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Computer Market ResearchThe Leader in Channel Data Management

Presents “Channels of the Future: Web 2.0”

Using Social Media to Maintain a Competitive Edge

Presented by Mike Dubrall, the Gilwell Group, May 6, 2009

COMPUTER MARKET RESEARCH provides expertise in channel data management which allows partners and manufacturers to make better sales, marketing, inventory management and financial decisions . CMR offers a wide array of SaaS products including Co-op/MDF, Channel POS and Inventory, Deal Registration, Opportunity Management, Special Pricing Authorization and Salesforce.com integration.

3545 Aero Court - Suite C - San Diego, CA. 92123 | Phone: 858-279-6668 | Fax: 858-279-6686 | Toll Free: 877-CMR-6661www.computermarketresearch.com

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Channels of the Future

Discussing Web 2.0 impact to the value chain

If you are not already active in the various spaces, you may find it interesting to follow:

MIke Dubrall on LinkedIn

@MikeDubrall on Twitter

Channels of the Future Group on LinkedIn

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Michael DubrallManaging DirectorGilwell Group, LLC

Gilwell Group provides research, consulting, and enablement services to help organizations

measure, manage, and improve partnership productivity through the use and understanding

of next generation products and tools.

“Channels of the Future” Community for Partner Managers www.

Gilwellgroup.xeequa.com

Channels of the Future Research Service(Vendor and Reseller surveys)

Channels of the Future Consulting(Community Development)

Social Media Education for Vendors and Channel Partners

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• Traditional Framework for Channel Growth (KPAs)

• Social Media Chaos – So Many Sites, So Little Time

• How Resellers Are Using Social Media • Site By Site Discussion of Partnering Usage

• On-line Communities• Changing Sales Process• Next Generation Partnering Strategies

Today’s Agenda

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Partner Execution

Whole Product

Partner Management

Sales Management

Partner M

arketing

Communications

Infrastructure

Ob

jecti

ves

Traditional Channel Growth

Framework

Territory Management

Go-to-m

arket Stra

tegy

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Forces Battering the Framework

• Social Media (Web 2.0)• SaaS (HaaS, Open Source)• Economic Downturn• Maturation of the Industry and the

Channel

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Social Networking is as old as civilization. It involves the sharing of information among friends/acquaintances to socialize, discuss topics of interest, reduce risks, and make more informed decisions. Social Media is how the internet has changed social networking. It includes the use of Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, video file sharing, and social networking sites like Facebook to expand the reach of social networking and more effectively capture and share relevant information. (Matt Goddard, R2i.ntegrated.com)

On-line Communities combine many social media capabilities in one secure place to facilitate communications, collaboration, and networking for social, educational, or business purposes

“Social Media is the collection of tools and online spaces available to help individuals and businesses to accelerate their information and communication needs.” - Axel Schultze

Earlier today I was once again asked to wrap a neat definition around social media. It seems increasingly hard to do this without sounding like a bit of a tool. Chris Lake on eConsultancy

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Social Media Value

Pyramid

Social Media Impacts All Levels Of The Value ChainTechnology vendors must adapt their channel

programs in response to the availability of Web 2.0 tools/technologies.

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On a 1-10 scale, how active are you personally on the following social media

sites?

9IT vendor employees are more active on-line. (Partners were asked this same question in a monthly survey.)

10Awareness Magazine, 9/08

The speed of acceptance for social media is staggering.

400 M social media users

75% of adults now use Social Media to connect with each other. Forrester

Crossing Over Into Business

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Some of the largest sites today

• Bebo 40,000,000• Classmates.com 50,000,000• Facebook 175,000,000• Friendster 90,000,000• Hi5 80,000,000• LinkedIn 35,000,000• Orkut 67,000,000• Reunion.com 51,000,000• Tagged.com 70,000,000• Windows Live Spaces 120,000,000• MySpace 253,145,404

Approximately 30% of the one Billion Internet users are

now part of a social network. In five

years - 400+ million users of social

media.

This happened with- zero advertising

- zero sales- zero cold calls

Source: Alexa.com

YouTube has 500,000 sites linking to it

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Entire Ecosystems have developed around the most

popular sites

pwytter

Twitterholic.com CNN has almost 1,000,000 followers

50 Great Widgets For Your Blog40+ Tools For Google CalendarSKYPE TOOLBOX: 50+ Enhancements for SkypeGMAIL TOOLBOX: 60+ Tools For Gmail

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Some Things to Consider

• Virtually all large technology vendors have a formal social media initiative (not with channels)– Plus dozens of informal projects scattered across the

company– Partner Sales Managers are increasingly spending their

time on social media activities– Partners increasingly concerned about how vendors

communicate with them and their customers

• Already there are leaders and followers among vendors and social media activities– There are a lot of thought leaders on Twitter– This impacts branding and positioning– This impacts your ability to influence channel behavior

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What Resellers Are Doing (Or Should be Doing) On-line

• Finding New Customers• Improving Proposal Close Rates• Shortening Sales Cycles• Training Employees and Customers• Recruiting Employees• Improving Customer Satisfaction• Building Partnerships with other Resellers• Advertising, Public Relations, building brands, disseminating

information, filling webinars, and more

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Social Media Sites Where Resellers Congregate

Tactical SitesSlideShare – FlickrIssuu – SchribdPodcast – PodcastalleyMeetups

Dual Presence SitesMySpaceFacebook

Experimental SitesTwitterDigg/Delicious

Training/Communication SitesYouTube – Yahoo VideoSlideShareBlogs

Networking sitesMeetupsLinkedIn - PlaxoBranded On-line CommunitiesGoogle / Yahoo Groups

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Meetups964 in Santa Clara

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SlideShare

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SlideShare

Flicker Posting photos for tech support and on-line

use

EMC = 18,639 on Flickr Hewlett Packard = 43,507 Microsoft = 211,098

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Scribd - Posting documents for on-line use

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Podcast (Podcastalley)Posting podcasts for easier access

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Dual Presence Sites

FacebookMySpace

Facebook

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Facebook

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Personal Branding on Facebook

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MySpace

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Experimental Communication Sites

DiggDeliciousTwitter

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Digg/Delicious

• Explanation and example of Reseller Use

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TwitterThe world’s biggest communication chain

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Twitter

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Twitter

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Twitter

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Sites Used for Training/Knowledge Transfer

Yahoo VideoYouTube

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YouTube

Videos, Channels, Playlists IBM – almost 10,000 videos

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Sites Used for Networking - Sales

LinkedInYahoo GroupsGoogle GroupsBranded Communities

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LinkedIn Prospecting153 results for Dow Chemical, Vice President Sales

115 results for John Deere, Vice President Sales

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LinkedIn Groups

14,667 results for Cisco partner

44,356 results for microsoft partner

3,844 results for value added reseller

48,488 results for channel partner

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LinkedIn Research

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Google/Yahoo Groups

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Branded On-line Communities Bring it all Together

• Accelerate Innovation– Decrease costs of gathering customer feedback– More efficient product and service launches– Better targeting of products and services– Faster Issue identification and resolution

• Drive Marketing & Sales– Enhanced SEO and Word of Mouth Promotion– Reduced cost of acquiring prospect/customer information– Increased close rate and higher average order size

• Reduce Support Costs– Direct/Indirect Support Call deflection– Faster issue resolution and fewer escalations– Elimination of alternative support channels– Lower-cost support for multilingual customers, spike handling

Source: Lithium Solutions

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Branded On-line Community Systems

Tying Branded Communities Together

Reseller A Reseller B Reseller C Reseller D . . . . . . Reseller N

Master Consol Distributing smart, non advertisial content such as blog posts, events, white papers, news, video clips to hundreds or thousands of partner community systems.

Partner communitiesAllow selected vendors to syndicate content withtheir customer community.

Getting content directly to the existing installed baseGetting content directly to the existing installed base

Customer Base

Customer Base

Customer Base

Customer Base

Customer Base

Like AdWords for“smart content”With a distributionsystem that is transparent and Channel aware

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Value of Programs to Resellers

Reseller Rating of Vendor Program Offerings

Partner Portal 3.01On-line training 2.92Webinars / web meetings 2.91Joint Business Planning 2.73Mass emails with file attachments

2.61

On-line forums 2.57Electronic Newsletters 2.21

1=Negative impact on our ability to sell2=No impact on our ability to sell3= Modestly improves our ability to sell 4=Significantly improves our ability to sell

Resellers were asked to rate the programs provided by their vendors, in terms of how well the program helped the reseller sell to customers. Growing resellers rated all programs higher than non-growing resellers. (Cum Jan-March 09)

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Channels of the Future Research

Personal Activities – Reseller Employees

LinkedIn 4.38

MySpace/Facebook 3.61

Industry Blogs 3.59

YouTube 2.76

Twitter 2.40

Second Life 1.41

participation in the following kinds of Web 2.0 sites, where 1 is no participation and 10 means you visit daily

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Reseller Social Media Skills

Growing Resellers 4.18 5.36 4.07 2.96 1.25 2.93

How would you describe your company’s revenue growth over

the past 24 months?

MySpace and

Facebook

Linkedin and Plaxo?

Blogs Video on Demand

(VOD) like YouTube

Second Life Twitter

Non Growing Resellers 3.20 3.63 2.98 2.39 1.10 1.90

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Channels of the Future Research

Reseller Needs from Vendors

On-Line Product Demos 6.75

E-marketing/Storefronts 6.50

Internet Advertising 6.03

Help with SoMe 5.03

On-Line Communities 5.00

Testimonials on YouTube

4.41

Rate your interest in having your vendors provide the following social media tools to make you and your company more successful, where 1 is no interest and 10 is extreme interest.

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Regarding Social Media, What’s Holding You (Vendors) Back?

56© 2009 Gilwell Group, LLC

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Web 2.0 Channels 2.0 • Web 2.0 concepts and tools are transforming the

entire value chain– Open and Instant Communications

• Isolated silos of information are replaced by content sources and platforms for end users to build on collaboratively

– Freedom & Necessity to Share and Re-use Information– Decentralization of Authority/Decision Making– Many services are low cost or even free

• Changing rules and business models in the channel• Changing the sales process

Non-linear, unstructured, conversational, constantly changing, multi-media, collaborative, low cost

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How end-user customers buy today

They rely on the Internet for information – not their sales rep

• They do Google searches• They ask friends in their social network• They check forums or online groups or blogs • They get feedback in Twitter or other micro blogs• When they are “ready to buy” the brand and product

decision is “far along”

• They hate cold calls• They increasingly ignore advertising• They have spam filters and popup blockers• They throw junk mail into the waste basket• They have no patience for the traditional sales process

They may not describe it that way – but their purchase decision is increasingly made in the social web.

Consumers are becoming Prosumers

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Partner Execution

Whole Product

Go-to-m

arket Stra

tegy

Territory Management

Partner Management

Sales Management

Partner M

arketing

Communications

Infrastructure

Ob

jecti

ves

Channel Growth

Framework

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Channels 1.0 Channels 2.0

What’s Going Out What’s Coming In

Responsiveness is critical

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Channels 1.0 Channels 2.0

What’s Going Out What’s Coming In

Responsiveness is critical

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When Vendors Don’t Embrace The Future

• Excessive channel marketing programs costs– Slower time to market for new programs– Static vs. dynamic knowledge transfer

• Inadequate response time to market changes– Collaboration shackled by bureaucracy – Inability to engage with new partner types– Slower revenue ramp in SMB markets due to limited sales coverage

• Partners and customers cannot take leadership role– Loss of channel influence / leadership– Exclusion from emerging Partner and End-user Communities

• Not present at the purchase decision

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What Resellers Need to be Doing

• Planning for Change– Upgrading their web sites– Finding out where their customers congregate on-line– Creating on-line communities for their customers– Encouraging their employees to develop and use

their on-line presence for business

“The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by a period of worry

and depression”John Preston - Boston College

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Successful Strategies for Vendors

• Vendors need to lead their partners– End-user customer mapping to social media usage– Partner mapping to social media usage– Branded community setup - Linking Communities– Fund web 2.0 web sites linked with communities

• Individuals/Organizations should embrace Web 2.0– LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, or ??– Pick your top five and be disciplined– Comment, post, forward, repeat– Its not additive – it’s a replacement– You won’t get a second chance

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Social Media Map for Partner Managers

For each of these social media focal points, understand how many users (partners), how active they are, who are the thought leaders, and how can you

connect the activity back to your own community.

Partner Portal & Community

Partner Communities

LinkedIn

Partnerpedia

Industry Blogs

Facebook MySpace

Channel Blogs

SlideShare Flickr

Vendor Partner

Communities

Twitter

Google Groups Yahoo Groups

YouTubeMeetups

Gilwell Group

400,000,000 Users100,000 Resellers

3,000 Vendors

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Thanks

For more informationMike Dubrall http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedubrallor

Channels of the Future Community

www.gilwellgroup.xeequa.com

3545 Aero Court - Suite C - San Diego, CA. 92123Phone: 858-279-6668 Fax: 858-279-6686Toll Free: 877-CMR-6661www.computermarketresearch.com