I'll keep publishing

You know I harp on about vendor – reseller relationships a lot because I believe if done well then resellers can materially increase the amount of business a vendor is able to close. I’m qualified to say what I think here as we are a vendor (via Cleartext’s messaging services) and a reseller (via our Cleartext Systems business).

But there are some vendors out there that just don’t get it and are not only unhelpful but most of the time just don’t seem to care. Without wanting to bite one of the many hands that feeds us I’m going to single out a US software vendor who have today managed to make me look like a complete plonker (British slang for idiot) in front of a potential customer yet again.

To elaborate,  they have an excellent product and I must recommend it to a handful of people every week. However what’s not fine is making major changes in your product strategy without letting your resellers know BEFORE going public.

This communication, or lack of, today resulted in a prospect telling me that they wanted v3.0, the new product. This left me wondering what they were talking about and feeling rather embarrassed that I didn’t know about it.

There’s a simple thing to remember here, every time your reseller communication program (you do have one don’t you?) breaks and one of your resellers is out there pitching to a new client there’s the potential for not only that reseller to look daft but by proxy you as well.