Silence Is Not Golden
That disregard for channel partners is one more sign of the technology tunnel vision and Wall Street myopia that drives the big boys. They are so focused on claiming a hot technology knight that threatens their majority market-share position and sweeping it off the chess board that they completely disregard what impact the deal might have on channel partners on both sides of the deal.
Can you imagine making a deal and then refusing to tell the sales folks from the company you've acquired whether they have a job? That's just what these big vendors are doing when they make a deal and fail to communicate directly with channel partners. What's laughable is that often the CEOs have absolutely no clue about the channel implications of these deals. When you view the incoming partners that come along with an acquisition as corporate assets, the lack of communication could be viewed as a violation of the corporate officers' fiduciary responsibilities.
What's troubling is that these deals are coming at such a frenetic pace that solution providers are in a constant state of flux trying to make decisions with no information. With solution providers increasingly left by the vendors to twist in the wind, more and more partners are continuing down the path of building self-sustaining, vendor-agnostic businesses that can thrive no matter what M&As reshape the business. As children, my siblings and I were sometimes told by our parents that "silence is golden." That may be true for children. But it's a recipe for disaster when it comes to solution providers trying to figure out just where they fit in a newly merged company's sales plan.
What vendors are treating you like children? Let CRN Editor/News Steven Burke know at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at [email protected].