As smaller technology Partners or resellers, you have a unique advantage in agility. This enables you to adapt swiftly to new opportunities and changing market conditions.
Unlike your larger counterparts, you are not as burdened by bureaucratic processes, business operations, and lengthy timelines. This gives you the confidence to navigate the technology world with fewer disruptions, allowing you to grab new opportunities and establish your place in the ecosystem.
Your capacity for innovation and decision-making is a significant advantage. Unlike larger organisations, you’re not bound by legacy systems and processes. This real-time freedom can inspire you to challenge potential risks and explore new ideas, often resulting in innovative products and services in saas that can disrupt and significantly impact established industries. This freedom allows you to push boundaries with contingency plans and gain profitability and market share.
As a smaller tech partner, you may often feel overlooked in the supply chain or lost among other partners in your vendor relationships. However, it’s essential to realise that your unique strengths and capabilities set you apart and make you an asset in the market. It’s also important to acknowledge your potential challenges, such as limited resources (e.g., marketing, management tools, quality standards, and competition from more prominent players), and develop risk management strategies to overcome them.
1: Affinity with your audience
Personalised and Niche
You have the flexibility to provide a more personalised and tailored service, encouraging loyalty and renewals. Large businesses can often adopt a “one size fits all” approach. Still, small businesses can capitalise on this by taking the time to understand each potential customer, assess their business goals, establish KPIs, build long-term relationships and create a customised solution that suits them perfectly.
Flexibility without hoops
Larger organisations often emphasise uniformity in their internal business operations or customer interactions. Due to their size and complexity, these organisations’ approval processes and risk mitigation can be lengthy. In contrast, you have the advantage of being more adaptable in rewarding and acknowledging your employees and their approach to interacting with and onboarding customers. This flexibility allows them to infuse and streamline a personal touch into the internal culture and external interactions, such as vendor relations.
Creative Engagement
Small businesses have a unique opportunity for continuous improvement by creating a constructive feedback loop that encourages open and effective communication and sets clear expectations. This engagement can improve deliverables and shape future product designs, new initiatives, and service offerings. It empowers consumers to become invested stakeholders and enthusiastic advocates, thereby influencing the direction of the business.
Level of care
Small businesses excel in providing personalised care and attention from dedicated individuals, a level of service that is often challenging for more giant organisations to match. Those who establish or work in small businesses have a deep passion for their craft, which you continuously refine to benefit your customers, building trust. You invest in your customers and the company, recognising that the customers are integral and should be valued and appreciated.
2: Passion
Adaptability
Business revolves around people, and small companies benefit from close relationships with each customer. This allows you to adapt and be flexible to better meet those customers’ needs and quickly introduce new services, products and pricing based on those needs.
Creativity
Small businesses have a unique advantage in leveraging creativity for success. Unlike larger organisations, you can streamline approval and response processes, enabling you to develop and implement innovative solutions quickly.
3: Strategic Vendor Value
Low investment/High Value
Suppose you’re busy juggling many vendors with different initiatives and offerings. Because of time restraints and resources, you’re in danger of a reactive relationship, and therefore, you risk the competition becoming preferred vendor partners.
You may have marketing resources, but they’re too busy doing your marketing, and they need more time to build relationships with the right vendors and drive multiple vendor relationships. Therefore, you’re probably losing out on precious wallet share that could be used to fund your GTM campaigns.
As a partner in your vendor relationships, you do not impose high costs on them, unlike higher-tier partners who can expect a lot and charge higher prices, demanding more substantial discounts and incentives.
The likelihood of regularly receiving Market Development Funding (MDF) from vendor partnerships could be higher, so the vendor’s investment and support expectations are proportionally smaller than those of the more significant partner, equalling cost savings for them. Utilise these facts as part of your supplier relationship management to gain additional value, such as data insights, physical data, or leads.
4: Quick to market
Being the agile one
Planning marketing campaigns to effectively and swiftly promote a new product or service is essential. Still, you must have an overarching marketing plan and consistent activity across the entire business. Using automation and workflows for your campaigns, as well as social media strategies for channels such as LinkedIn, thought leadership content, industry award entries, blogging, and lead gen outreach, are equally important. It’s well worth considering outsourcing your marketing or elements of it to give you additional resources as an extension to your team. This will free up your time, give you clear metrics and ensure a consistent and timely delivery.
Leverage the opportunities
To maximise effectiveness and deliverables, develop a campaign plan that aligns with the provider’s key strategies and seek support for content, training, sales focus days, and funding. Remember, building and maintaining a strong vendor relationship is crucial. It can lead to more support and opportunities, helping you to grow your business and improve your market position.
Timely
With your marketing engine in place, you can monitor performance, generate leads, act on them quickly, and provide timely feedback. This approach will help you earn recognition, be less transactional, and secure more effective vendor relationship management while bringing you more business. It’s a win-win.
