Whose Job Is It To Generate Demand--Vendor, Reseller Or Distributor?

But Riddle's team managed to bring backup into the conversation. INC then persuaded Inland's IT people to visit distributor Ingram Micro's solution center in Santa Ana, Calif., where a Veritas representative also joined them. Thanks to that meeting, INC closed a $50,000 disaster-recovery up-sale that included HP servers, a tape library and Veritas software.

"Before that on-site discussion at Ingram, we weren't even close to that conversation," Riddle says.

As that sale illustrates, demand generation is not just up to the vendor or reseller. It's also the distributor's job. "Everybodyhas some responsibility," says Joe Gruca, Ingram Micro's vice president of sales.

Such was the discussion at the recent Global Technology Distribution Council Summit in San Francisco. Top distributors, including Arrow, Avnet, Ingram Micro, Synnex and Tech Data, discussed the major issues and concerns for IT distribution. Among the priorities was demand generation; distribution execs exchanged ideas with various vendor officials from EMC, IBM and Symantec to find the right model.

There are some gray areas, however, when it comes to the roles of the vendor, reseller and distributor. The vendor's primary responsibility is to provide "air cover," says John Koury, vice president of global channel marketing at EMC. "Because we own the brand," he says.

Meanwhile, the VAR is responsible for occupying and holding territory"closing the sale. Somewhere in between is the distributor, which can be an invaluable partner in the demand-generation process. Just ask Pete Elliot, director of marketing for Key Information Systems, an IBM premier business partner in Woodland Hills, Calif. "Last year, we did two mass-marketing campaigns with Avnet," Elliot says. "Our campaign to sell server consolidation with IBM's pServer/AIX yielded $30,000 in revenue at a 23 percent level of profitability."

Without Avnet's marketing assistance, Elliot couldn't have pulled off the campaigns. "The mass data requirements alone would outstrip my resources," he says.

But even though distributor marketing clout and savvy back many sales, the end user usually doesn't know who Avnet is, says Roger Arndt, vice president of product and customer marketing for Avnet Hall-Mark's IBM Division, San Antonio. "Our role is primarily that of a facilitator," he says.

Another key distributor function is to educate resellers about the strengths and weaknesses of solutions from multiple vendors. For example, video capture and editing is a popular new technology, with four different vendors dominating the market, says Dan Schwab, vice president of purchasing at D&H Distributing, Harrisburg, Pa. So D&H runs training programs and also puts a shorter version of the training sessions on the Web. Once the vendor generates consumer demand, the distributor helps resellers sort out competing products.

"The manufacturer heightens consumer awareness through end-user advertising that this technology is available," Schwab says. "Then the reseller's responsibility is to make sure they know their end-user base and can see where the new technology can enhance business."

Often, vendors must work closely with distributor partners to increase efficiency for both end-user and channel demand. For example, Yosemite Technologies primarily markets its TapeWare product on the Web, says John Maxwell, vice president of worldwide marketing for the Fresno, Calif.-based backup software publisher. But Ingram Micro is a key partner because it also spreads the word about TapeWare. "Ingram creates demand," Maxwell says, "but it's reseller rather than end-user demand."

Peter Jordan ([email protected]) is a freelance writer based in Franklin, Tenn.