Marketing
Supporting the Channel of the future
“We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open” – Shakti Gawain
Seasonal Greetings to all clients, colleagues and readers in our industry. Once again we spend time here considering all things positive that can potentially make a difference to the way we all grow our business, regardless of these torrid times….
In this edition I invite you to ponder on the health of your arteries. I’m sure you would consider anything possible that would keep yours pumping with vigour, so an occasional examination doesn’t do any harm does it?
I am of course referring to The Channel, because the traditional Vendor-Distributor-Reseller model indeed has to adjust to cope with a new way of life.
Gone are the days when the primary requisite of a computer distributor was a large warehouse near a motorway. Holding stocks of hardware may still be a necessary feature of some IT supply chains, but as the tide continues to turn away from physical to virtual solutions, the old-style distribution business model is in need of a rethink in some areas.
We work in an industry defined by its need to evolve and reinvent itself rapidly, yet some things seem resistant to forces of change. The ‘vendor-disty-reseller’ conduit may be under pressure, with margins for all hard to come by, but for whatever reasons the underlying model remains much the same as it always was.
Stop wasting money on Marketing. The Eight Ways to Stop – revisited
Last year I was asked to do a presentation at an IBM Partner seminar on “something topical in marketing”. Great, I thought – thanks for the opportunity to die in front of one of my main target markets – who were probably expecting yet another one of those ‘we’re the greatest agency’ pitches that they’ve all heard before. So I decided to be a bit more radical, under the banner: “Stop Wasting Money on Marketing”.
‘Sales 2.0’ ………What’s it all about ..and what’s in it for you?
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all” – Abraham Lincoln Greetings again, colleagues and friends, and welcome back to this series on anything that might help you to improve sales effectiveness in the coming year. Why the Abe Lincoln quote? Because he perfectly describes my [...]
Blog 6. Forecast: High pressure with sunny periods, ‘Clouds’ on the way – prepare to sweat!
Welcome to Blog 6 in my series of communiqués to a select group of marketing and sales leaders in IT and telecoms, discussing what we see working and what is not, in terms of business development in the current climate. For those who have recently dropped in, we are exploring GoToMarket strategies that could potentially [...]
