Best Practices for Channel Partner Recruitment: Simple Advice for Exceeding Goals

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by Taylor Deakyne, Marketing Development Manager, Onestopclick

In this article, we explore the ways IT vendors can maximize their success finding the right VARs while making fewer mistakes along the way and growing their channel beyond what they thought possible. The advice in this article comes from seasoned pros that joined together in a VARs/Resellers/Distributors discussion group on LinkedIn.

Channel recruitment

The IT market is full of casualty stories when it comes to VAR recruitment. Unfortunately, developing a stand-out win-win partnership with a VAR it is the “I should have…” story that is told more often than the “Cinderella” one. But that can change right here, right now, and it’s even easier done than said.

Simply following in the footsteps of those who created their own successes through many long years of “at the coalface” experience can help you avoid mistakes, dead-ends and pitfalls when pursuing VARs for your firm. Simply put, these experts want to keep you from having to reinvent the wheel and put your firm on the path to ultimate goal expansion.

Groundwork and homework – There’s no getting around it, to be successful at recruiting VARs you have to put in the time and effort to find the right fit for your firm. This means investing in a significant amount of preliminary research and partner profiling. As a vendor, your efforts must be in line with your VAR’s target market, and you must know if there’s a strong match before you even open lines of communication.

Clear messaging – Communication is a two-way street, and it’s vital to be able to both define what your company needs in a VAR and what you can do for the VAR. Our experts suggest that without a firm grasp on these messages, your voice will never reach the right ears.

“Many vendors fall into the trap of shouting about what matters to them. Resellers don't really care. They want to know that what you are offering is relevant to them,” says expert Julie Tatum, EMEA Senior Partner Marketing Manager at Emulex, UK.

Personal contact – Achieving “face time” with a VAR means making personal contact, and you must be making contact with the decision-maker, not a temporary intern. Our experts suggest that when you find the right contact, send a five-sentence email – short and to the point – and then follow up the old-fashioned way to start a productive dialogue.

Knowing what to sell – Your customer is the VAR, and as a vendor you must sell yourself as much as you sell your product. However, as our experts point out, you must realize that VARs have much different interests and motivators than an end user, so be prepared to adapt your sales pitch to make it VAR-friendly. This means laying out for the VAR not only how they will make money with your product, but also following up by stating all the other benefits for them to sell your products. 

“The VAR is going to respect you more if you acknowledge what your product cannot deliver as well – and hopefully your product’s strong points will tick enough boxes to make the vendor a good fit for the VAR and the VAR’s customers,” says expert Sherri Stanfill, Director of Business Development at Allied Network Solutions, who has over 20 years of experience in all aspects of channel marketing and channel partner recruitment.

Taylor DeakyneTaylor Deakyne is the Sales & Marketing Manager at OneStopClick based in London, UK. Drawing on his IT channel experience, Taylor seeks to pass on hard lessons learned while in the field. Taylor is a regular participant in social media discussions-- contributing insights on marketing & sales related subjects within the IT sector. 

For a more advice from Sherri Stanfill and more than a dozen other experts in the VARs/Resellers/Distributors discussion group, download this free informative guide, Best Practices for Channel Partner Recruitment