The Four Traits of a Trusted Advisor

If I had to pick my most annoying phrase right now, it would be “Trusted Advisor”. Greatly overused, often misrepresented, and largely misunderstood, those two words are now well and truly entrenched in the “Meeting Bingo” category – they seem to get bandied about without any particular definition or consideration. But while I may hate … Continued

You Get What You Reward So Be Careful

At present there is a lot in the news about reward and compensation systems driving the wrong behaviour at banks and financial institutions. Luckily the ICT industry is not facing a Royal Commission, but there are certainly some badly designed incentives and discount structures delivering predictably poor outcomes, which we will explore in this month’s … Continued

Improve Profit Through Operational Efficiency

Most channel firms today acknowledge that transforming their business from hardware-centric reselling to a business model that embraces services and recurring revenue is not only the future, but should at this point be the present. There are however, many moving parts involved in the transformation process, notably anything to do with business operations and process … Continued

Distribution and Channel Alignment

Author: Cam Wayland Vendors often measure, profile and segment their partners and their distributors based on revenue performance. Rarely do they dig deeper to look beyond the numbers to what is actually driving the revenue via distribution.   When it is working well you will usually find there is “alignment” between the capabilities, resources, and vendor … Continued

Getting Your Vendor’s Attention

Author: Tamara Hodkinson The 80/20 rule is a reality that all vendors deal with when it comes to their channel revenue. By this I mean that 20% of a vendor’s channel partners will deliver 80% of their channel revenue. This is nothing new. It does however tend to mean that those larger partners (the 20%) … Continued

Use Customer Segmentation to Enable Partners

I often ask Channel Account Managers (working for vendors or distributors) why they think their partners buy products from them. And I’ll get a range of answers from “we have the best technology” to “great service” to “a strong relationship”. But at least one person will respond with the correct answer, namely, “to sell it … Continued

Predictions of What Will NOT Happen in 2018

At the beginning of each year the channel trade press, IT industry consultants and pundits take a stab at what will or may happen in the coming year. While so much has happened in the IT industry in recent years, it seems that some things never change. With that in mind, this year we thought … Continued

Forget About Disrupting and Just Get on with it

If “Cloud” was the most overused word in 2016, then “Disruption” would be my pick for this year’s winner. It seems that the mantra for the new breed of workplace warriors is “disrupt, or be disrupted”, and anyone who isn’t turning their business on its head is surely going to end up in the dictionary … Continued

Don’t Trust Your Partners? Trade Places

I’ve been in more than a few meetings with vendors where the question of trust has come up. Typically it sounds like this… “I’ve got an opportunity, and I want to give it to a partner, but I’m concerned they’ll make a mess of it or sell something else, so I’ll hold on to it … Continued

Getting Annuity fit – What a Gym Can Teach The IT Industry

As the IT industry moves further towards an annuity, subscription based model, it is worth having a look at other industries where this business model is more mature as an insight to a possible future landscape for MSPs. One such industry is surprisingly the gym and fitness industry. There are many similarities between the two … Continued