Being Direct With VARs

One of the most pressing issues facing solution providers serving small and midsize businesses is the number of vendors contacting customers directly without informing the so-called "trusted partners" that brought the deal to the table in the first place. This issue of how many vendors have your clients' names and what they do with those names is the subject of our cover news analysis this week.

STEVEN BURKE Can be reached at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at sburke@cmp.com.

Certainly, even a direct sales bigot would concede that it is bad business and sneaky at best to try to take such a deal and move it to a direct relationship without a partner's input. Any such play is confusing to customers, who look to solution providers as their trusted advisers/outsourced IT departments. Those that doubt this is the case are living in the channel dark ages. It violates all tenets of rudimentary SMB economics for vendors to think they can cost- effectively go direct to the SMB market.

Vendors must adopt clear, printed channel policies that give the solution providers that made an initial license/maintenance sale a set deadline to obtain the renewal. Whether that is 30 or 60 days before the contract is up should be decided between the vendor and its partner. These policies then should be updated annually. In addition, vendors must adopt a no-nonsense set of rules guaranteeing solution providers that customer names will not be shared with other vendors, affiliated companies or even solution provider competitors. That's just a good, standard privacy policy.

Of course, more than a few vendors would prefer to operate in the shadows with no printed policy on when and under what conditions they will contact an SMB customer. All the better to pull the rug out from under their "trusted partner" so they can take the deal direct.

What vendors are not being direct with you? Contact Steven Burke at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at sburke@cmp.com.

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