The channel better start preparing for an economic recovery in 2010 and the business strategies that worked in the downturn won't necessarily work next year, according to Janet Schijns, Motorola's global channel chief.
"Be careful about assuming that your success today will occur tomorrow," said Schijns, herself a 15-year veteran of the channel with her own IT consultancy firm before joining Motorola. Schijns further predicted that IT spending won't simply return to pre-recession levels even if there's a strong recovery.
Schijns, delivering a rollicking, Halloween-themed keynote Wednesday at the CRN Fast Growth Conference in San Francisco, offered compelling and sometimes counter-intuitive advice on marketing, sales, ecosystem partnerships, innovation, talent acquisition and leadership in a changing IT landscape.
The Motorola channel chief focused primarily on new models of marketing, particularly the rise of social networking, while arguing that the old, outbound sales models were dying.
"If sales is who you know, marketing is who knows you. And who knows you has become more important than who you know for the first time ever in our industry," she said.
Schijns further contended that by 2011, the ratio of marketing dollars to sales dollars spent will essentially be reversed at fast-growing IT firms, who will be spending 60 percent of that money on marketing and just 40 percent on sales in two years' time.
She also advised VARs to ignore the advice of some analysts who push Software-as-a-Service business models that discount hardware.
"Software-as-a-Service is only powerful if it's served up on Hardware-as-a-Service," Schijns said. "This is contrary to what other industry experts are saying, who say you should discount the hardware.
"But let's face it, you're better at hardware," she added, noting that most VARs are going to be able to parlay their expertise in infrastructure more profitably than as software resellers. Schijns went so far as to advise VARs to consider discounting software while raising prices on hardware, "forever."
Schijns rounded out her keynote with thoughts on talent acquisition and leadership. She advised VARs to develop four- to-five-year talent acquisition plans and to focus on hiring individuals with social networking skills.
She also lamented the fact that relatively little time and money is spent on training tomorrow's corporate leaders at most companies.
