KEY TAKEAWAYS
surefire way to make a vendor take notice, but
only a vaunted few partners can rightly claim that
spot. For many vendors, certification is considered important because it shows a willingness to
invest in, and develop expertise around, the vendor’s offerings. And certification often translates
into significant bottom-line benefits. According
to Cole, partners certified in Adtran’s technologies
grow 40 percent more than partners who are not.
INVEST IN CERTIFICATION as a
way to stand out in the crowded field
of partners.
SELL TOTAL SOLUTIONS rather
than products.
CHAMPION VENDORS’
ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES to
increase your visibility.
ATTEND PARTNER CONFER-
ENCES and vendor user groups to
consult with insiders and learn about
new technologies.
BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER
and put your innovative ideas to work.
with complementary products and services at
the same time as Microsoft. As Elliot sees it,
winning awards or achieving a certain level of
partnership is great, but Workshare still has to
translate those achievements into revenue. Being among the 75 ISVs that participated in the
Office 2007 TAP enabled Workshare to drive
revenue, Elliot says.
Realistically, only a select few partners can expect to participate in something like a TAP. Yet
most vendors offer partners a wide variety of support as part of their channel programs—
everything from marketing collateral and lead generation to sales training and product development.
For vendors, it’s important that partners take
advantage of as many program features as they
can. “One of the key things for partners is that
they avail themselves of all the tools, resources,
and advantages the partner program brings to
bear,” says Wendy Bahr, Cisco’s vice president
of commercial channels.
Harty of SilverBlaze takes advantage of many
of the program benefits IBM offers, such as the
joint business plans he develops. “I’m surprised
that more companies haven’t taken advantage
KNOW THY VENDOR’S PRIORITIES
For vendors, partner networks serve as an extension of their own sales, marketing, and customer
service operations, so partners can increase their
stature by figuring out what strategies vendors
have for those areas. “Ninety percent of our revenue comes through partners,” says Clark Easterling, vice president of marketing at Perimeter
eSecurity. “We have an existing, dedicated sales an approach for building an ecosystem,” he says.
force, and we’re looking for systems integrators “As a partner, I have to learn and understand Mi-that overlay their services on top of our products crosoft’s strategy and be aggressive in my pursuit.”
and provide a complete solution. We’re not in- Both Elliot of Workshare and Perez of DataCorp
terested in partners that just sell a product and have aggressively pursued and then fostered part-walk away.” nerships with their respective vendors by taking
That’s a recurrent theme among vendors. advantage of conferences, award programs, and
D-Link Systems Inc., a provider of networking products in Fountain Valley, Calif., is in the midst of revamping its strategy. Rather than focus on selling products such as routers and switches, D-Link is looking to VARs to provide end-to-end ‘Bo‘th parties have to make money, but th‘ere‘’s a networking solutions. “We want our partners to challenge us,” says Keith Karlsen, D-Link’s exec- lot of legwork that goes into a successful partnership. utive vice president. “Partners that understand the customer and work with us to create solutions RICHARD DYM, SR. VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, OPSOURCE that meet customer needs—those are the kinds of partners we want to work with,” Karlsen adds. In effect, partners can’t expect to achieve vis-
ibility and influence if they have different objec- of the IBM program,” Harty says. According to
tives than their vendors. “Both parties have to Duncan of Perimeter eSecurity, partners that
make money, but there’s a lot of legwork that goes use sales and marketing programs sell 10 times
into a successful partnership,” says Richard Dym, more products than those who pass them up.
senior vice president of business development Clearly, vendors need their partners. In the best
and marketing at OpSource, a Santa Clara, Calif., relationships, partners essentially serve as a sales
provider of infrastructure and applications for and marketing extension of their vendors. But to
Software as a Service (SaaS). “We want partners get the most out of vendors, partners need to do
that have a business plan they can take forward, more than just sign up for a channel program. By
and are willing to invest the time in doing their taking the initiative in the relationships, channel
own training, promotion, and finding customers.” partners can forge a partnership with vendors that
Dym is in a unique position to gauge what will benefit everyone involved.
makes partnerships work: OpSource is both a vendor with a channel partner network as well as a
Microsoft partner. “As a vendor I have a plan and
other activities. Being proactive serves two related
purposes: It enables partners to be responsible
for their own growth and strategy, and helps them
to stand out from the pack of partners and merit
more attention from vendors.
For Workshare, more attention from Microsoft
culminated in an opportunity to participate in a
technology adoption program, or TAP. “We had to
do a lot of networking inside product management, because TAP is really strategic, so we did
everything to get into it,” Elliot says.
In the summer of 2006, TAP participants received early access to Office 2007. The idea behind a TAP is that participants get a jump start
with the latest technologies and can come out
MEGAN SANTOSUS
isabusinessandtechnol-ogy writer based in Natick, Mass.
