Who is Direct Anyway?

With the buzz in the channel about the new announcement that Dell is going to offer managed services directly to small and medium businesses, I dug out a letter we sent to our clients back in 2002 that I originally borrowed from Ted Warner of Connecting Point Greeley. Not sure if Ted is the original source, but he was my source back in 2002 when we were all bent out of shape about Dell's push down to our SMB clients. My perspective is that Dell will do what Dell does. They sell direct - always have - always will. That is their business model and they are very good at what they do. They "use" partners when it is in their best interest. They have no understanding of what it really means to partner - they just know how to get to their end goal - sell more stuff. Nothing wrong with that - it is what they are and what they do. But when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Dell is a direct reseller and that is what they do. No sense sugar coating the truth. And no sense whining about it either. It is reality, and we need to leverage the fact that we are really the direct solution for our customers and provide what Dell or any large org never will - personal and local touch that truly cares about our customers and their needs.

To that end, here is something from the archives that we used some 6 years ago. Amazing how most of it still fits today:

Large direct marketing computer manufacturers talk about the message “Be Direct” in all of their print and television ads. Their message infers that it is infinitely better to deal with a website or a tele-sales rep at the end of a toll free number hundreds or thousands of miles away. We couldn’t disagree with them more.

To us, “Being Direct” means having real salespeople, and real engineering personnel working face-to-face with our customers. We listen to our customers’ needs and work to develop solutions that will help their businesses. Your success directly impacts our future. Unless we help to make you successful, we have no future while our distant competitor and their toll free number is only concerned about the order you may need to place at this moment. We partner directly with a wide variety of hardware and software manufacturers to craft the exact solutions that will serve the needs of your business. We take the time to evaluate what is best for your long-term needs, not the immediate sale that a telemarketer may want to make to hit their daily quota. When you have problems, we will be there directly to assist you. The “Direct” people don’t have their own service personnel; choosing instead to contract indirectly with other companies to do work. In some cases, they even select us to do their work since we can be a direct response to their indirect problem.

As we deal directly with each customer, our job is to provide you with options. We directly represent the best companies in the industry and we directly present you with solutions that include a broad range of products and services. The people who urge you to “Go Direct” can do little more than provide you with products and try to fix them over the phone when they break. If they can’t make the repair remotely, they call and ask one of us as a local reseller to go and make the repair directly with the end user. In your relationship with us, you have a partner that is committed to helping you now and into the future; business-to-business and face-to-face. Which begs the question….

Who is really being direct???

Dell Just Doesn't Get It

I have been vocal over the last few years about how a channel friendly vendor acts in a particular way, and that certainly is not how Dell thinks. They continue to infringe on partners while telling them out of the other side of their mouth that they want to be channel friendly. It just ain't so. Jeff Anderson from Bulletproof Networks in HTG10 wrote a very strong and accurate email about the reality of Dell and what they are doing. Take a read. The landscape continues to change at the same time as they are trying to convince us they want to work with partners. Baloney. Here are Jeff's words:

"We’ve been reselling Dell for nearly 5 years, and it’s been great right up until a few weeks ago when we were moved into the Partner Direct team. Now, they’re refusing to quote on any deals larger than 2 or 3 PCs unless we tell them who the end-customer is, and if the end customer has ever done business with Dell directly then we have to register the deal. By “register” they mean supply all the details and ask for permission to sell to this customer. I’m almost okay with that, since it protects us too by preventing the customer from shopping the deal around to get the best price, but it turns out that they won’t approve a deal unless it’s valued at $25K+ ($50K+ for non-profit or government). Maybe 20% of my deals will exceed $25K in Dell hardware.

So the upshot of all of this is that if I have a deal for a server and half a dozen new workstations, and my client happens to have ever dealt directly with Dell before, then I won’t be allowed to sell it. In fact, Dell won’t even give me a quote.

I’m way beyond pissed off right now - I’m actually enraged. And, yes, I could probably lie to Dell about who the end user is, or maybe split up my purchases so that I stay under the radar, but that kind of thing ’s just a bullshit waste of my time. Oh, and my first question upon learning about this forced deal registration nonsense was to ask how we get out of Partner Direct… And the answer? We can’t.

So much for Dell becoming “channel friendly” since they hired (former Dell Canada President) Greg Davis to develop a formal channel program. The irony is that I suspect that he actually thinks the new program IS channel friendly, but didn’t take into account the affect on smaller partners like us who live on smaller deals…

I’ve directly done about million dollars in business with Dell over the past few years, and probably influenced half again that much. I’m curious how much volume we have as a group, and if the rest of you are experiencing pain since moving to Partner Direct. If so, maybe together we do enough business to get someone at Dell to listen to us and remove these ridiculous restrictions, or maybe we should be seeing how interested HP would be in picking up all of that business instead."

Well said Jeff. I appreciate your willingness to let me share it. Sounds channel friendly to me.....HP you have another opportunity to get it right and connect with partners. They keep serving the opportunity up on a silver platter. How about becoming easy to work with so partners don't feel forced to sleep with the enemy. Most don't want to do business with Dell. They just can't figure out how to work with HP.

Are you ready for Summit

Today we had our first day for the HTG peer group meetings here in Dallas ahead of the SMB Summit. People are arriving and activities are picking up. We had an HTGALL reception tonight at the Texas Grill and had a great time connecting with each other. Each of the five groups met individually all day today and will repeat the tomorrow. We heard from HP - Dan Smith and Pradipta Dutta - over lunch and then in HTG1 this afternoon. There are some exciting announcements for SMB partners that were announced last week. Things are looking up. We sent these guys back with a list of tasks that would make working with HP a little easier for us as partners. If you have feedback, please send it to me. As I sit on the HP SMB advisory council, I want to be your voice to our friends at HP.

Far and away the funniest thing I heard today was from Alex Ziogas, HTG7 member from Chicago. Alex is such a timid young man but he provided the analogy of the week, month and maybe the year. Pay close attention to what he said: "Buying from Dell is like being married to a wife that cheats on you all the time". Maybe not exactly verbatim but you get the drift. HP is far from perfect but at the end of the day they really are our choice in the channel. OK - IBM and Lenovo and a few others fit the bill too, but Dell - now that is like loving a cheating woman. The one thing that was so obvious from the discussion - very direct and somewhat heated at times - is that doing business with HP is too difficult. If they can just get that part fixed they can own the channel completely.

Sonicwall is here doing a CSSA training. Part of the challenge today was the offer to give a free firewall to anyone who smoked one of the units. Of course, one of the creative HTG members was able to give everyone a good laugh with his digital smoke. Check out the photo of Eric Adkins and the SW he was working on.

I want to alert you to the HP cocktail party that is being held on Friday night - opening night at the Summit. It will be held from 7:00 - 9:00. Drinks & Desserts will be served in Salon C. Hint - there will be a ticket for this in your badge holder so don't lose it!

See you in Dallas!

Will Dell be the first to understand the power of peers

One of the crusades I have been on for some years now is to try and help the channel industry understand the power of peer groups, user groups and community to drive their business. It has been a slow and painful process. Microsoft sort of gets it - at least at a user group level. But most channel partners are very slow to promote community. They fear losing control of their partners, which they really don't have anyway but have convinced themselves they "own" their channel. What a surprise when I ran across this from a post on BuzzMachine about Dell - the one company I would expect to be last to the community party. (http://www.buzzmachine.com/dell-story-the-draft/)

"Mark Jarvis, Dell’s new chief marketing officer, acknowledges that customers are now influenced by peers, not marketers: “The challenge is how you create a network of advocates for your business….""

That is a big part of the power of peers - to be advocates for vendors in not only selling and servicing their products - but understanding the true value of partnership in meeting customer needs. It is not an "us/them" relationship with our vendors any longer. It has to be a "we" relationship. The channel needs to figure out that peer groups and other community groups aer their secret weapon to succeed and grow. And do it before Dell does. Is anyone listening? You have a chance as channel vendors to build your own group of advocates. Dell gets it and is coming after us. They have "re-embraced" the channel because of this reason - not because they love partners. Get on the bus before it leaves the station with the wrong people at the wheel.