Perfect pitch

When it comes to marketing, resellers often face a dilemma - do they take the resources offered by vendors and PR firms, or do it their own way?

Resellers are caught in something of a marketing crossfire. On the one hand, they face the challenge of making their own voice heard by potential customers, over and above the noise made by any number of rival reseller offers.

On the other, they must field a barrage of messages coming at them from vendors anxious to enlist them as shock troops in the battle to propagate their own marketing agenda.

The conventional solution is to take on board the marketing resource offered by vendors and their distribution partners, while using it as much as possible to further awareness of your own brand.

This need not be a matter of stealth. Most vendors are well aware that there is a dual purpose to be served, and are keen to provide what back-up they can in order that both sets of interests be met. Sometimes this support will take the form of hard MDF cash, sometimes pre-published collateral, sometimes customisable collateral and sometimes something a little more consultative.

"Resellers should take advantage of advice from their vendors." says Paul Callow, general manager of trade with printer vendor Brother UK. "At Brother, we run a proactive marketing advice and support campaign for all our channel partners - from the large IT reseller right down to the one-man band.

"This doesn't mean we just offer generic guidance on a web site or in newsletters - it means there are real people to talk to and get advice from, and marketing collateral to use to sell products."

Callow claims that, unlike some manufacturers, Brother's marketing support offer is not effectively limited to larger resellers. "We proactively take our collateral to smaller operators as well," he says. "In such a cut-throat, price-driven market, smaller dealers both appreciate our support more and they also have the flexibility to able to make quick decisions on marketing campaigns."

Working closely with a vendor on marketing can be more than a matter of resource, material or otherwise. There is always the advantage of association with a well-known brand - or so well-known brands would have you believe.

"It is easier to sell a trusted brand," says Rakesh Mahajan, general manager of marketing and strategy at BT Indirect Channels. "Working with a leading vendor can help a reseller to build on the trust that the end user has in them.

"Our resellers regularly tell us that the brand building campaigns BT undertakes help them when they are making their sales. For example, last year's advertising campaign for BT Broadband helped raise awareness among customers and made them more receptive to our resellers' sales approaches."

Mahajan warns though that there is no magic formula for the conversion of marketing to sales. But he says segmentation and an understanding of the simplicity or complexity of the sale is key.

"Wherever possible, resellers should tailor marketing collateral provided by the vendor to their own marketing requirements and audience," he advises.

Neil Robertson, chief executive of the Neverfail Group, says marketing is best seen as part of an uphill slog rather than a miracle cure. "Winning new customers is a difficult business," he says. "It involves marketing to create the pipeline, protracted sales negotiations and often discounting to close the deal, especially if there is not real differentiation in the solution offered."

But he nevertheless believes that marketing is a key process for all parties. "Helping our partners to open new accounts and to add more value into existing accounts is helping us to achieve our objectives. What works for the channel works for us," he says.

There is little value in resellers going their own way, believes Krista Hohmann, head of marketing at vendor Caudwell Communications.

"The relationship with your vendor is possibly the most powerful marketing tool you can have. Co-branding and joint activities will give you extra brand credibility and marketing resource," she says.

But Hohmann admits that marketing is far from an exact science, whether it is resellers trying to stimulate demand with customers or vendors angling for reseller support.

"What you think is the most important thing about your company may not turn out to be the key thing for potential customers, and you need to know that before you invest in your marketing," she says.

She claims this is a lesson that Caudwell itself learned the hard way. "Before we launched our offering we undertook an intensive survey of existing and potential resellers to see what they thought were the most important things when choosing a vendor," says Hohmann.

"The results surprised us and, as a direct result, we changed the focus of a lot of our marketing activity. This is equally applicable to any reseller looking at marketing to their customers and should be the golden rule of any marketing activity."

George Dziedzic is something of an expert on the subject of unsuccessful vendor marketing aimed at resellers. He is a director of Foster MacCallum, a specialist in setting up partner networks for B2B software vendors.

"We go out and find resellers based on an ideal profile that we work on with the vendor," he explains.

"They will generally have an existing channel, recruited on an ad hoc basis. Because of the way they have typically gone after resellers, they have ended up with a lot of partners with an inappropriate profile. We go back to basics, and work out what to keep and what doesn't make sense."

Big and small vendors have the potential to foul this up, says Dziedzic. "Smaller vendors usually manage channel marketing themselves and get it wrong. And they forget you've really only got one shot at it per prospect. You can't go back if you've messed it up," he says.

"Big companies usually do it well to begin with, but then lose focus on basic principles. This is a dynamic market and things change quickly if you take your eye off the ball."

Dziedzic says some vendors have managed marketing to their existing channel so badly that they are treating partners that have quadrupled in size as though they were still small.

"They supply them through distribution only and starve them of MDF, when they're turning over millions for them. But remember; if you can solve these sorts of challenge between the two of you, you'll be better placed to jointly market to end users," he says.

There will be those resellers who take the view that marketing to prospects is primarily their responsibility, and not something to be left to any third party.

"To be successful, resellers need to take control of their marketing identity and destiny, and plan it in the same way as every business does," says Centennial Software's channel marketing manager Diane Ashfield.

"All too often resellers fail to take this responsibility and rely too much on vendor programmes where the objectives may, let's face it, be very different," she says.

Ashfield reckons a planned approach is what is required. "Different markets and products require different approaches of course, but generally speaking the channel player should concentrate on developing and communicating their USP to customers," she says.

"This may be something like an unusual service or value-add to talk about, or it may simply be their location and corporate personality or reputation for service."

She says that where vendors do become involved, the best to work with are those that really understand the channel and its concerns. "Clear rewards and structure, consistency and constancy, these all count very highly," she advises.

"As with any relationship, trust and good communication is key; vendors that have both a direct and indirect channel will probably always create conflict and unease. Channel players should seek out vendors that are prepared to treat them as partners, to welcome their involvement and feedback, to actively consult their views, through channel councils or forums."

But for the reseller truly determined to plough their own marketing furrow, what is the most effective tack?

Manny Pinon, sales and marketing director with distributor Norwood Adam, believes a mix of approaches is best, according to desired aims.

"To attract customers, use broad and narrow techniques for marketing tactics. For broad, consider PR to get to the widest audience, for narrow consider direct mail, online, telemarketing and a technology or vertical market focus," he says.

Pinon says that to retain customers, resellers need to be consistent by developing a marketing message which is differentiated from other resellers.

"Be in the face of the customer or your competition will be. Make yourself a reference point by using guides as mini-manuals for customer reference. Also use placement advertising in simple terms, with branded note pads, diaries, and clothing which are primarily visual cues," he says.

"Online presence cannot be emphasised enough. Look to use your online presence to build your brand equity and also win the hearts and minds of customers and prospective customers.

"Use interactive online services as well. Create the additional customer experience, provide an electronic knowledge base, ordering point and collateral. Use case studies, downloads or support portals."

As anyone who has been even tangentially involved in marketing a reseller's message over the past five years will testify, there is rather a different climate out there now, compared with the fat years of the back end of the past decade.

"Five-plus years ago, marketing budgets were generous, and exhibitions and events were the favoured tactics to reach new customers," recalls Deborah Lees, marketing manager with Access Distribution. More recently, she says, these activities have been replaced by telemarketing and electronic direct mail.

Pick 'n' mix

Successful organisations are picking from the full marketing communications mix, Lees says.

"They're choosing from PR, collateral, events, seminars, advertising, case studies and references, web, direct mail, and newsletters to reach their target audience. If a reseller only has a small marketing budget, then the priority should be to produce a well-written case study that can be turned into collateral or posted on the web," she says.

Lees says if a reseller's objective is to reach new customers, then using a vendor's collateral should not be dismissed. If the reseller wants to get more business from existing customers, then using collateral under the reseller's brand helps reinforce the reseller's own unique value proposition, she says, since usually vendors allow resellers to take their copy and reuse it under the reseller's own brand.

For some companies, end-to-end marketing support goes further than collateral, customised or not. Graham Bevington, marketing manager at Mitel, says that while resellers need marketing tools that can generate leads and offer to help close the sale, they also need rewards for success in winning business.

"For example, earlier this year we awarded Azzurri Communications with a Porsche Boxster for its outstanding IP sales performance," he says.

Practical advice

Resellers would do well to remember that marketing is not just about winning new business but also retaining existing customers, says Stewart Hayward, commercial director of reseller WStore.

"There's no easy part to getting and keeping a customer, and there is certainly no single answer," he says. "Be very good at one and you'll undoubtedly slip with the other, and realistically the best you can hope is that consistently, month on month, year on year, your attrition rate remains low enough that you are always bringing on more customers than you are losing."

Martin Ebbage, sales director at Oki Systems, agrees that it is just as important for resellers to retain their existing customers as it is to gain new ones. He says the newly launched Oki Community web site supports this aim.

"This is a practical advice and support system designed to educate and help end users produce professional business documents in-house. There are reciprocal links between the Oki Community web site and the reseller's own web site, so that with one click customers visiting the site can be put in contact with the reseller from whom they purchased their printer," he says.

Of course no marketing effort is worth anything without that extra bit of skill in closing the business opportunities that result. David Freedman is IT sector head of Huthwaite International, a behavioural change consultancy which specialises in improving sales results.

"The key is to distinguish your offering, whether that is in terms of products or services," advises Freedman. "At some point, the key will be first class negotiation skills, which are central to building value into your proposition."

He says skilled negotiators know how to generate a 'win/win' outcome without awkward compromises. "Resellers need to be prepared to negotiate on areas beyond price and ensure that, where they give, they receive something in return."

CONTACTS

Brother
www.brother.co.uk

BTIC
www.btindirectchannels.com

Neverfail (0870) 777 1500
www.neverfailgroup.com

Caudwell
www.caudwellcommunications.co.uk

Foster MacCallum (01252) 783 917
www.foster-maccallum.com

Centennial (01793) 344 055
www.centennial.co.uk

Norwood Adam (01342) 870 170
www.enorwood-adam.com

Oki (020) 8219 2190
www.oki.com

WStore (08700) 113 310
www.wstore.com

Huthwaite (01709) 710 081
www.huthwaite.co.uk