| DECEMBER 2004
Planning for 2005
In 1893, William Thayer wrote "There is no such thing as becoming learned or great without forethought, plan, or purpose; it must be the result of well-directed and persevering effort. The new year is right around the corner but are you ready for it? Do you have a purpose and a plan that will allow your organization to build profitabilty and more importantly, shareholder value over the next four quarters? Your 2005 Business Plan Matters
If you are like me you are reading everything you can to find out what analysts are saying about the new year trends; what will be the next wave of technology to capture profits. At the same time, vendors are working hard to keep their best resellers interested; whether they have a compelling product or not. As you work through closing out your year, in addition to planning your budget, I recommend that you consider planning in a couple of areas: 1. Solution Strategy What's the company vision? Jim Collins, in his book "Good to Great" says, "You need a hedgehog concept". In other words, do you know what your passion is, what you have the potential to be great at, and have you determined what significant financial denominators to focus on? In addition to this, you should be looking at the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) right now to see what is pre-tornado, and where your value proposition can be established. Let's face it, there are not many resellers out there with a unique value proposition (claiming you are more experienced or have a higher level of customer satisfaction doesn't do it in this market), so this is your chance to move ahead. At the same time, you need some kind of monthly reoccuring revenue to create stability. Perhaps you have invested in a managed services solution such as LevelPlatforms or nAble; now you need a plan to grow that business. Clearly security is a key point of interest in almost every vendors program, but its not the same security we sold in in 2000 or even last year. SC Info Security Newswire reports that CIO's are primarily concerned about malware and regulatory compliance. Are you prepared to capture this market? Creating a focused plan to get into new accounts, move up in your existing accounts, and increase the margin you command through business centric solutions may be the most important thing you can be doing between now and the first of the year. 2. Marketing Plan Above selling or even marketing is "branding". How do the companies in your market view your organization today, and is that going to allow you to get the rates and the mind share of economic buyers in this coming year? If you are selling mostly commodity product or providing simple (but necessary) reactive support services, your offerings are needed, but cost structure is going to be a challenge. With the right focus you can begin to move up in the race by applying some of the things I have addressed in recent Channel Concept bulletins (Digital Asset Protection offerings, Disaster Recovery Planning, Managed Services and Security Monitoring). The idea is to wrap these disciplines around the offerings you currently have momentum with and then reinvest the profits in building out your vision. While you are doing this, you have to have a plan to get the message out. According to Peter Montoya, author of several branding books, branding requires at least seven (7) elements:
- Specialization
- Leadership
- Personality
- Distinctiveness
- Visibility
- Unity
- Persistence
- Goodwill
One of the primary jobs of your company's leadership team should be involvement in branding. Plan to get involved this year in speaking engagements, writing, press releases, and executive level networking within your clients' organizations. Montoya's first element is going to require a focused solution strategy, so these first two points are closely related. 3. Partner Plan How about your partner plan? One the best things I ever did was put together joint marketing plans with my partners. Not wanting to be a box pusher, I made it a priority to put together a solution strategy that involved my vendor partners, allowing me to leverage their support for the right kind of activities to move my business forward. You want to identify your key partners; partners that are willing to make an investment in your business with an expected return of loyalty and commitment to sell their products. Why is this important? CRN last month reported that 25 of 100 billion dollars in MDF will go unclaimed this year. With MDF support and some creativity you can accomplish a lot of branding and lead generation; but you need to have a plan. Start thinking about the partners that can add value to your solution strategy. With the right partners you really can have a win/win partnership. But again, you need to look back at the TALC and see what is going to be strategic. Vendors will welcome a focused reseller that understands how to bring value to their customers; they need incremental sales. 4. Hiring Plan Finally the hiring plan. At one point I recommended that you begin forming a hiring team; a team of like minded individuals that share your vision for a strong organization. Our business has changed and the people in it must retool or be replaced as the change continues. What was once largely a product/install business has become more and more services oriented according to VARBusiness reports. Have you considered that this business will require an organization that looks a lot different than the old business model you may have started your business with? Start by creating a new organization that is driven by consultants with solutions. Who is going to provide the leadership, the marketing/branding functions, the lead generation? If you still have a traditional product resale business model, chances are your cost structure is out of line and your operating profits are not as strong as you need them to be. Doing this right may be one of the key factors in ensuring there is a positive return on sales (ROS) as the end of 2005. I have spent the last three months working with resellers to develop these things using tools like SVLC's Vision Development Resource, workshops on solution strategy, and developing a stronger solution value proposition. You may want to take advantage of these things or you may do this yourself. Either way, now is the time to get started; don't get caught in the year-end activity and forget you have Q1 coming after the New Years celebration. |
