CRN Forum: Have you heard of your vendor/distribution partners cold calling your customers?

By Sholto Macpherson
May 28, 2009 12:54 PM
Tags: vendor | distribution | cold | calling | customers

Have any of your customers told you about pitches they've received from direct sales teams? How did you handle it?

An angry reseller called me last week saying that his distribution partner had cold called some of his customers. The distie apologised, saying it was a random sample from the phone book, and promised to make amends.

But it follows on from other comments made earlier in the year about two vendors, one networking and one software, whose direct sales teams were targeting their resellers' customers.

If you have already invested too much training and IP in that vendor, or they are simply too big, walking away might not be an option.

Have any of your customers told you about pitches they've received from direct sales teams? How did you handle it?

Given the sensitivity of the topic, could you please refrain from naming the vendors/distributors involved and focus instead on how to handle difficult business relationships.

CRN Forum: Have you heard of your vendor/distribution partners cold calling your customers?

2 comments in this discussion

"This is a sensitive area in the channel and rightly so as there are so many two, one and zero channel mixed model distributors and vendors with either no understanding of how the channel works or ..."

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Comments: 2

Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.

Arty

May 29, 2009 2:05 PM

We had this issue and it really made my blood boil - we felt betrayed and angry. After 4 years of dealing with this particular company and many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware purchases they decided to undertake a direct marketing campaign targeting the same vertical market which we were selling their hardware. The first we heard about it was from one of customers who had received a colour brochure and a covering letter from our supplier saying they wanted to bid for our services. I contacted the Victorian State Manager whose name was on the letter who told me it was just a cold calling exercise, did not think there was an issue, did not want to discuss the matter any further and proceeded to hang up on me.
So where is the ethics in all this? Why would you do business with someone who can steal your clients or target them in a marketing campaign whether it is cold calling or not?
I contacted the Managing Director in Sydney who was appalled at what had happened and wanted to meet to discuss the matter. At first I felt bitterly angry and did not want to meet but I though it through and decided to turn this experience into a positive outcome. So we met and I was assured that this would not happen again. I took along with me a list of concerns and we went through them one by one and agreed on a course of action. I now have a new account manager based in Sydney (I still refuse to deal with their Melbourne office) who is doing a fabulous job and have I started to put through many orders.
I was lucky that in that the Managing Director of the company had a strong commitment to the channel and we were on the same wavelength.
However, there is definitely an ongoing problem within the Industry which should be addressed. There are always going to be issues with distributors trying to be resellers and/or service providers. I believe we should have a code of conduct aimed at distributors to protect the client base of hard working resellers.

The warning is there for all small IT service providers to be careful with whom they partner because one day you may wake up to see your distributor at your client site.

Jonbays

Jun 1, 2009 2:41 PM

This is a sensitive area in the channel and rightly so as there are so many two, one and zero channel mixed model distributors and vendors with either no understanding of how the channel works or why they should or shouldn't use the channel in the first place. As a specialist full service distributor who provides technical, sales and marketing support we are especially aware of the problems in working the channel. Certainly as part of our marketing we do also include telemarketing end users on behalf of our vendors. This is all part of lead generation for the vendor and the vendors reseller or SI partners but it can be tricky. When you have a qualified opportunity it's always awkward to ask who the end users preferred reseller or SI partner is and whether we could recommend one of our vendors preferred partners to assist them. If it's well done it's the essence of the channel at work. However there are many small local distributors and vendors who have multiple entities or business divisions or shared ownership where you do have to wonder at their real commitment to channel any busines through themselves or to anyone not associated with them. I often browse the gazettes to see which reseller or SI was winning which tender only to see a few names that maybe perhaps shouldn't be there if they were really helping thier reseller partners. It's not all just about business ethics as business is pretty cutthroat in the channel and lets face it I don't remember being taught morality in my marketing diploma so you do need to qualify which sort of distributor you work with and then how closely you work with them. It's a point I make when talking to my reseller prospects all the time. I make sure they understand our business model as a distributor and I understand their business model as a reseller. We do not sell to end users or possess our own reseller arm. We sell through a network of reseller partners including, value added resellers, Systems Integrators and Services providers.

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