Recently, Intermedia announced they had joined the portfolio of vendors at Scansource/Intelisys. By my count, Intermedia is the 62nd cloud comms provider in the portfolio (that is viewable publicly). Also, by my count, from publicly available info, TBI has 58 and TCG has 53.
How would a partner know which to quote?
How would a channel manager (CM) at any of these Brokers know which to recommend?
Some of it is personal experience, but that means the newer members of the portfolio have to figure out how to provide “experience”. Some of it is relationship with personnel at a service provider — the CM or the Partner worked with the SE or the CM or the VP elsewhere.
But if that UCaaS aisle looks like the potato chip aisle at the grocery store to Buyers, Partners and CM, what happens? Do price and SPIFF come into play?
It depends on the Buyer. What are they looking for? Some don’t know because they don’t know what is available. It is up to the Partner to do sufficient Discovery to understand what the Buyer needs. Replacing like for like is not only Lazy, but a disservice to the Buyer. So much functionality is available today for an affordable price. The Partner should be educating Buyers on the enterprise class functions that all SMB can now afford and leverage.
On a coaching call with a sales manager discussing a deal for a retirement community, the questions are about What is working, What is not working and What is Possible.
Now the what is Possible is only if the Partner knows the functionality available. Eating the dog food provides user insight. Use cases can be helpful. Vertical collateral that explains benefits and specific features that a vertical takes advantage of can be actionable.
I have tried for years to get SP’s to create, define and verbalize their Target Market and their Value Proposition. Well, with 62 vendors, the ones that are most clear about that will win business.
There are a bunch of companies in the Partner Marketing space. Marketing to Buyers is different that marketing to Partners. And marketing through Brokers is a different animal as well. The key to marketing to partners is clear, concise messaging that can be remembered and repeated.
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