Consultants: A Channel like no other
Telecom vendors, with good reason, have always made room in their marketing budgets for relationship building with independent consultants. Truth be told, the major vendors typically knew which consultants they could count on to gently direct business their way come RFP time. Today though, like so much else about our nouveau telecom industry, the world of consultants – and how they operate – is changing. And so might the way vendors manage them.
The telecom resurgence (read as: VoIP meets Web 2.0 meets Unified Communications) has brought with it a choice of business solutions the likes of which we have never seen. An enterprise buyer that once engaged a consultant to choose a new PBX and voice mail (when plain vanilla voice mail didn’t seem so plain) is now faced with a myriad of modern terms like IP Telephony and Unified Communications, and with totally new product segments like Video Conferencing and Mobile Everything. Soon, they’ll even have to consider Microsoft.
This resurgence is incrementally fueled by what feels like a new market, but really isn’t. It’s ironic that the SMB market – given its immense girth – is only recently in vogue. This segment of buyers, once served with feature-rich but essentially lowly regarded key systems, now chooses from almost anything it’s big brother the enterprise can - if not more.
Perfect Storm
Combine these market forces and well, it’s a good time to be a consultant. The industry evolution means far more complexity for the end-user buyer, and far more buyers looking for complex solutions. In fact, the consultant value proposition is probably more compelling than ever before – to any size buyer.
With opportunity though, comes challenge. For the consultant, it’s no longer as simple as aligning oneself with leading vendors alone; the buyer will expect these ‘experts’ to know something about almost everything.
As for the vendors, how should consultants fit into their plans? And what if anything can vendors do to make today’s consultants, better consultants?
Treat them like a Channel
Not as a reseller, not as a referral partner but as a channel of influence. After all, it’s suggested that telecom consultants influence as much as 25% of telecom product and services purchases every year. Wow. Find me a channel that that can do that.
It’s true that consultants are dispersed and can’t be managed centrally like other big channels, but they do require attention and nurturing just like the others in order to succeed:
Qualify. Reach out to the ones that best map to your business (or businesses); it’s not necessarily a quantity thing.
- Talk to them. Use easy to digest sound bites and consistent messages that will instill confidence.
- Communicate. Make it regular and relevant to their business, not just yours. These are not buyers, nor are they sellers. They’re influencers.
- Tools. Build content that speaks to them and tools that will position them as an expert interface between their customers and you.
- Make them shine. I am repeating myself here, but this is important. Do what you can to give them and their customer the confidence it takes to leap forward. They only have themselves and their time to sell.
- Stick with it. Don’t start and stop. Like any large channel, an effort must be sustainable to pay dividends.
Times are good it seems for almost everyone these days. The buyer has plenty of choice; the vendor has plenty of customers (and if not, plenty of VC cash) and the consultant is busy working the in-between, adding immeasurable value to the equation. Treating them as the channel they are can only help all sides.