Distributor Shares Secrets To VAR Success

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How do you succeed as a distributor? How about by focusing less on how VARs can sell product and more on how they can improve their business. That's just what ScanSource did last week when it brought nearly 900 solution providers to San Diego.

The Greenville, SC-based value-added distributor dedicated the first half of the one-day Impact Now conference to keynotes and sessions aimed at helping solution providers recruit and retain sales reps, improve customer satisfaction, find venture capital funding, and even market themselves to would-be suitors.

"ScanSource is my favorite distributor by far," said Stephen Wright, president of Wright Business Technologies, a Houston-based solution provider who attended the conference. "They really care about the reseller. Even the conference—half the sessions are not on selling to us. They're more on how we can sell more. And that helps them sell more."

Richard Lowney, CEO of Clearview Software, an Amherst, NH-based independent software vendor, said that ScanSource wants to move a lot of hardware, but the company has recognized the need to move solutions whether product-based or technology-based.

"ScanSource Knows we know what the customer needs, and that we understand the vertical market," Lowney said. "They realize companies need to partner with people like us because we know where the issues lie. In the past, you might sell hardware, but you got out of town before dark. With solution selling, you need to be involved."

In the past, ISVs like Clearview were treated as a necessary evil for vendors to sell their hardware, Lowney said. "But we don't feel that way with ScanSource," he said. "They make us a necessary part of a sale."

Mike Baur, CEO of ScanSource, said that, as a value-added distributor, ScanSource's goal is to find ways to help solution providers get together and network with each other over business and technology issues. This is the first year for the Impact Now conference, which morphed from the company's regional Solution City events it held the past couple years, Baur said.

"We've made an industry event with a trade show to help you with business issues and keeping up on the latest products," he said. "The typical trade shows are extinct mainly because there is some vested interest in keeping it alive. If this one doesn't work, we will just let it go away."

NEXT: How to hire and retain sales talent

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