TMCnews Featured Article

The VAR is Dead and Partnering is Born

By Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC

(The following is taken from Rich Tehrani’s (News - Alert) VoIP blog:)

In a session titled “How to Make Money Selling VoIP,” Robert Messer spoke at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO West 2007 today about how resellers need to evolve to become successful. Messer, who works for ABP (News - Alert) Technology, a distributor of communications solutions, said resellers who embrace innovation are most successful. He said you must partner with your customers.

To be a reseller is the wrong paradigm, he said. The most successful resellers reposition themselves as technology partners – not resellers. He said you need to offer services as well as products. You need maintenance contracts and you must find ways to become part of the company you are selling to. As SMBs cannot afford many technology workers, you can make money helping companies who don’t have huge IT departments.

Messer went on to say you should define yourself as an IP communication specialist – focusing on open-standard based solutions. He said there are devices which allow a company to have resilient internet service relying on DSL and cable. If you approach a company with an innovative solution such as this he says you become a technology partner.

Next up was Don Gant (News - Alert) from Iwatsu who started his presentation by asking the audience what is important to them in business. Making money and retaining employees were a few of the answers. He asked what is important to the customer and the audience agreed that customers have the same desires.

Grant asked a member of the audience why he purchased the car he drives. The response was the van did what he wanted at the right price point. It was a Kia, by the way. Grant said that in this case if the dealer gave him a great deal on a pink VW convertible he would have likely declined the offer.

The point? The product has to be the right one for the customer.

Grant went on to read some statistics on employees working from home and how this trend is continuing. He also mentioned studies show the work at home employees are more productive and bring in more revenue than their counterparts in the office.

“UC provides customers with the ability to be in contact” was a pertinent quote Grant made and he went on to say the cell phone has to be part of a UC solution and the desktop must be extended onto the smartphone with embedded software and presence.

He wrapped up by saying we need to consult with customers to help them grow their companies, make money and allow employees to be more productive.

Brit Vickner of Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) talked about how products could eat into margins as they require frequent service calls. In datacom he says occasionally resellers may put in a telecom system with limited prep work and this doesn’t work well in telecom.

Vickner mentioned telecom vendors do a great job with coordination – the service provider, call flows and more. You must build proper expectations he says. “You must have a process” he exclaimed. He continued, “You can always plug in products and technology into the process.”

The number one thing is that the customer adopts your position he says. We need to sell solutions and get the end users to use them as well.

Products need to be flexible and open he mentioned. “More open standards is the key.” This allows you to evolve he mentions.

Vickner went on to say you want an SMB play and an upmarket play. He also mentions you need to stay away from commodity products.

In the Q&A session the theme once again revolved around partnering and not reselling, with all panelists agreeing. As a moderator I would have preferred more dissent to spice things up, but when you are right you are right and the panelists all knew it. It seems the reseller is dead and the partner is born.

If you missed this session, come to future ITEXPOs to stay up to date on making money selling VoIP/unified communications.

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Rich Tehrani is President and Group Editor in Chief at TMC (News - Alert). In addition he is the Chairman of the world’s best attended VoIP event, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)	X
Frequency Division Multiplexing is used in wireline systems such as CATV-Community Antenna TeleVision and DSL-Digital Subscriber Line systems. This form of FDM is also called Broadband Multiplexing o...more

Voice over IP (VoIP)	X
A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more

Internet Protocol (IP)	X
IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data in packets over the Internet. I...more