Q&A: Synnex's Stegner Drops Partner Community Hints

Bob Stegner joined Synnex Monday as senior vice president of marketing, North America, eight months after a long tenure at competitor Ingram Micro. Stegner, well known among the solution provider and vendor communities, aims to develop Synnex's planned partner organization and build tighter alliances with customers on both sides. The noted Ohio State alumnus was on the job for a mere five hours when he talked with CMP Channel about his new role with a former competitor.

I guess the first question is do you feel like you're walking around in the middle of Ann Arbor, [Mich., home of Ohio State arch rival University of Michigan] right now?

That was low! That's a great comment. No, actually I always have a lot of respect for what they've done. I really like the culture here. The way they do some things is very customer-based and very focused on that, so it really fits my style.

It would have been tough for me to go back to distribution, but I've been talking to Peter [Larocque, Synnex president of U.S. distribution] for a long time and it just seemed like the right thing to do. It afforded me the opportunity I really wanted and that was North America. There was a lot of opportunity out there that was just U.S.-based., but I truly wanted to do something North American and this allowed me to take advantage of the customer and vendor relationships that I have in the North American market.

It's good. I've been through this before with Ingram, going to a North American initiative and I know the challenges with it. I look forward to it. I've already received a lot of e-mails just from the Canadian customers since I've come on board.

Let's start at the very beginning. Can you talk a little bit about what you've been up to, and also a little bit more about why Synnex and why now? While it was tremendous exposure and a great learning experience with the world-wide [responsibilities at Ingram Micro], I truly did think I was going to fully retire and just do some consulting, but as the months went on I started realizing how much I truly missed the customer and vendor touch that you have. I had talked to Peter before and we continued to talk. As he started setting the vision for what the future and this new initiative for Synnex was going to be, that's when I really started thinking this could be a good fit for me.

What exactly is the fit? What is your role and what are some of the things you're going to be focused on?

First of all I do want to clarify one thing. Synnex already has a customer community in place that they started. Kirk Nesbit has already started a community, so I didn't come over here just to start a community. That will be something that is under me, and I obviously will have my input on it, but I'll be really focusing on the overall marketing efforts of the whole company for North America, looking at some of the programs we need to do and how to help Synnex meet the goals that they've set.

Can you talk a little bit more about the community in terms of how it's structured now? What kind of members does it have, and where do you see it going?

I don't know enough about it. It's really more in the development stage. It's not a full-fledged customer community yet, but it's not something I came in to start. It's something that Synnex had started and I will simply help them enhance it. It's in its infancy stages right now, and it's said to be developed down the road.

Obviously you have very good reach into the reseller community now. Will recruitment be a big part of your involvement in getting the community up and off the ground?

Anybody who's a senior vice president of marketing is always actively involved in sales. In the program, the communities are definitely there to enhance the relationship with the respective distributor. I will do anything that I can do help sales make that community into something that enhances the relationship with Synnex.

NEXT: Stegner Addresses Vendor Issues

Does the same [personal commitment] hold true from the vendor side?

I have very strong relationships with the vendors. I think that the track record for the past speaks for itself. I've just started to really get entrenched with the vendors that Synnex has and look at which ones would be a fit for this type of program. But it's not the only thing that we have. We have a lot of other things that we need to get out there as far as helping drive sales, such as finding ways for Synnex to get closer to the end user, which all distributors want to do through their reseller partners.

We want to find out how we can put better programs together for Synnex to help them work more closely with the vendors in order to help the resellers sell the respective vendor's products. [A community] is a portion of it, and it's just like it's no different than anything else. I have a lot of responsibilities. A customer community will be one of them, but I have someone running it right now in Kirk Nesbit.

Can you give us a timetable as to when the next step is for that partner community [which will be called Varnex]?

I don't have my email yet, and I've talked to Kirk for a total of 20 minutes, so I would say let me get a month under my belt so I can really go through it. They've got a meeting scheduled in November, but I'm not prepared to discuss it fully yet until I can sit down with Kirk and go through the whole program and see what Synnex has already got set up and see what if there's anything we can tweak it a little bit or if it's fine just the way it is.

What do you think is important for partner communities in 2008?

The first thing that's important is that it shows value to the VAR. That's the primary thing. If it shows no value to the VAR, there's no reason for them to join it. The second thing is it has to show value to the vendors on behalf of Synnex. Most importantly, as you go along that line, it has to make sense to Synnex.

Is there anything not out there today that you think will be important for 2008?

If I told you that today you'd go tell the guys at Ingram! I do have some things in mind that can set it apart from others but we're definitely not ready to talk about that yet. There are some things out there that can be done to a customer community that can enhance it for the VARs.

CRN: What do you think of customer communities in general? There are a lot of communities popping up now, distributor agnostic.

There are a lot of them out there. I thikn you're going to have a couple of people out there starting up communities that are not specific to a distributor, but I think it's very important for a distributor to have a community that allows its VARs to participate.

Aside from communities, what are some of the other things you'd like to focus on?

This is a new position. Vice president of marketing is not new to Synnex, a senior vice president of North American marketing is new to Synnex and the purpose of that is to help me utilize my relationships across the border to better help Synnex with the various vendors and customers across the border. As you and I both know right now there's a big push on behalf of end users to have VARs that make it easy for them to do business across the borders. That's something we are really focused on with the vendors working with Synnex, how to take advantages of opportunities in Canada or in the U.S.

One of the things I've found in the past is that the Canadians have a lot of great ideas that maybe the U.S. doesn't have. This will give us at Synnex the opportunity to utilize some of the ideas the Canadians have down in the U.S. and vice versa.