After a global pandemic and supply chain crisis, IT distributors are poised to provide sales support to vendors that channel partners need now.

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For decades, the IT industry’s distributors have provided indispensable integration, final assembly, and financial assistance to tech vendors everywhere. More and more, those companies are now being looked to for their sales expertise.

Surprised? Don’t be. While leveraged and loved for years by vendors in the know, the sales teams of IT distributors have been a godsend to a growing number of companies that are changing business models, embracing emerging technologies, and trying to recover from the global pandemic. This includes partners that discovered how those companies can help them find new customers, sell deeper into existing accounts or expand into market adjacencies.

Distributors are helping IT support companies capture revenue through improved account management, upsell and cross-sell programs, and contract renewals.

However, not every partner understands how to take advantage of the services that distributors have to offer. This is especially true of smaller firms that doubt how those services can help companies of their size. It turns out they can — and in more ways than one.

Here’s a quick overview of sales capabilities available to channel partners — and why these strengths can help up-and-coming vendors everywhere.
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Fulfilling the Needs Business Partners Have Most

Ask MSPs and VARs how their businesses are doing and you will get a mixed or nuanced response.

Coming out of the global pandemic, most will say they weathered difficult times fairly well. They helped customers establish professional setups in home offices and launch e-commerce sites so companies could remain in business. They also secured assets so miscreants could not take advantage of the chaos that followed the dislocation of millions of workers everywhere.

Through it all, technology providers sold record levels of notebook computers, monitors, collaboration applications, and security software services. Results from the Channelnomics 2022 Channel Forecast Report revealed that those firms retailed so many of these solutions that their businesses reverted back to a model not seen in years.

“In many ways, partners today look like those at the outset of the cloud evolution a decade ago,” summarized the report. “Their businesses are weighted too heavily toward transactional product sales, they’re targeting tepid, barely sustainable growth, and they’re short-arming reinvestments in capabilities and capacity at keep-the-lights-on levels.”

Recognizing this, partners have prioritized increasing sales and marketing capacity in 2022 above all other reinvestments into their businesses, according to the study. But they do not have as much to invest in 2022 as in previous years, so they are eager to avail themselves of outside support where possible.

This is where distributors play an important role. Many distributors are adding new personnel to their sales organizations. One reason is the changes in partner business models. Compared to a product sales organization, a subscription-based firm that depends on monthly recurring revenue (MRR) requires more transactions to achieve similar levels of annual revenue. Without the type of assistance that a distributor can provide, these new models can negatively impact on return on investment (ROI).

So, what are some of these sales services? GTDC members offer channel partners pre-sales technical expertise to help with solution configuration, customization, integration, installation, and provisioning. Distributors can also help with management and support for digital solutions that address business problems.

These services can be quite extensive and exacting. Many distributors have pre-sales engineers available to consult with partners trying to define and implement solutions for customers. These engineers are experts in creating cross-vendor solutions that fit the budgets of end customers and complement their existing infrastructures and applications portfolios. Those professionals can also help partners perform demos and evaluation units to customers and follow up with expertise to address questions and integration issues so providers can close more sales.

Distributors have developed capabilities and teams to help specifically with end customer renewals to support IT firms with business models more focused on recurring revenue. These include steep investments in management systems and data analytics, plus multi-lingual sales consultants who can help customers analyze utilization rates, usage patterns, and outcomes to ensure that customers renew and expand their technology investments.

Also worth noting is financial credit. While outwardly not as important in a digital services world, these services are nonetheless significant in the new era. Customers still need help financing deals, and many partners do not have the financial wherewithal to borrow against their own businesses. Having the financial stability of distributors to fund new deals, project expansions and renewals is still key to closing more sales.