In the war for talent, differentiate or die

Robertson Sumner's MD Marc Sumner on how to search for the best talent

This article originally appeared in Top VARs 2018

The UK IT industry has faced a skills and talent shortage for a few years and this has been particularly prevalent in 2018, especially in the reseller/managed services space. This doesn't mean that VARs aren't growing, in fact at Robertson Sumner we have seen some massive success stories this year; the simple difference between the soaring and stagnant VARs is that the growing VARs differentiate themselves.

Most VARs spend a lot of time identifying and articulating how their products and services or strategy differentiates them from the competition in order to attract clients. However, how much time is spent differentiating their offering or recruitment strategy to attract the best available talent?

If UK VARs don't start thinking about how they can differentiate themselves, the talent pool will continue to shrink and this will eventually lead to multiple VARs dying.

But how can resellers differentiate themselves in the current market? We see two simple ways to do this.

1) Change how you approach the market and what you're able to offer the available talent.

Firstly, before businesses have even approached the market, they're spending a good amount of time putting themselves in their candidates' shoes and introducing benefits (home-based working, 30-plus days' holiday, innovative monetary incentives) to differentiate their message to the market.

2) Fish in a different talent pool and grow your own talent organically.

The second method resellers are adopting is to look in a different talent pool. Searching for a ‘book of business' reseller candidate can take months, which is time that most resellers just don't have. Therefore VARs need to ask themselves: ‘If we can't get a billing reseller candidate on board, what's the next best alternative?'

Robertson Sumner has found four key pools that businesses have targeted to keep up with their aspirational growth plans, which are laid out below.

To conclude, whether you differentiate by offering the talent market a truly bespoke offering or if you decide to differentiate by targeting a different talent pool, Robertson Sumner's strong recommendation in these current market conditions would be ‘differentiate or die'.

Talent pool: Graduates

Who does this wel? Storm Technologies

Storm and many other VARs target graduates to meet ambitious growth goals. Graduates come into the business with limited experience but equally have no bad habits and, in cases such as Storm, have grown into credible account managers and the future management of the business as they are highly engaged with the business and its values.

Talent pool: Apprentices

Who does this well? CCS Media

Apprentices come into a business with a lot of energy, low salary expectations and are easily mouldable. If a firm has the resource to train and develop such talent, this is a brilliant method to bring through its future salesforce.

Talent pool: Vendor or distribution candidates

Who does this well? Vohkus

There is less of a shortage of talent in the vendor and distribution markets, which can therefore offer a talent pool used to selling IT solutions with a full understanding of the channel but lacking a book of business. If you can offer end-user training, it's an easy transition for business and candidate.

Talent pool: Sales experience outside the IT industry

Who does this well? Softcat

Softcat has arguably seen the biggest amount of growth in the reseller space (over 1,000 per cent growth in the last 12 years) and it has done this by aggressively hiring candidates who fit the culture regardless of their background. This strategy has led to growth over 50 straight quarters.