ChannelVision Magazine

Start with a Value Grid You can create your own evalua- tion grid based on the criteria below with the various services you are considering. Then, score the services based on how much extra benefit they brings your business. What cloud service helps you acquire new customers? As you try to expand your busi- ness, you’re likely looking for ways to add net-new customers. It’s always great to have your existing custom- ers buy from you, but what if you are working with a new vendor? You face less risk introducing a brand new cus- tomer to a vendor than to an existing customer where the rest of your re- lationship might be exposed if things don’t go as planned. Products that have already gained adoption but are just beyond the grasp of a customer make for great conversation. Most resellers are ap- proaching their prospects with the no- tion of moving to the cloud. However, having something different to say, and providing more education, can open doors and help develop the founda- tion for a long-term relationship. What products help you address customer needs? You’ve likely heard a lot about out- come based selling – what are your customers trying to achieve? HVDs/ DaaS offer use cases ranging from usage across an entire organization to specific needs, such as supporting remote workers or contractors, or ac- celerating a merger or acquisition. It’s also a big part of digital transforma- tion, which currently is a major topic on the minds of business and technol- ogy executives. How much value are you offering customers? Products such as online backup are low priced, low value and high risk. Customers see online backup as an insurance policy and aren’t too thrilled with paying for it. There is also little work in setting up an online backup so it offers little margin or op- portunity from a services perspective for the reseller. However, the risk is extremely high because of the confi- dential and critical nature of the data. If an online backup fails, or a recovery effort fails, the blame and liability is at your service: Xaas Product Upfront (pre-sale) services Onboarding related services Ongoing services Add-on services The various products you are considering go here (SaaS, cloud, etc.) Does the product give you the opportunity to provide services without requiring a sale? Put Yes or No here and notate what those could be in a second phase. Does the product allow you to provide services related to getting the customer set up? Put Yes or No here and expound on it. Does the product give you an opportunity to provide on-going services? Put Yes or No here and list what those might be. Does the product allow you in short term or near- term to add-on related services or products? Put Yes or No here and list or flag it for more research. Example Hosted virtual desktop (DaaS) Yes • Readiness assessment • Network assessment • Telecom (pipes) Yes • Data migration • User migration • Security, such as SSO and MFA • High Availability and BC/DR setup Yes • Network monitoring, • Server monitoring, • Workspace monitoring, • Helpdesk Yes • Security add-ons • IDS/IDP • Vulnerability assessment • Regulatory assessments (GRC) March - April, 2018 | Channel Vision 45