DNS Arrow prepares to reward top performers

As market conditions worsen, distributor vows to invest in loyal partners

DNS Arrow HQ: The distributor will offer step-by-step selling guides to help partners drive sales

DNS Arrow is taking a tougher stance on its reseller base, pledging to plough resources into those partners that offer return on investment.

The distributor revealed how it will be sifting through all of its 7,000-strong reseller base and deepening its relationships with its top 600 partners.

Steve Pearce, managing director of DNS Arrow, said: “We have to place our bets on the winners. We want and intend to focus our energy and resources on those partners that are most important to us. We cannot afford to waste resources on
those that only want to deal with us occasionally.”

However, Pearce insisted that the distributor is still keen to work with its entire base.

“We are definitely not going to ignore the rest of them,” he said.

“We have several thousand customers that periodically buy from us, so we will be looking at managing them on a more limited service-level agreement and pushing the small-value, high-transaction business to a more automated system.”

However, vendors are also in the spotlight ­ if their products cannot add value to DNS Arrow’s existing offering, they will not be included in its line-up, Pearce added.

The distributor is investing heavily in helping its partners to drive business by launching a series of step-by-step, how-to-sell guides to its technology that partners can use as sales tools. The first is on virtualisation, and the firm is also working on a security guide.

“We do not want to lose sight of the distributor’s job, which is to stock product and supply it, but to develop the business we have to get creative and focus our resources,” said Pearce.

Alastair Edwards, senior analyst at Canalys, said that the strategy makes complete sense.
“I can see the logic in this for a company like DNS Arrow, which has a relatively high cost of sale compared to the broadliners.

I think we are going to see a lot more of this happening as distributors start to tighten their belts.”