1 Computer Market Research The Leader in Channel Data Management Presents “Channels of the Future: Web 2.0” Using Social Media to Maintain a Competitive Edge Presented by Mike Dubrall, the Gilwell Group, May 6, 2009 COMPUTER MARKET RESEARCH provides expertise in channel data management which allows partners and manufacturers to make better sales, marketing, inventory management and financial decisions . CMR offers a wide array of SaaS products including Co-op/MDF, Channel POS and Inventory, Deal Registration, Opportunity Management, Special Pricing Authorization and Salesforce.com integration. 3545 Aero Court - Suite C - San Diego, CA. 92123 | Phone: 858-279-6668 | Fax: 858-279-6686 | Toll Free: 877- CMR-6661 www.computermarketresearch.com
Computer Market Research is pleased to provide educational information regarding Web2.0 to our customers and other members of the channel.
Purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by social networks, blogs, forums, YouTube, and on-line communities. Channel Marketers have a tremendous opportunity to inspire their partners to stay ahead of the customer buying curve. This is not an ROI question or question of business process effectiveness. This is a question of keeping or losing reseller and customer relationships!
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Transcript
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Computer Market ResearchThe Leader in Channel Data Management
Presents “Channels of the Future: Web 2.0”
Using Social Media to Maintain a Competitive Edge
Presented by Mike Dubrall, the Gilwell Group, May 6, 2009
COMPUTER MARKET RESEARCH provides expertise in channel data management which allows partners and manufacturers to make better sales, marketing, inventory management and financial decisions . CMR offers a wide array of SaaS products including Co-op/MDF, Channel POS and Inventory, Deal Registration, Opportunity Management, Special Pricing Authorization and Salesforce.com integration.
3545 Aero Court - Suite C - San Diego, CA. 92123 | Phone: 858-279-6668 | Fax: 858-279-6686 | Toll Free: 877-CMR-6661www.computermarketresearch.com
• Social Media Chaos – So Many Sites, So Little Time
• How Resellers Are Using Social Media • Site By Site Discussion of Partnering Usage
• On-line Communities• Changing Sales Process• Next Generation Partnering Strategies
Today’s Agenda
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Partner Execution
Whole Product
Partner Management
Sales Management
Partner M
arketing
Communications
Infrastructure
Ob
jecti
ves
Traditional Channel Growth
Framework
Territory Management
Go-to-m
arket Stra
tegy
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Forces Battering the Framework
• Social Media (Web 2.0)• SaaS (HaaS, Open Source)• Economic Downturn• Maturation of the Industry and the
Channel
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Social Networking is as old as civilization. It involves the sharing of information among friends/acquaintances to socialize, discuss topics of interest, reduce risks, and make more informed decisions. Social Media is how the internet has changed social networking. It includes the use of Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, video file sharing, and social networking sites like Facebook to expand the reach of social networking and more effectively capture and share relevant information. (Matt Goddard, R2i.ntegrated.com)
On-line Communities combine many social media capabilities in one secure place to facilitate communications, collaboration, and networking for social, educational, or business purposes
“Social Media is the collection of tools and online spaces available to help individuals and businesses to accelerate their information and communication needs.” - Axel Schultze
Earlier today I was once again asked to wrap a neat definition around social media. It seems increasingly hard to do this without sounding like a bit of a tool. Chris Lake on eConsultancy
Twitterholic.com CNN has almost 1,000,000 followers
50 Great Widgets For Your Blog40+ Tools For Google CalendarSKYPE TOOLBOX: 50+ Enhancements for SkypeGMAIL TOOLBOX: 60+ Tools For Gmail
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Some Things to Consider
• Virtually all large technology vendors have a formal social media initiative (not with channels)– Plus dozens of informal projects scattered across the
company– Partner Sales Managers are increasingly spending their
time on social media activities– Partners increasingly concerned about how vendors
communicate with them and their customers
• Already there are leaders and followers among vendors and social media activities– There are a lot of thought leaders on Twitter– This impacts branding and positioning– This impacts your ability to influence channel behavior
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What Resellers Are Doing (Or Should be Doing) On-line
• Finding New Customers• Improving Proposal Close Rates• Shortening Sales Cycles• Training Employees and Customers• Recruiting Employees• Improving Customer Satisfaction• Building Partnerships with other Resellers• Advertising, Public Relations, building brands, disseminating
LinkedIn Prospecting153 results for Dow Chemical, Vice President Sales
115 results for John Deere, Vice President Sales
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LinkedIn Groups
14,667 results for Cisco partner
44,356 results for microsoft partner
3,844 results for value added reseller
48,488 results for channel partner
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LinkedIn Research
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Google/Yahoo Groups
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Branded On-line Communities Bring it all Together
• Accelerate Innovation– Decrease costs of gathering customer feedback– More efficient product and service launches– Better targeting of products and services– Faster Issue identification and resolution
• Drive Marketing & Sales– Enhanced SEO and Word of Mouth Promotion– Reduced cost of acquiring prospect/customer information– Increased close rate and higher average order size
• Reduce Support Costs– Direct/Indirect Support Call deflection– Faster issue resolution and fewer escalations– Elimination of alternative support channels– Lower-cost support for multilingual customers, spike handling
Source: Lithium Solutions
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Branded On-line Community Systems
Tying Branded Communities Together
Reseller A Reseller B Reseller C Reseller D . . . . . . Reseller N
Master Consol Distributing smart, non advertisial content such as blog posts, events, white papers, news, video clips to hundreds or thousands of partner community systems.
Partner communitiesAllow selected vendors to syndicate content withtheir customer community.
Getting content directly to the existing installed baseGetting content directly to the existing installed base
Customer Base
Customer Base
Customer Base
Customer Base
Customer Base
Like AdWords for“smart content”With a distributionsystem that is transparent and Channel aware
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Value of Programs to Resellers
Reseller Rating of Vendor Program Offerings
Partner Portal 3.01On-line training 2.92Webinars / web meetings 2.91Joint Business Planning 2.73Mass emails with file attachments
2.61
On-line forums 2.57Electronic Newsletters 2.21
1=Negative impact on our ability to sell2=No impact on our ability to sell3= Modestly improves our ability to sell 4=Significantly improves our ability to sell
Resellers were asked to rate the programs provided by their vendors, in terms of how well the program helped the reseller sell to customers. Growing resellers rated all programs higher than non-growing resellers. (Cum Jan-March 09)
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Channels of the Future Research
Personal Activities – Reseller Employees
LinkedIn 4.38
MySpace/Facebook 3.61
Industry Blogs 3.59
YouTube 2.76
Twitter 2.40
Second Life 1.41
participation in the following kinds of Web 2.0 sites, where 1 is no participation and 10 means you visit daily
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Reseller Social Media Skills
Growing Resellers 4.18 5.36 4.07 2.96 1.25 2.93
How would you describe your company’s revenue growth over
the past 24 months?
MySpace and
Facebook
Linkedin and Plaxo?
Blogs Video on Demand
(VOD) like YouTube
Second Life Twitter
Non Growing Resellers 3.20 3.63 2.98 2.39 1.10 1.90
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Channels of the Future Research
Reseller Needs from Vendors
On-Line Product Demos 6.75
E-marketing/Storefronts 6.50
Internet Advertising 6.03
Help with SoMe 5.03
On-Line Communities 5.00
Testimonials on YouTube
4.41
Rate your interest in having your vendors provide the following social media tools to make you and your company more successful, where 1 is no interest and 10 is extreme interest.
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Regarding Social Media, What’s Holding You (Vendors) Back?
They rely on the Internet for information – not their sales rep
• They do Google searches• They ask friends in their social network• They check forums or online groups or blogs • They get feedback in Twitter or other micro blogs• When they are “ready to buy” the brand and product
decision is “far along”
• They hate cold calls• They increasingly ignore advertising• They have spam filters and popup blockers• They throw junk mail into the waste basket• They have no patience for the traditional sales process
They may not describe it that way – but their purchase decision is increasingly made in the social web.
Consumers are becoming Prosumers
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Partner Execution
Whole Product
Go-to-m
arket Stra
tegy
Territory Management
Partner Management
Sales Management
Partner M
arketing
Communications
Infrastructure
Ob
jecti
ves
Channel Growth
Framework
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Channels 1.0 Channels 2.0
What’s Going Out What’s Coming In
Responsiveness is critical
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Channels 1.0 Channels 2.0
What’s Going Out What’s Coming In
Responsiveness is critical
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When Vendors Don’t Embrace The Future
• Excessive channel marketing programs costs– Slower time to market for new programs– Static vs. dynamic knowledge transfer
• Inadequate response time to market changes– Collaboration shackled by bureaucracy – Inability to engage with new partner types– Slower revenue ramp in SMB markets due to limited sales coverage
• Partners and customers cannot take leadership role– Loss of channel influence / leadership– Exclusion from emerging Partner and End-user Communities
• Not present at the purchase decision
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What Resellers Need to be Doing
• Planning for Change– Upgrading their web sites– Finding out where their customers congregate on-line– Creating on-line communities for their customers– Encouraging their employees to develop and use
their on-line presence for business
“The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by a period of worry
and depression”John Preston - Boston College
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Successful Strategies for Vendors
• Vendors need to lead their partners– End-user customer mapping to social media usage– Partner mapping to social media usage– Branded community setup - Linking Communities– Fund web 2.0 web sites linked with communities
• Individuals/Organizations should embrace Web 2.0– LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, or ??– Pick your top five and be disciplined– Comment, post, forward, repeat– Its not additive – it’s a replacement– You won’t get a second chance
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Social Media Map for Partner Managers
For each of these social media focal points, understand how many users (partners), how active they are, who are the thought leaders, and how can you
connect the activity back to your own community.
Partner Portal & Community
Partner Communities
LinkedIn
Partnerpedia
Industry Blogs
Facebook MySpace
Channel Blogs
SlideShare Flickr
Vendor Partner
Communities
Twitter
Google Groups Yahoo Groups
YouTubeMeetups
Gilwell Group
400,000,000 Users100,000 Resellers
3,000 Vendors
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Thanks
For more informationMike Dubrall http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedubrallor
Channels of the Future Community
www.gilwellgroup.xeequa.com
3545 Aero Court - Suite C - San Diego, CA. 92123Phone: 858-279-6668 Fax: 858-279-6686Toll Free: 877-CMR-6661www.computermarketresearch.com