these case studies than actual dollars on the mailings."

After identifying the targets and tailoring potential solutions for them, Optimus begins a three-pronged approach via the Web, direct mail and telemarketing to reach customers. Lately, the solution provider, which saw sales increase during the past two years, has been focusing on newly identified needs, such as IP-telephony solutions.

"It has gone from something that people talked a lot about in the past to something companies are actually budgeting for today," Potter says.