Reseller Channel - The Change is Overdue
The pace that technology is moving today never ceases to amaze me. Some channel partners are still trying to figure out VoIP and now there’s unified communications, virtualization, and the cloud! It’s enough to challenge even the most visionary VAR or telecom dealer (the community that UCStrategies refers to as “Solutions Integrators”). And what about the significant number of traditional VARs and telecom dealers whose business model most likely won’t support either the new technology or the current buying strategy of end-user customers?
No matter how we slice and dice it, the world of the VAR and the telecom dealer has already changed dramatically. Business as usual or TWIWAD (”that’s the way it was always done”) definitely isn’t today’s formula for success. What’s different today than even just 2-3 years ago?
- The strained economy has finally changed the buying habits of most customers. Although the shift has been in process for a while, today’s situation has brought the change to the forefront. Customers will only spend if they can see a strong ROI. They are avoiding CapEx and are more open to OpEx.
- PBX sales are different. Without the 2 well-known motivators - a company is growing rapidly and has outgrown its phone system or a company is moving and it’s the perfect time to buy a new phone system - even IP-PBX sales are difficult. The PBX often no longer leads the sale but is pulled along as a necessary part of an overall solution.
- Selling security? Trying to sell more storage? These are purchases that will too often have to wait until business is doing better unless they too are part of an overall solution sale.
- Customers trying to do more with smaller staffs have become candidates for managed services, leading to new opportunities for those VARs who have already started drinking the managed services kool-aid (didn’t the telecom dealers invent “managed services”?).
It doesn’t matter if you’re a reseller (Solutions Integrator) or a vendor depending on the reseller channel for revenue - the old ways don’t work anymore! In a recent white paper, “Survival of the Fittest”, I discussed in detail the changing reseller profile and the impact on vendors. Happily there are Solutions Integrators who are doing very well right now and will continue to do so. Many of them have been in a long process of evaluating their model, their customers, the market and technology trends - and making significant changes to their business as a result. As I talk with thriving Solutions Integrators, the changes that are most common among the group include:
- Moving from generalist to specialist - whether it be focusing on a specific industry, solution or market segment
- Painfully shifting the entire organization from product selling to solution/consultative selling
- Hiring a marketing specialist or outsourcing marketing, i.e. making it a line item in the budget
- Networking with other Systems Integrators to fill gaps in expertise or geography
- Developing strong relationships with key vendor partners
- Resellers - take a look at this list and if you can’t check off even one of the five changes, you’d better get busy!
Vendors - it’s time to assess each of your channel partners as the first step in determining how you can best help them as they’re making the necessary changes to be thriving partners, not just surviving partners. It’s amazing what we’ve learned with the channel assessment tool that we developed - and it’s scary too!
Remember, vendors - just have a meaningful dialogue with members of the channel and you’ll agree that TWIWAD doesn’t work anymore!!!!!
Pam,
Your advice to everyone in the supply chain for business telephony technology is very practical, since IP Telephony, wireless mobility, and, most importantly, the convergence of telephony with unified communications, is spelling the end of traditional wired desktop telephony as we know it.
The label of “integrator” will become increasingly important, not only for device-independence interoperability between all modes and media of communication contact, but also for strategic integration with business process applications that will increasingly initiate direct, personalized contacts with mobile individuals (business users, consumers).
Commonly known as “Business Process Enabled Communications” (CEBP), such business contacts will reduce the cost and time delays (human contact latency) currently generated by the need to use people to initiate real-time contacts to recipients to deliver or retrieve important, time sensitive information. The flexibility of mobile access and multimedia application interfaces can now be strategically applied to high-value business processes for business ROI payoffs, not just lower costs. CEBP will complement traditional user-initiated self-service applications (online web-based services, as well as legacy IVR applications).
Can traditional VARs provide their customers with this kind of business process analysis or will they have to team up with business consultants and text messaging providers as a first planning step in the sales cycle of unified communications technologies?
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The high knowledge worker will certainly be a market to focus on. But the traditional interconnects still have millions of customers that need an easy to use and easy to maintain SIP communications system that is the underlying glue to hold everything together. This IP PBX will integrate with PDA’s, CRM tools, ERP systems, yes. But it also needs to act like an old key system to satisy the lower knowledge workers and resellers who just need to deliver efficient dial tone and park a call on any line. We do this at pbxnsip by listening to market forces and creating applications that will apply across all the different spectrums of users and integrators.