For marketers who walk the walk

The more I talk to partners in the IT and telecommunications industry the more I feel their collective frustration at the vendor community. Vendors in this sector are fairly similar they mostly have a US HQ and they more or less divide into 4 regions which are roughly North America, EMEA, CALA and Asia Pacific. These structure and coverage models looks fine as part of the corporate overview but does it really work at ground level. And do global processes such as Self Service really work for their loyal partners?

I am not going to single out one vendor for good or bad examples as most of the channel partners deal with several vendors although there are still some that remain exclusive. As an aside I support that fact that vendors should create as part of their partner program a special award for partners that have remained exclusive for an extended period of time like 5 or 10 years, this is highly commendable given the turbulence in this industry over the past 10 years.

I am still a firm believer in the fact that people do business with people and any vendor that can push back on the global pressure of centralisation and say we really honestly have to make it easier for our partners to do business with us, otherwise they will go and buy some other vendors products. New vendors are entering markets where the traditional vendors are either static or being acquired and we all know what happens to external facing staff during a merger, they all face internally looking for a role and security.

Partners are then left to fend for themselves, the all too familiar corporate message, it’s all on the website and in the email that was sent from the US, oh and in the webcast where you had to dial a US number to access, wow that is just such a global approach, as a partner I can’t quite believe how accommodating you are being of me the small loyal partner based in Bristol.

Partners are then also left to find out essential business transformation information by going to the Partner Portal and logging on using their PRM ID to the secure area. I still can’t quite understand why vendors are forcing their partners to use only one method of communication i.e. the partner portal when they are marketing and actively trying to sell solutions that allow customers to interact with businesses on any number of levels.

At the end of the day this is supposed to be a partnership and both parties rely on each other to exist and grow. Partners want fast and easy access to an account manager and to information that will help them sell, preferably quickly and effectively. In my opinion major vendor channel management and channel marketing still has a long way to go to hit the mark, but those vendors that understand and listen to their partners will receive the greatest rewards in the quickest time. Face to face communication is key as you can’t have a partnership without first having a relationship.

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