Gartner To VARs: SMBs Need You Now More Than Ever
Now, more than ever, SMBs need solution providers to be trusted advisers and knowledgeable business partners. Identifying their exact needs will preserve VARs for when the recession ends and growth returns, said Joslyn Faust, principal analyst with Gartner's SMB Research Group.
Faust presented the opening keynote at Ingram Micro's 2009 Partner Connection Summit in Hollywood, Fla., seeking to highlight recent Gartner research on SMB spending habits in the channel.
"Quantifying the value proposition for small and medium-size businesses is more important than ever before," Faust said. "Customers have business priorities, not technology priorities. They're not saying to you, 'I need a CRM,' they're saying, 'I want you to help me know my customers.' "
In a Gartner survey of those business priorities, technology purchases came in third in order of importance for SMBs, well behind developing new products and getting sales and marketing leads, Faust said. VARs need to pitch solutions to those customers that solve business problems first, and upgrade technology second.
"SMBs are still spending money on technology -- they're just not saying so," Faust explained. "You need to demonstrate how IT can help SMBs be better for their customers, and ensure that the products and services you recommend can leverage their existing infrastructure."
Faust described 2009 as a "year to prepare." Gartner predicts that growth in the tech sector will start to look up starting in 2010, and, according to Faust, see further upticks in 2011 and 2012.
VARs and the tech sector in general won't see the impact from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in verticals such as health care, government, energy and education until next year, Faust said. Next year also will see a "ripple effect" from the stimulus that catalyzes spending on business intelligence, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), enterprise resource planning and other service and efficiency-oriented technology segments, he added.
Above all, SMBs want their VARs to make doing business easy. Another Gartner survey Faust presented found that SMBs cared most about ease of integration and ease of doing business over any other criteria for their solution providers. The survey also found that what SMBs felt VARs lacked most was a clear understanding of how their business worked.
"They're saying, 'Make it easy,' " Faust said. "You'll also notice that the top answer for what they think VARs are lacking is not 'Know the technology better.' They think you know it pretty well."
VARs also need to help SMBs by being a strategic adviser, because SMBs in a down economy don't have time or money to develop their tech strategies, Faust suggested.
Another Gartner survey item found that of all their sources for learning about and acquiring technology -- from DMRs to manufacturers to systems integrators and software developers -- SMBs considered VARs their most important sources of advice.
"They want to buy what they need, when they need it," she said. "Spin your technology to show how it can help them. That's what makes them sit up and listen."
Moving away from specialties and targeted leads and toward the "any customer with a buck" approach to sales leads might be tempting with the economy still in tatters, but Faust advised against it -- you can only see "everyone as a prospect," she said, "if you have unlimited resources to chase them."
"Think of your sales pipeline like a closet," she said. "If you have a big closet that's packed and unorganized, it's junk. If your pipeline is like that, it is also junk."