Leader: So tell them what you want, what you really, really want

If I had a fiver for every time I?d heard a vendor describe itself as the channel?s greatest friend I?d have ... well, enough to buy a round of drinks in central London at least. And the same could be said of the distributor community, which would have us believe it would bend over backwards to help the dealers.

It?s hard to know how many of them actually believe this hyperbole and how many of them are just making all the right noises, but the bottom line is they can?t all be the vanguard of the reseller channel. So, what do the dealers and resellers really think of the support they get from the people they buy from? PC Dealer, together with research firm Context, asked the channel who?s good and who?s bad, what they like and what they don?t like (see Page 16).

When asked which vendor is the most helpful, Hewlett Packard came out smelling of roses, with 20 per cent of PC dealers and 43 per cent of printer dealers giving HP the thumbs up. This leaves Compaq, IBM and everyone else playing catch up. Interestingly enough, when asked who the least helpful vendors were, guess what? That?s right ? HP was crowned people?s choice yet again. So, keep up the good work HP, but remember to try harder.

As for Compaq, the world?s biggest shifter of boxes is unlikely to be top of the pops in the channel after announcing it was setting up a direct sales arm for the micro business sector.

Northamber and Ingram Micro proved that despite pressure from more specialist distributors, there?s still a place in the market for the big broadliner. But with two-thirds of respondents complaining that response times from vendors and distributors are poor, there is still a lot of work for everyone to do to get their customer service levels up to speed.

There are some clear messages coming back from the dealer channel about the different levels of interaction with manufacturers and disties, but when asked if they were happy with the training on offer, around one in four dealers failed to answer. Training is a key issue and with 32 per cent of dealers happy with training provision and 45 per cent unhappy, the jury is obviously still out on this one. Dealers are going to have to make the most of every opportunity to tell their business partners their likes and dislikes. After all, if you don?t voice your opinions, no one will listen to your complaints.