Introduction
Customers expect more value from their resellers. Resellers have a history of shifting boxes, connecting printers, taking care of cabling, maintenance and updating hardware.
But the world has changed. Solutions need to be combined to managed end-to-end solutions. Resellers need to think in eco-systems. Real added value has to be delivered.
And now resellers are faced with either making this shift or disappearing. And who is going to help them make the shift?
The role of vendors
Vendors are good at making products and creating content. Presentations, leaflets, whitepapers, battle cards, tooling. That’s what they do best. And it is up to the resellers to bring the product to the market. To make life easy for resellers, each vendor has created their own portal with all their content.
So far so good.
But resellers have multiple vendors, and find it hard to check all those vendor portals. What vendor content is used at the sales meeting between a reseller and its customer? Probably something old, probably something they’ve created themselves, and most often nothing.
The role of distributors
Who is the perfect fit to help resellers do a great sales job, and providing all relevant content. Content to enhance the sales call between the reseller and the customer.
That’s the distributor. The distributor has an overview of the market, the positioning of the resellers, the offerings of the vendors and the eco-systems.
It’s up to the distributor to help resellers go into consultative sales mode. Know what to ask, know which trends to discuss, which solutions to present and know how to sell, know what information to share with their customers.
In a world where distribution has less to do with physical distribution, the role of the distributor has changed. It’s their role to bring market & solution knowledge to the resellers. And deliver real added value.
The feedback loop
In all meetings between resellers and their customers, data is collected and exchanged. This data can be captured to continuously learn and improve. And offered as feedback to vendors, distributors and the resellers.
How to be a value added distributor for reseller sales teams
Real value added distributor take the role to add smart content to the sales meetings of their resellers, and their customers. Smart content which enables them to properly sell managed solutions, eco-systems, etc…
As a distributor you know your market and have access to all relevant content produced by your vendors. Converting this in ready to use content for your resellers makes the difference.
The first distributors that understand how to change reseller sales, will be the ones growing market share.