Vendor Partnership

I need to explain why this post is important. So many companies today are having a hard time knowing the difference between a partnership with a vendor and using a reseller/solution partner.

Lets start with a reseller.

These IT companies want your company to sell products. They have dedicated staff that has been training by these vendors, to provide solutions. For smaller companies that do not have the staff or the technical knowledge this is a great way to enter the market.

Here are the drawbacks for working with the reseller.

Resellers are taking 5-10% or more of your profit margin.  You do not have a partnership with company X.  Companies like VMware, CISCO, and Nutanix.  You are only a reseller of the Company X product line.

Now lets move onto Partnerships.

When you create a partnership with a vendor you work directly with this vendor to provide solutions. All profits are passed to the partner and there are no third party’s.  You are able to call Company X a partner. You receive sales and technical training directly from the vendor.

Drawbacks

You have to dedicate time to the vendor training.  Technical staff is required to sell and implement solutions for Company X.

The break down

If you are in a position that is requiring you to grow your company and are trying to competing against the giants, choose the partnerships path.  If you want to stay a small mom and pop computer store, keep on task with being resellers.  When I ran a small computer company for 5 years I was resellers for just about everything. Looking back, if I would of created more partnerships I might still be working for myself.