Profitable Partnering – 4 Expert Perspectives On Finding Your Niche

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Experts weigh in on creating channel partnerships with vendors, VARs, distributors, and developers.

At the inaugural ISV IQ Live! Conference held February 24 in Santa Ana, CA, nearly 150 channel executives gathered to address the topics of raising capital, partnering, and marketing. One panel, Profitable Partnering, featured three vendors and one distributor executive discussing channel partnerships.

Participants included Gregg Brunnick, Director of Product Management and Technical Services at Epson America; Walker Thompson, Director of Alliance Management at Vantiv Integrated Payments; Mark Fraker, Vice President of Marketing at BlueStar; and Marc Solomon, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Worldpay. The session was moderated by Business Solutions Magazine President Jim Roddy.

The panelists addressed what ISVs need to know about partnering with VARs and how to approach it. Solomon underscored the importance of matching VARs with your business plan, saying “I’ve run across so many ISVs that want to partner with so many different VARs, but there are probably only a couple VARs that meet their needs.

“By just partnering with anybody who wants to do business with you, you spend a lot of time, and it’s a lot of wasted time.” Solomon advises to first “make sure that a VAR that you’re looking at matches up in values, matches up in what your business plan is, what you want to accomplish, and then will actually bring something of value to you.”

Fraker added, “It’s core competencies that are most important in finding the right fit.” He explained there are a lot of different types of VARs on the market, so “if you are going to put together a reseller program, have one that fits different business models. Are you going to go out and look to the DMARs (Direct Marketing Companies), the DCWs, the Insights, the Tiger Directs of the world? Are you going to look for the typical reseller that provides services within a 150-mile radius of their facilities, or are you going to look for VARs that have an international or maybe a national or state footprint? When you’re going to go out and do that, it’s the matching up their core competencies to what you’re looking for to drive your products.”

Thompson underscored the alignment of value with the VAR, stating, “In a way, the VAR is actually contributing back to your business as much as you’re contributing to the business, with a software product or even some kind of service offering as well. That would be something I would see as an important aspect of a VAR program, and just looking for VARs.”

For Brunnick, “It’s very important for ISVs to do a lot of the planning and heavy lifting before starting to engage with a number of VARs. ISVs who have a clear direction and have decided to focus upon certain verticals and certain regions can really help define the type of VARs they’re looking to partner with. It can really help narrow the selection of those VARs down.”

Then next step is to align the values, according to Brunnick. “You want to partner with a VAR who shares your same interests and goals and a VAR who can really make it a win-win relationship for both parties.” The key to establishing successful ISV-VAR partnerships is finding the right niche for your organization, without trying to be all things to all people, surmises Brunnick.