What would your perfect partner program look like?
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Hi all,
I would like to know, what are your MOST or LEAST favorite parts of your VAR partner programs with your hardware vendors?
Disclosure - I represent a mid-market IT hardware vendor and we are looking to overhaul our partner program offerings. I am doing a little informal market research.
Thanks in advance!
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One thing that we (NTG) find a lot is that many partner programs assume that their partners will be VARs (resellers) who make money from purely selling products. But some key players (like NTG) are not resellers, but influencers. For pure IT outsourcers and consultancies it is nice to have partner programs that provide them (us) inside information and resources without needing to make sales.
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As @scottalanmiller says forcing a certain level of sales.
Making the quoting process horrible.
Not allowing those of us who don't choose to resell to still be the point of contact for consulting/sales with our clients. -
Ok, no quotas - got that one loud and clear
Thanks for the responses! Anyone else?
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My company does not go into any partner stuff. We sell nothing but our time.
If a client wants hardware/software, we recommend solutions to the client, but the client purchases direct from a vendor.I hate dealing with most vendors because of this. They always get pushy to either take me out of the picture (which is not possible as we ARE the IT department for most of our clients) or put me in their MSP program.
We refuse to be part of a program that gives us a financial benefit because that affects our ability to be a completely neutral party that only recommends what we feel is the best solution for our client's specific business need.
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@JaredBusch said:
We refuse to be part of a program that gives us a financial benefit because that affects our ability to be a completely neutral party that only recommends what we feel is the best solution for our client's specific business need.
You don't see this everyday. Good for you guys
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@IRJ said:
You don't see this everyday. Good for you guys
We also tell any prospective client up front, that if they want the cheapest, we are not it. You can have cheap or you can have skilled, you cannot have both.
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@JaredBusch said:
My company does not go into any partner stuff. We sell nothing but our time.
If a client wants hardware/software, we recommend solutions to the client, but the client purchases direct from a vendor.I hate dealing with most vendors because of this. They always get pushy to either take me out of the picture (which is not possible as we ARE the IT department for most of our clients) or put me in their MSP program.
We refuse to be part of a program that gives us a financial benefit because that affects our ability to be a completely neutral party that only recommends what we feel is the best solution for our client's specific business need.
Exactly! Many vendors try and make us a reseller to work with them.
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@JaredBusch said:
My company does not go into any partner stuff. We sell nothing but our time.
If a client wants hardware/software, we recommend solutions to the client, but the client purchases direct from a vendor.I hate dealing with most vendors because of this. They always get pushy to either take me out of the picture (which is not possible as we ARE the IT department for most of our clients) or put me in their MSP program.
We refuse to be part of a program that gives us a financial benefit because that affects our ability to be a completely neutral party that only recommends what we feel is the best solution for our client's specific business need.
When I had my own one man shop I ran this way for a few years, but I had a few customers who just didn't want to deal with the vendors so I became a bit more flexible for them as needed.
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@Dashrender said:
When I had my own one man shop I ran this way for a few years, but I had a few customers who just didn't want to deal with the vendors so I became a bit more flexible for them as needed.
Oh, I am still the one calling the vendor and making the purchase. The client is not doing it. But it is the client credit card or setting up the client on an accoutn with net terms at the vendor.
I do have a preferred vendor I always price against and use maybe 80% of the time. But each client has their own account with the vendor.
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Same with us. We talk to the vendors, place the orders, review the specs, deal with everything - but we don't do the reselling so that we can be neutral. I think that there are more people doing that than vendors realize and a lot of business shifts to vendors that work well with that ecosystem.
Meraki, for example, gets almost no attention from vendors like us because they try so hard to take over the whole thing. They basically cut us out of the process leaving the customers without any means to deal with them because we are the only ones that handle that stuff.
