6 Questions to Ask Your Vendors
January 28, 2019
Start a dialog resulting in higher returns on investment
By Larry Walsh, Channelnomics Staff
Vendors rely on partners to take products and services to market, acquire new customers, gain market share, and maintain relevance. This dependency is what makes vendors so good at telling partners what they need to do to grow and maintain productive and thriving businesses.
Partners hear and see vendor advice and guidance all the time. Channel chiefs and their teams blanket the channel with messages about the need for adopting new technologies and business models, training on new technologies, getting certified on products, amplifying marketing to capture customers’ attention, and building value-add systems and solutions.
Of course, the underlying themeis sell , sell, sell.
Vendors craft their channel programs with a “carrot and carrot” approach, meaning incentives lead to more rewards and more incentives. They design pathways for advancement, which unlocks incentives, and those incentives open a new pathway for advancement. If you want a better discount, get certified. If you want more market development funds, demonstrate sales. If you want investment, attain top-tier status.
The vendor community wants partners to perform. They want partners to take the initiative. They want to see partners succeed. Partner success is vendor success.
So, if you want to impress your vendor, show them that you’re an engaged partner and planning for the future. Actively talk with them about their goals, plans, and market views. You should seek information to get alignment with vendors. In doing so, you’ll demonstrate a commitment that will enhance your working relationship.
The following are six questions you should ask your vendors to gain an understanding of where they’re going, what they want, and how you and they can better work together.
1. What Are Your Goals and Aspirations?
Vendors talk about goals all the time, but they typically don’t talk about specific goals in public. Moreover, channel chiefs don’t talk openly about their goals and aspirations. It would help if you asked your vendors, channel chiefs, and channel account managers about their goals and where they want to see their business go. The answer will give you a sense of their challenges and how they measure partner contributions.
What You Get: How vendors answer the goals and aspirations question will give you a sense of where they’re going, how they’ll execute their plans, and what’s needed to align your business with theirs.
2. Where Do You See Partners Adding Value?
Vendors have channels because partners can do things they can’t or don’t want to do. It’s that simple. Vendors can’t do everything. Partners do many things better than vendors. So, ask your vendors what you (the partner) can and should do to add value to the go-to-market strategy and customer engagement.
What You Get: Vendors have a good idea of where they want and don’t want partners to play in their go-to-market equation. Often, it’s part of the discounting and marketing equation. If the partner can make money on add-on services, they don’t need to give as much product margin. Understanding where vendors see partners adding value provides guidance on how you should design your profit model.
3. How Will Your Product Road Map Unfold?
No vendor launches a product as a one-off. Every product comes to market with at least three planned iterations, each with progressive improvements or expansions. It would help if you talked with your vendors about their product road maps in terms of capabilities, price points, and release schedules. It would be best if you also asked what partners need to do to get and stay prepared for each release.
What You Get: Understanding the product development road map and having a sense of the development time line enables you to prepare, make investments, and develop solutions that add value.
4. What Is Your Partner Investment Strategy?
Partner relationships are not automatic. They require investment. Collectively, vendors spend billions of dollars annually developing and operating channel programs in support of partner sales and customer relationships.Will they put dollars into training, marketing, field resources, direct investments, and credit and financing? It would be best if you had an understanding of where they see the best bang for their buck in channel investments.
What You Get: Knowing where vendors see the best channel investments will give you an indication of the available resources and how you can best capitalize on a channel program.
5. What Are Your Most Effective Resources for Partner Development?
Vendors craft pretty clear pathways for partner advancement. How partners advance in a channel program varies. It would help if you talked with your vendor about the support and enablement programs that will help your business gain access to new resources and accelerate development. By simply asking about effective and available resources, you’re expressing an intent to grow your business with the vendor.
What You Get: Vendors publicize every channel program. In talking with vendors about available resources, you can access their knowledge about programs – ones they offer themselves or through third parties – that can help accelerate your growth.
6. How Can We Do Joint Business Planning with You?
Vendors appreciate and crave partner transparency. They want to know what you’re doing to grow your business. What vendors don’t do very well is joint business planning with partners. You need to press the issue with your vendors. Ask them about their best practices for doing joint business plans, and talk about how you can effectively execute on plans to get to goals.
What You Get: Don’t expect miracles. Vendors are notoriously bad at following through on joint business plans with partners. It’s not that they don’t care. They’re just too distracted. They have too many competing priorities and partners to address. Nevertheless, expressing an interest in and drafting joint business plans gives you something to work against and use as proof of commitment and performance.
I tell vendors all the time that partnership is not a one-way street. Vendors can’t dictate terms to partners and expect results. They have to make an effort beyond the prescribed programs and automated systems. Likewise, partners need to do the same if they want to get more out of their vendor relationships. Asking these six questions is a good point for starting that conversation.
Larry Walsh is the CEO of The 2112 Group, a business strategy and research firm serving the technology industry, and the publisher of Channelnomics, a news and analysis site for technology vendors, distributors, and partners. Follow Larry on Twitter at @lmwalsh2112.
Partners hear and see vendor advice and guidance all the time. Channel chiefs and their teams blanket the channel with messages about the need for adopting new technologies and business models, training on new technologies, getting certified on products, amplifying marketing to capture customers’ attention, and building value-add systems and solutions.
Of course, the underlying theme
Vendors craft their channel programs with a “carrot and carrot” approach, meaning incentives lead to more rewards and more incentives. They design pathways for advancement, which unlocks incentives, and those incentives open a new pathway for advancement. If you want a better discount, get certified. If you want more market development funds, demonstrate sales. If you want investment, attain top-tier status.
The vendor community wants partners to perform. They want partners to take the initiative. They want to see partners succeed. Partner success is vendor success.
So, if you want to impress your vendor, show them that you’re an engaged partner and planning for the future. Actively talk with them about their goals, plans, and market views. You should seek information to get alignment with vendors. In doing so, you’ll demonstrate a commitment that will enhance your working relationship.
The following are six questions you should ask your vendors to gain an understanding of where they’re going, what they want, and how you and they can better work together.
1. What Are Your Goals and Aspirations?
Vendors talk about goals all the time, but they typically don’t talk about specific goals in public. Moreover, channel chiefs don’t talk openly about their goals and aspirations. It would help if you asked your vendors, channel chiefs, and channel account managers about their goals and where they want to see their business go. The answer will give you a sense of their challenges and how they measure partner contributions.
What You Get: How vendors answer the goals and aspirations question will give you a sense of where they’re going, how they’ll execute their plans, and what’s needed to align your business with theirs.
2. Where Do You See Partners Adding Value?
Vendors have channels because partners can do things they can’t or don’t want to do. It’s that simple. Vendors can’t do everything. Partners do many things better than vendors. So, ask your vendors what you (the partner) can and should do to add value to the go-to-market strategy and customer engagement.
What You Get: Vendors have a good idea of where they want and don’t want partners to play in their go-to-market equation. Often, it’s part of the discounting and marketing equation. If the partner can make money on add-on services, they don’t need to give as much product margin. Understanding where vendors see partners adding value provides guidance on how you should design your profit model.
3. How Will Your Product Road Map Unfold?
No vendor launches a product as a one-off. Every product comes to market with at least three planned iterations, each with progressive improvements or expansions. It would help if you talked with your vendors about their product road maps in terms of capabilities, price points, and release schedules. It would be best if you also asked what partners need to do to get and stay prepared for each release.
What You Get: Understanding the product development road map and having a sense of the development time line enables you to prepare, make investments, and develop solutions that add value.
4. What Is Your Partner Investment Strategy?
Partner relationships are not automatic. They require investment. Collectively, vendors spend billions of dollars annually developing and operating channel programs in support of partner sales and customer relationships.
What You Get: Knowing where vendors see the best channel investments will give you an indication of the available resources and how you can best capitalize on a channel program.
5. What Are Your Most Effective Resources for Partner Development?
Vendors craft pretty clear pathways for partner advancement. How partners advance in a channel program varies. It would help if you talked with your vendor about the support and enablement programs that will help your business gain access to new resources and accelerate development. By simply asking about effective and available resources, you’re expressing an intent to grow your business with the vendor.
What You Get: Vendors publicize every channel program. In talking with vendors about available resources, you can access their knowledge about programs – ones they offer themselves or through third parties – that can help accelerate your growth.
6. How Can We Do Joint Business Planning with You
Vendors appreciate and crave partner transparency. They want to know what you’re doing to grow your business. What vendors don’t do very well is joint business planning with partners. You need to press the issue with your vendors. Ask them about their best practices for doing joint business plans, and talk about how you can effectively execute on plans to get to goals.
What You Get: Don’t expect miracles. Vendors are notoriously bad at following through on joint business plans with partners. It’s not that they don’t care. They’re just too distracted. They have too many competing priorities and partners to address. Nevertheless, expressing an interest in and drafting joint business plans gives you something to work against and use as proof of commitment and performance.
I tell vendors all the time that partnership is not a one-way street. Vendors can’t dictate terms to partners and expect results. They have to make an effort beyond the prescribed programs and automated systems. Likewise, partners need to do the same if they want to get more out of their vendor relationships. Asking these six questions is a good point for starting that conversation.
Larry Walsh is the CEO of The 2112 Group, a business strategy and research firm serving the technology industry, and the publisher of Channelnomics, a news and analysis site for technology vendors, distributors, and partners. Follow Larry on Twitter at @lmwalsh2112.
