Grow your garden
The Russian IT distribution market has ceased to grow, the number of partners is declining, the margin is falling. Habitual mechanisms for attracting partners cease to be a competitive advantage. We need new ways of development, for example, to grow our partner community. Pioneers are already there.
Recently, I have often heard complaints that many companies are closing down and partners are becoming less and less reliable, and so are units. After reviewing reviews about the life of distribution companies and talking with familiar top managers from IT companies, I collected a few statements:
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What are these quotes talking about? I saw three trends:
These trends have long been observed in the market, and I believe that they are not directly related to sanctions. In my opinion, the industry is simply growing up, replacing quantitative growth with qualitative growth: we must not only fight for partners — they must be helped to survive, the product portfolio must be changed quickly, the margin must be packaged in related services.
How to achieve this all? Options for the sea. You can build an ideal logistics, or better to negotiate with the manufacturer and attract partners with a price, or intensify the sales process and make your sellers run more and faster, or reset the ballast of non-profit products. But you did it all, right?
When the stages of putting things in order, increasing efficiency, increasing the level of automation, exhaust themselves, we have to look for new directions of development. Here is one of them.
I come from Soviet times. I remember how it was possible to catch a bucket of fish in a pond. And I understand very well the difference with what is now: if you want to catch some fish, either go to the paid pond, or create your own pond and grow it there. A good demonstration sample is in the Skolkovo business park, although the fish there are still small swim, have not yet grown. Translated into the working language, if you want to have good good partners - create a partner community for them, or contact someone who has a partner network with the partners you need.
The essence of the partner community is cooperation, in which each participant benefits more than effort. First of all, it concerns learning, accumulation of knowledge and competencies. For example, as it was in the Toshiba partner community.
The main difficulty of the proposed solution is that it is not enough to simply create a reservoir — a partner portal or an automated system for receiving orders — and wait for life to originate in them. We must also invest our energy, create conditions for truly open relationships, show our partners our readiness to work in a new way, invest in their competencies, and be able to build a system for managing the partner community. And to understand that the result will not come immediately ...
I quote Andrei Skvortsov, director of the RRC distribution company: “ At the beginning of the year, the general director of one of our partner companies addressed me. He asked to help get a job. We talked. He complained that he was on the verge of ruin. What does not see prospects for themselves and their employees. It turned out that he did not use our warehouse or credit line, but in order not to lose clients, he bought everything from us on a prepaid basis and put it in his warehouse. For a company of its size it is very difficult to create a warehouse for all occasions. So it turned out that there was a very significant cash gap. In the end, they made him a framework agreement with a delay. Now his purchases from us have grown significantly, and he even increased the number of his employees. Markup? The markup is normal, but the value is extraordinary. It is a pity that partners can evaluate partnership only in extreme situations! "
Of those IT distributors that I know, RRC are the first to create their partnership. We help them in this. This story will tell another time.
Vladimir Ivanitsa Facebook | LinkedIn
Recently, I have often heard complaints that many companies are closing down and partners are becoming less and less reliable, and so are units. After reviewing reviews about the life of distribution companies and talking with familiar top managers from IT companies, I collected a few statements:
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- “The number of Russian partners with whom the company works has decreased ... if earlier two or three new ones were formed at the site of one disintegrated company, now this is not observed”;
- “The share of integrators bringing added value is decreasing, they are washed out by online stores”;
- “Initially, non-computer trading networks begin to sell IT products”;
- “Margin migration to the ecosystem formed around popular products: the greatest profits are brought not by themselves, but by a variety of related products and services”;
- “Half of our sales were deliveries to large corporate clients. Now they buy directly from vendors ” ;
- “Russian-Chinese trade in the main groups of consumer goods has decreased by 70%. The situation is aggravated by the fact that, in addition to demand, the marginality has decreased ” ;
- "The trend is an offensive by Asian manufacturers who are able to resist the American ones already in the corporate sector."
What are these quotes talking about? I saw three trends:
- Manufacturers and distributors become less capable partners (resellers, dealers, sales agents), but there are new partners from other markets;
- The growth of Chinese imports is falling, but at the same time, Chinese suppliers win back a share from the US;
- Margin on the delivery of products falls, but it can be taken from related services, if only your affiliate network can sell them to the end customer.
These trends have long been observed in the market, and I believe that they are not directly related to sanctions. In my opinion, the industry is simply growing up, replacing quantitative growth with qualitative growth: we must not only fight for partners — they must be helped to survive, the product portfolio must be changed quickly, the margin must be packaged in related services.
How to achieve this all? Options for the sea. You can build an ideal logistics, or better to negotiate with the manufacturer and attract partners with a price, or intensify the sales process and make your sellers run more and faster, or reset the ballast of non-profit products. But you did it all, right?
When the stages of putting things in order, increasing efficiency, increasing the level of automation, exhaust themselves, we have to look for new directions of development. Here is one of them.
I come from Soviet times. I remember how it was possible to catch a bucket of fish in a pond. And I understand very well the difference with what is now: if you want to catch some fish, either go to the paid pond, or create your own pond and grow it there. A good demonstration sample is in the Skolkovo business park, although the fish there are still small swim, have not yet grown. Translated into the working language, if you want to have good good partners - create a partner community for them, or contact someone who has a partner network with the partners you need.
The essence of the partner community is cooperation, in which each participant benefits more than effort. First of all, it concerns learning, accumulation of knowledge and competencies. For example, as it was in the Toshiba partner community.
The main difficulty of the proposed solution is that it is not enough to simply create a reservoir — a partner portal or an automated system for receiving orders — and wait for life to originate in them. We must also invest our energy, create conditions for truly open relationships, show our partners our readiness to work in a new way, invest in their competencies, and be able to build a system for managing the partner community. And to understand that the result will not come immediately ...
I quote Andrei Skvortsov, director of the RRC distribution company: “ At the beginning of the year, the general director of one of our partner companies addressed me. He asked to help get a job. We talked. He complained that he was on the verge of ruin. What does not see prospects for themselves and their employees. It turned out that he did not use our warehouse or credit line, but in order not to lose clients, he bought everything from us on a prepaid basis and put it in his warehouse. For a company of its size it is very difficult to create a warehouse for all occasions. So it turned out that there was a very significant cash gap. In the end, they made him a framework agreement with a delay. Now his purchases from us have grown significantly, and he even increased the number of his employees. Markup? The markup is normal, but the value is extraordinary. It is a pity that partners can evaluate partnership only in extreme situations! "
Of those IT distributors that I know, RRC are the first to create their partnership. We help them in this. This story will tell another time.
Vladimir Ivanitsa Facebook | LinkedIn
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/295400/
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