Ingram Revitalizes SMB Alliance
The Santa Ana, Calif., distributor also will trim the roster to 3,500 members from 5,000 and focus heavily on about 1,000 companies, said Justin Crotty, vice president of North American channel marketing at Ingram Micro.
“[The number of members] swelled over the years, and we lost focus on a lot of these partners. We couldn’t track 5,000 partners,” Crotty said.
The face-to-face initiatives, including regional training and educational seminars, will focus on 1,000 solution providers that generate the bulk of the revenue for Ingram Micro, Crotty said.
SMB Alliance events are scheduled for San Diego, Houston, New York and Cincinnati, with two smaller events set for St. Louis and a city not yet determined, said Deb AlBayati, SMB Alliance marketing manager. Ingram Micro expects to limit attendance to 50 members per event to encourage idea sharing, she said.
David Omlor, CEO of QLAN, a Laguna Hills, Calif., SMB Alliance member, said the organization has not borne much fruit, but the new direction gives him hope.
“They initially sent out a launch kit. But … they [never] engaged in a meaningful way with the manufacturers to build programs for the SMB space for small integrators like QLAN,” Omlor said. “Those [changes] are all powerful statements, and I look forward to participating in these initial things.”
The SMB Alliance previously was more of a menu-based, self-service offering, Crotty said. “This is more event- and training-focused,” he said. “We hope it gives two benefits: one, to our sales organization to know customers more deeply, and second, to help customers understand what other solution providers are doing.”