Vendor Marketing Programs and Social Media Reseller Survey 1/3
Jan 20, 2009
Demographics of the resellers surveyed (on-line questionnaire) • • • • • • •
There were 59 reseller surveys completed. Not all participants answered all questions. The sample is mostly small resellers that have been in business more than 10 years. Most sell to SMB customers. About half of the respondents reported year-to year revenue growth. The other half reported flat revenue or even declines . Many different primary vendors were mentioned. Microsoft and Intel computers(various brands) were named most often. Resellers represent a diverse blend of business models and sales capabilities. More than 10% of their sales are on-line, 25% over the telephone. Almost all respondents were more than 40 years old. All had some experience with social media, but most in a personal or experimental manner.
………………………………….. 1. For every active reseller customer (purchased in the past six months) there are two inactive customers (purchased more than six months ago). Growing resellers abandon inactive customers and acquire new customers significantly more often and quickly than non-growing resellers. 2. Fast growing resellers are more active in social media than non-growing resellers, especially on business networking sites like LinkedIn. 3. SFA/CRM tools are not being used except when pushed by vendors. When used, they are generally not effective for resellers. They go through the motions but don’t see real benefits. 4. Current vendor offerings (portals, mass emails with attachments, webinars, forums) get mixed reactions as to their effectiveness. 5. Resellers do very little marketing. What they do is usually ad hoc. 6. The channels’ electronic landscape has become a cluttered wasteland of outdated information, bloated PDF datasheet directories, and orphaned websites. Very few resellers consider their websites to be useful as a sales/marketing tool. 7. Only about 10% of resellers are using new capabilities like RSS, Wikis, and blogging in their web sites. Non-growing resellers are not using them at all. 8. Resellers want and need their vendors to help them market and sell on-line, not just sell faceto-face. (They want/need leadership and program support with on-line Web 2.0 tools.) 9. Resellers need/want more of the basics: on-line “canned” product demonstrations, on-line storefronts, e-newsletters and the capability to use them more efficiently. They especially want help with their web sites.
Copyright 2009, Gilwell Group LLC
Company Confidential
10. Virtually all resellers had a high interest in receiving more information about available or potential “hosted, multi-vendor, social media marketing programs.” Specific Reseller suggestions to vendors: • • • • • • • • •
Provide on-line marketing collateral, webinars, demos, training that we can point our customers and potential customers to. Create customer-to-customer dialogue, blogs, leverage social networking to enable this. Assist our company with this transition. Produce “how to use their product” videos with link to vendor website where our company can link to. Give me a business reason to use social media tools. Give me something of value. Provide orientation and training seminars on Web 2.0 tools and how to use the most effective tools. Make it easier to establish a real web store front from more than one vendor. Provide us with cookie cutter social media tools to use. Help with our web site. Make it more effective.
Early information from the vendor survey (will end this week) Vendors are starting to see Web 2.0 as a game changer, but don’t yet understand the best strategies for using it. They don’t yet see the business benefits. Vendor employed channel managers are using social media tools more often than resellers.
For more information:
Mike Dubrall Managing Director, Gilwell Group LLC miked@gilwellgroup.com www.gilwellgroup.xeequa.com
Copyright 2009, Gilwell Group LLC
Company Confidential