Channels Of The Future Presentation May 6,2009

Computer Market Research The 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-6661 www.computermarketresearch.com

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

Michael Dubrall Managing Director Gilwell 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

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

Partner Execution Whole Product Partner Management Sales Management Partner Marketing Communications Infrastructure Objectives Traditional Channel Growth Framework Territory Management Go-to-market Strategy

Forces Battering the Framework
Social Media (Web 2.0)
SaaS (HaaS, Open Source)
Economic Downturn
Maturation of the Industry and the Channel

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

Social Media Value Pyramid Social Media Impacts All Levels Of The Value Chain Technology vendors must adapt their channel programs in response to the availability of Web 2.0 tools/technologies.

On a 1-10 scale, how active are you personally on the following social media sites? IT vendor employees are more active on-line. (Partners were asked this same question in a monthly survey.)

Awareness 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

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

Entire Ecosystems have developed around the most popular sites pwytter Twitterholic.com CNN has almost 1,000,000 followers 50 Great Widgets For Your Blog 40+ Tools For Google Calendar SKYPE TOOLBOX: 50+ Enhancements for Skype GMAIL TOOLBOX: 60+ Tools For Gmail

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

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

Social Media Sites Where Resellers Congregate
Tactical Sites
SlideShare – Flickr
Issuu – Schribd
Podcast – Podcastalley
Meetups
Dual Presence Sites
MySpace
Facebook
Experimental Sites
Twitter
Digg/Delicious
Training/Communication Sites
YouTube – Yahoo Video
SlideShare
Blogs
Networking sites
Meetups
LinkedIn - Plaxo
Branded On-line Communities
Google / Yahoo Groups

Meetups 964 in Santa Clara

SlideShare

Flicker Posting photos for tech support and on-line use EMC = 18,639 on Flickr Hewlett Packard = 43,507 Microsoft = 211,098

Scribd - Posting documents for on-line use

Podcast (Podcastalley) Posting podcasts for easier access

Dual Presence Sites
Facebook
MySpace

Facebook

Personal Branding on Facebook

MySpace

Experimental Communication Sites
Digg
Delicious
Twitter

Digg/Delicious
Explanation and example of Reseller Use

Twitter
The world’s biggest
communication chain

Twitter

Sites Used for Training/Knowledge Transfer
Yahoo Video
YouTube

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

Sites Used for Networking - Sales
LinkedIn
Yahoo Groups
Google Groups
Branded Communities

LinkedIn Prospecting 153 results for Dow Chemical, Vice President Sales 115 results for John Deere, Vice President Sales

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

LinkedIn Research

Google/Yahoo Groups

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

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 communities Allow selected vendors to syndicate content with their customer community. Getting content directly to the existing installed base Customer Base Customer Base Customer Base Customer Base Customer Base Like AdWords for “smart content” With a distribution system that is transparent and Channel aware

Value of Programs to Resellers 1=Negative impact on our ability to sell 2=No impact on our ability to sell 3= 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) Reseller Rating of Vendor Program Offerings Partner Portal 3.01 On-line training 2.92 Webinars / web meetings 2.91 Joint Business Planning 2.73 Mass emails with file attachments 2.61 On-line forums 2.57 Electronic Newsletters 2.21

Channels of the Future Research Personal Activities – Reseller Employees participation in the following kinds of Web 2.0 sites, where 1 is no participation and 10 means you visit daily LinkedIn 4.38 MySpace/Facebook 3.61 Industry Blogs 3.59 YouTube 2.76 Twitter 2.40 Second Life 1.41

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

Channels of the Future Research Reseller Needs from Vendors 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. 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

Channel Top Ten
On-Line Communities (Branded and Open)
LinkedIn
Blogs
Facebook
MySpace
YouTube
Yahoo Video
Twitter
Flickr
Tactical Sites (SlideShare, Issuu, etc.)

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

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

Partner Execution Whole Product Go-to-market Strategy Territory Management Partner Management Sales Management Partner Marketing Communications Infrastructure Objectives Channel Growth Framework

Channels 1.0 Channels 2.0 What’s Going Out What’s Coming In Responsiveness is critical

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

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

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

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 YouTube Meetups Gilwell Group 400,000,000 Users 100,000 Resellers 3,000 Vendors

Thanks For more information Mike Dubrall http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedubrall or Channels of the Future Community www.gilwellgroup.xeequa.com 3545 Aero Court - Suite C - San Diego, CA. 92123 Phone: 858-279-6668 Fax: 858-279-6686 Toll Free: 877-CMR-6661 www.computermarketresearch.com

Channels Of The Future Presentation May 6,2009

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