Optimus Technology and Telecom, chief executive officer, Meera Kaul, discusses the VAR busines model and the need for the regional enterprise channel to advance and embrace the changes that are happening in the market.
With the revolutionary pace of evolution within the technology space and the IT industry as a whole, it has become increasingly imperative for channels to revisit how their value offering and their go-to-market methodology needs to change. To remain competitive and to prevent redundancy, channels within the region need to become more agile and in-step with global innovations.
The biggest problem with us as a channel is that we are very slow to change. And this lack of agility eventually means that the best technology and innovations that are happening all over the world take a lot more time to get embedded into the channel itself. This in turn leads to our end customers and resellers adopting this technology much later than the rest of the world. So how do we address this biggest issue that pretty much sits at the core of the VAR business model?
To answer that we first need to understand the current technology landscape. Now there are two dimensions to the constant evolution of technology which VARs need to adapt to. Firstly, the technology itself is changing on a daily basis, with constant innovation and new developments. Secondly, there are improvements and changes on a daily basis in the way we as customers consume technology.
A huge case in point with respect to technology innovations impacting VAR business models is that traditionally, we have sold through the channel, but cloud really makes the channel redundant. Who needs the channel if the customer can approach the manufacturer directly?
On the other end of the spectrum is the consumption cycle of technology. Earlier, the manner in which the technology sale was conducted required the salesperson to educate the customer. That isn’t real anymore because the customer is highly educated now, before he sends out a request for a proposal for a product or a service or a solution, he has already looked at a variety of these across a spectrum and he knows exactly what he is trying to buy. So the job of a salesperson has evolved from that of an educator to that of a convincer.
In the light of these changes within the channel ecosystem, how do we ensure that VARs don’t fail?
With the explosive amount of data and technology being developed, detected and routed into the market daily, on an average, a salespersons time-to-market is very high, ranging anywhere from six months to nearly nine months or even a year for enterprise channels. This means it takes a salesperson nearly a year to be fully trained in any new technology and become effective to close sales around it.
While in a VAR situation a salesperson may be dedicated to one or two products, but within the region the entire channel works in such a way where a sales person would be selling multiple products and solutions. If that statistic is true, that means we can safely assume that for a salesperson, learning the ropes of a more expansive product portfolio would definitely take a longer time.
So in this environment, where new products are being pushed into the market on a daily basis, the pivotal role a salesperson has to play is to not only enable himself but to enable the VARs and the companies he represents, as well as to enable the customer to make a better choice.
Since buyers always want more control, the sales tools can be re-engineered to ease collaboration between resellers and consumers. And the manufacturer can also have a say in how to make it more appealing.
Even the training that we enable the salesperson to undertake to be able to sell a product, if that’s available on a mobile platform with structured modules would make his life easy and allow him to hit the market running.
In a nutshell, sales tools are critical and need to become more engaging. Maybe we can look at high-tech to develop better sales tools instead of having power-point presentations stacked upon peoples’ computers. Eventually, we need to understand that marketing and sales are so married together that sales cannot be easy and effective without a good marketing strategy, so research and white papers and comparative documents will help the customer validate how his buying decision is correct with you. And that is a very important tool for a sales guy to reduce his time to convince and sell.
Then of course from a manufacturer’s perspective, from a supplier’s perspective, or from a high-tech company’s perspective, since there is a lot of globalisation and selling is happening everywhere, there is a need for more product demonstration centres everywhere. And the sales enablement tools can be made more manufacturer specific, and then the distributor can make them portfolio specific and the VAR can make them his portfolio specific.
VARs need to become more agile, keenly looking at how technology consumption is changing and adapting their offerings accordingly to avoid redundancy. At the same time, they need to recognise how the role of the salesperson has evolved and that the sales title has become too big for the salesperson to really hit the market running. They need to empower him with effective sales tools, from training, to convincing the customer to enabling the actual sale. And in the bargain, they can benefit all stakeholders in the technology ecosystem through a collaborative sales platform.
About the author:The views expressed in this article are Meera Kaul’s own opinions and not necessarily those of Channel Post Middle East and Africa.
