I'm Your Partner, Not Just Your Reseller

I was at a conference two years ago at which Robert DeMarzo, publisher of VARBusiness, discussed the finer points of the relationship between an integrator and a manufacturer. He put up a slide that is permanently imprinted in my brain: the 12 commandments manufacturers should heed when working with the channel.

CHRISTOPHER LABATT-SIMON is president of network integrator D&D Consulting, Albany, N.Y. You can send feedback via e-mail to c.labatt@dandd.com.

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.