Mentor's Corner
Toolkit for Consultants: Vendor Relationships
By C. Thomas Tyler, Chief Technology Officer of The Go To Group, Inc.
Many consultants tell me they are weak at what I call forward marketing, finding ways to connect with new prospects. They feel they are limited to networking and personal referrals. However, many of these consultants have a good marketing baseline. That is, they have a good story to tell when somehow, someone does find their way to their doorstep. A marketing baseline consists of things like your "elevator pitch", brochures describing your products and/or services, your web site, and whatever you have to show to someone who indicates an interest in your offerings.
This article explores a way of capitalizing on the powerful forward marketing capabilities of other companies to support your own offerings. If you are in the situation of having a good marketing baseline but weak forward marketing, this article may prove helpful. If you don't yet have a solid marketing baseline - you'll need to focus on that first, and then read this later!
Vendors
First, I should define what I mean by
vendors. For purposes of this article, "vendor" will have a somewhat narrow definition, meaning "any well-established company with strong forward marketing capabilities that primarily distributes products (software or otherwise) rather than services."
The basic idea is to use vendors as a channel to drive business to your doorstep, thus taking advantage of their powerful forward marketing capabilities. Then your own marketing materials will tell your story. Marketers love to use terms like "synergistic" and "win-win", and in this case these terms generally do apply.
How to Select Vendors to Work With
Start with vendors whom you know, and whose products you already have experience and expertise with. Before spending much time on a strategy for selecting vendors, start with those you have some sort of relationship, if only as a customer. Are there any products you regularly use in delivery of your services? Who makes them?
Product Complexity
Are the vendors' products "install and go", or do they require experience and expertise to deploy them properly and/or to get the most from them? Complex products are often ripe for consulting. Of course, you want to pick a vendor whose products you like working with - if you find yourself griping about its excessive complexity, or lack of sophistication, skip that vendor.
Open to Partnering
You're looking for vendors that are receptive to dealing with consultants as partners. Some vendors have formal channel partnering programs in place. Others have Certification programs that earn you a link to your web site from their high-traffic web site. Still others will need to be contacted directly to engage in discussions about partnering opportunities. Some vendors with particularly complex products often like to keep their own focus on product development, and leave things like deployment and configuration to consultants. Other vendors may want to do both, and view consultants as competition for their own services arm. Learn what you can about the vendor's openness to partnering with a consultant before investing much time with their products.
Wait for Opportunity
As Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "Ability is of little account without opportunity." You want to validate to yourself that there is enough interest in a vendor's product to make whatever time you spend with it worth your while. It would be a waste to invest lots of time developing your ability to support a vendor whose product isn't selling. Ideally, you'll get started with a vendor by using it in the context of some other paying gig that you're working on.
Forward Marketing Capabilities
At a minimum, you're looking for companies that have already solved problems you would like to solve, like driving lots of traffic to their web site, or attracting the attention of a large number of customers. You are looking to be the beneficiary of their marketing clout and prowess. If the vendor is anxious to discuss how you can help them move their product, be wary.
What about becoming a VAR?
Becoming a VAR (Value Added Reseller) is forming a deeper relationship with a vendor. It's something to think about carefully. As a VAR, you get closer to the vendor, but you also sacrifice "vendor neutrality" which can be to your greater advantage as a consultant.
As ICCA members, you'll want to be mindful of the ICCA Code of Ethics, which stresses that you make clear to clients any influences that impact your recommendations to them, and so a VAR relationship should be disclosed if it constitutes a potential conflict of interest.
For purposes of this article, I won't go into VAR relationships in detail. VAR relationships can distract your own focus. If your own forward marketing isn't particularly strong, you won't be able to bring a lot of value to the table in terms of moving product for the vendor, and if you're not moving product, your own benefits will be limited. I'll focus more on relationships with vendors where vendors drive business to you, and you help them by providing expertise in best practices. You might also provide training and other service offerings related to their products.
Offer Support and Training
Vendors may be open to having you provide support and training offerings to augment their product offerings. Support and Training are two areas that, if needed by the vendor, will make them more than happy to drive business your way. Training offerings in particular can help you get paid to do your own marketing for the vendors' customers. The marketing is implied - you're not selling your services directly, but of course you can indicate that your own services offerings include support for a product. Product vendors prefer to have customers rather than clients, and want to focus on product development rather than get bogged down in the details of any particular customer. For a consultant, getting bogged down in the details of a particular client is part of what we do, and you'll be willing to have a greater understanding of your clients' environments than a vendor will have for any given customers. Product vendors focus on volume, whereas consultants tend to build deeper relationships with a relatively small number of clients. This presents a situation where vendors' and consultants' offerings are complimentary, and together can best provide what the market needs. You may even consider modeling annual support agreements based on the vendor's license scheme.
Make Relationships Known
Be up front with your vendors and clients! Let your vendors and clients know that your revenue stream is chiefly dependent upon good relationships with your own clients, and that you'll always do what's right for a client, without allowing vendor relationships to influence your recommendations. Any vendor preferences should be the result of your experience - experience-based professional bias is actually part of the value you bring to the table as a consultant, so long as it is seen in that light. Make it clear that you pursue relationships only with vendors who are leaders in their respective market spaces, so that the relationships can be seen as a benefit of your experience. Otherwise, if relationships are discovered, they'll be presumed to represent some ulterior motive that influences your recommendations. Of course, you want to form relationships with vendors you see as leaders, to minimize potential conflict of interest situations.
Avenue for Publications
Vendor relationships can also help with other areas of your marketing as well. For example, product vendors tend to have marketing staff who stay in touch with editors in various publications. If you're writing articles, perhaps about best practices or case studies of a product, the vendor may help connect you with editors. Once you establish direct connections with editors, you may be able find other publication opportunities, regardless of whether they're tied to the vendor.
How Long Does it Take?
Developing vendor relationships can be time-consuming, and should be thought of as a strategic part of your overall marketing efforts. If you're thinking "Strategic" is a code word meaning, "it could take years", you're right! I'm a firm believer that vendor relationships, if properly nurtured over the years, can greatly expand a consultant's marketing reach with relatively little investment in time and treasure. But, it's a process that takes time, and isn't likely to be a quick fix if you're struggling to survive.
By C. Thomas Tyler is the Chief Technology Officer of The Go To Group, Inc. and the Former President of the ICCA Greater Boston Chapter.
He can be reached at
Tom.Tyler@Go2Group.com or you may view his website at
www.Go2Group.com
