VARnishing the channel message - what resellers can learn from Ronseal

CRN's Sam Trendall examines whether the channel's most beloved buzzwords are doing more harm than good

Sam Trendall
I'm sure I'm not the only one who read analyst Rolf Jester's blog today with an uneasy mix of amusement, agreement and abashment.

As we reported this morning, the Gartner VP lamented what he sees as the all-too-frequent use of some terms that will be awfully familiar to anyone even remotely cognisant of the IT channel. Focused on value-add? Meaningless. Solution provider? Irrelevant. End-to-end offering? Vague. Trusted partner? Empty.

Jester admits that he himself has been sucked into using such channelisms. As have I. But I doubt I'm the only one who inwardly winces when they hear themself blithely bandying around terms such as "solutions portfolio" or "strategic differentiator".

(While we're on the subject, my own personal bête noire is the word "solution". Isn't everything we buy a solution to a perceived problem of one kind or another? No one questions the value-add of a café that sells soups and sandwiches, rather than lunchtime hunger solutions. Garden centres somehow survive selling shrubs and soil. And, yes, they do call a spade a spade, and not a digging and turf-dispersal solution.)

But I digress. Could the IT channel really get used to the idea of cutting out the business speak and buzzwords? And would it really be a better place if it did?

I certainly find it hard to disagree with Jester's assertion that the most common buzzwords are now so ubiquitous as to have become "white noise", invariably causing potential customers to "switch off". The first person to tire of the connotations of the word ‘reseller' and stick the term ‘value-added' before it was, I hope, lauded by their peers and bosses for a very canny piece of marketing. But something tells me their early-mover thought-leading advantage is a bit lost in the mix now.

With everyone adding value, taking a holistic approach and acting as a trusted adviser to their clients, maybe some in the channel could benefit from taking a more simplistic tack. Perhaps something akin to the Ronseal approach.

As both a lifelong inhabitant of rental accommodation and the world's least handy man, I've never owned a fence, and if I did, I don't know if I'd ever have cause to stain or varnish it. (To be honest, I'm not even confident I'd hold the brush the right way up.) But if that day ever comes, there will surely only be one product I reach for. I may not know exactly what it does, but I do know that it does exactly what it says on the tin, and that's good enough for me.

The channel's tin is all too often emblazoned with something woolly and unquantifiable, such as "turnkey solution" or "end-to-end service wrap". Perhaps some customers would be more inclined to put that tin down and pick up one that said something like "working computers", "effective anti-virus" or "helpful support staff".

But something tells me my solution to this problem is unlikely to catch on anytime soon.

Sam Trendall is special projects editor at CRN