Preparing to clean up

This might be jumping the gun just a tad but, according to last week's announcements from Hewlett-Packard (HP), it's something that most vendors are already starting to think about: having a spring clean of their channel. Even though we are still in the throes of winter, it seems that HP wants to prepare its channel early, perhaps hoping for some kind of bumper year.

Although in many ways a channel spring clean, or any spring clean for that matter, is a good thing, it needs to be for the right reason and done in the right way. Otherwise you end up consigning things to the bin, just for the sake of it.

And, of course, in accordance with Sod's Law, the moment you don't concentrate and throw away something on a whim, the following week, you suddenly find a contract that reseller would have been perfect for.

The whole point of spring cleaning is to evaluate what you have, what you no longer need, or what is no longer useful, in the hope that this makes what you have left clearer, cleaner and easier to use.

This is where not just spring cleaning, but feng shui-ing channel partners comes in. Now, while I'm sure most of us consider this old Chinese art of placement to be utter tosh (after all, how can simply putting your rubbish bin in the south-facing corner of your room stop you from making money?) there is actually some common sense in the trendy fad. It's about putting what you have in the right place, which is of paramount importance when operating in the channel.

There is no point, for example, in having 90 per cent of your partners operating within a 20-mile radius, or having 500 partners hitting the retail sector but only three targeting public-sector contracts. Most partners do not want to compete with five billion others for a slice of a pie that is decreasing in size, so continually evaluating and trimming numbers is a good idea.

Helping partners to seek alternatives to their existing markets will not only help to re-energise and reinvigorate them, it will mean that partners are operating in a place that is right for them.