Close engagement, not price, has become the master of relational links in the channel, according to Nine Group Marketing Director Mark Saunders, who argues that today's marketplace demands a new posture on relationship building and customer support.
There has been a lot of hue and cry in the channel about the importance of partner relationships but all too often actions do not speak louder than words. The 'promise' must deliver specifics, not platitudes, asserts Saunders, who believes that Nine has revealed a new world of customer engagement that offers a holistic approach designed to bring about transformative change. Nine's promise, he says, is to deepen partner relationships through a tried and tested process of knowledge sharing and hands-on assistance. "We are in the business of relationships and happen to have a service-centric operation based in the telecommunications sector," he said. "It is important never to lose sight of what we are and what we need to do well. Supplier choice is not about price, it's about how we can help partners be more successful."
Saunders believes that relational policies to date have been too general and that many suppliers are missing a trick simply because they do not prioritise, or invest in, the partner relationship. "Our ethos is based around building and developing relationships with our resellers and we believe this is equally valid for them when they are considering their own customers," added Saunders. "Our Train>Guide>Win formula is about helping our resellers to be more successful by sharing our own views, experience and expertise with them. Resellers are often competing against more sophisticated businesses, so we believe in helping them to level the playing field."
The lesson of Nine's success for others is that close collaboration with partners reaps rewards and ongoing mutual growth is no pipe dream. "We change the depth of our reseller relationships from strangers, to acquaintances and friends and even fans," commented Saunders. "We believe with certainty that by building the trust of our resellers we will both enjoy success. Nine embraces ambitious resellers looking for a lasting relationship with an energetic, innovative service provider. Furthermore, for those resellers who want to talk openly about their business exit, our track record in structuring deals makes us a natural choice where this factor is a key consideration."
Nine's partner-centricity is aligned with various service options for resellers including outsourced billing, direct debit collection, out of hours service and provisioning. "We offer a compelling alternative to the carriers," emphasised Saunders. "Through our Purple Partner Programme, we offer real world business benefits to our resellers, not just re-branded collateral, but professional quality videos and workshops which deliver practical advice on improving margin through a better understanding of tariff maintenance and billing rules.
"Marketing workshops and Twitter Q&A sessions also benefit our reseller community. We take our role as defender of the channel seriously and offer support for our resellers to join FCS, enabling them to be engaged with legal and regulatory changes that impact telecommunications. We are also working alongside the industry fraud awareness body, TUFF, to deliver a second reseller event in June."
Nine also evangelises the importance of measurement. "We are obsessed with improving and translating the data we hold on our resellers into information that we can then use to create better levels of engagement," explained Saunders. "It would be folly to invest precious marketing dollars talking to the wrong reseller about the wrong opportunity, so we always preach the gospel of clean data and recommend this to our resellers too. It is just as important to understand what our resellers buy from us and what they buy elsewhere so we can market our proposition more effectively. They should be doing the same with their customers and we are happy to share our insight. There is zero value in implementing an idea, not checking if it worked and then repeating it just because that was Plan A."
Nine's stance puts less engaged organisations to shame, according to Saunders, who pointed out that employee collaboration and engagement is a key factor in the company's overarching philosophy. "Our business is about our people and we invest in allowing them to be the best that they can be," he commented. "Last year we achieved the Silver Standard for Investors in People on our first attempt and we going for Gold this year, supported by our move across the car park to a new 12,500 square feet flagship office which offers a remarkable work environment with great facilities for meeting our customers."
Nine is a natural relationship building organisation that with alacrity puts resellers on a new course by imparting sound advice rather than the self-righteous bluster, believes Saunders. "There is always a lot of noise around new product developments, be they alleged seismic shifts away from ISDN towards SIP, the eternal question of what is Lync really for, the possible business applications of 4G, or the as yet not so meteoric rise in hosted IP telephony," he said.
"We try to engage with our resellers to debate the key issues, often over lunch, and offer our own perspective on which product is worth putting on the shelf. There is a lot of traditional hardware and network services business still out there, and although a monocular focus in this area would prove catastrophic a balanced portfolio can provide rich dividends."•