Looking for these six traits can help you choose the right technology partner.
By Jason Cherveny
In a previous life, I worked in sales for an IT vendor. Customers often asked me to help them plan out complementary initiatives, and I could only direct them to other vendors who sold what they needed. More than one customer asked me why I didn’t simply become a reseller and work with multiple vendors. “Why don’t you just do it all?” they asked. “It would save us so much time.”
My answer back then? “Resellers are terrible.”
I had seen too many resellers who offered little value beyond simply processing orders. Some of these branded themselves as “value-added resellers” (or VARs), but in my experience, that “value” was often elusive. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized there was an opportunity to become a real partner with my customers. So, when I started Sanity Solutions more than two decades ago, I strove to be a solutions provider, rather than a reseller.
Here are six traits that differentiate solutions providers from mere order takers.
1. Deep Technical Expertise: Every time we scale up a new customer, we add more technical talent to make sure we can serve them well. Compare this to resellers, who often hire newly minted graduates as account executives, and you’ll begin to appreciate the value of working with a true solutions provider. When choosing an IT partner, look for providers who employ people who not only have years of experience designing solutions for customers, but who have also sat on the customer’s side of the table at some point in their careers. It makes a difference.
2. Outcomes-Focused Mindset: “What do you want?” is the wrong question. Instead, technology partners should be asking customers: “What do you want to achieve?” Too often, resellers use the word “solutions” as a synonym for “products and services.” That’s not what we mean when we use the term. We start by talking through the problems that customers are looking to solve, and then we work backward to design integrated solutions that will meet their specific business needs.
3. Contextual Understanding: The perfect solution for one customer might be disastrous for another. For example, a highly complex tool could be a fit for an enterprise customer with a large IT staff, but it will almost certainly be a flop for a smaller organization that lacks the employees to manage it. Understanding customers’ specific context is extremely important in bidding and scoping projects. I’ve seen some resellers overbuild solutions for customers with deep pockets, and I’ve seen others come in with a low-cost proposal that won’t actually solve the customer’s problem, just to win the work. Both of these approaches end up costing customers more in the long run.
4. Financial Awareness: Often, the right solution for a given customer comes not only to money—not only budget, but also financing models. Some organizations have specific funds set aside for capital purchases, and others will need to take an operating expense approach. A solutions provider should be able to help customers find a way to get the numbers to work. For example, one customer wanted to roll out new employee laptops slowly over time, but also wanted to make sure product updates didn’t disrupt their golden image. We were able to pre-order hundreds of identical devices, store them for the customer, and then deliver 50 new laptops on the first of every month.
5. Comprehensive Services and Support: A product still in its box never solved a company’s problem. A solutions provider should be able to help with deployment and configuration, as well as ongoing management and optimization. We take a co-managed approach to our customer engagements, working closely with internal IT teams to provide advanced, solution-specific services.
6. History of Long-Term Partnerships: At Sanity, we talk about “customers for life,” and we take that very seriously. In fact, some of our customer relationships are older than the company, dating back to my days in vendor IT sales. One very simple way to distinguish a solutions provider from a reseller is to look at the length of their business relationships. I can often tell when customers have been burned by previous salespeople looking to meet quota. At first, their tone is wary, and their posture is guarded, but they often open up when I explain our philosophy: For a solutions provider, relationships and reputations are far more important than any sale.
Reach out to our team today to learn more.