Anyone work in IT? Advise needed please

Zascar

Hey guys, I've just started to work for a new company and I'd like to ask for some advise from the boards members as I know may people in here have a lot of experience and might be able to offer me some pointers. The company is new in the Republic of Ireland, and my job is to develop the business almost from scratch.

The field is IT Security, and they have 2 main products which are each excellent. My job is to build a channel of partners/resellers who will take this on as part of their product portfolio and sell to their customers. There are some very attractive characteristics in becoming a partner, for anyone from a one man contractor right up to the large VAR's. Once we have built a group of steady key resellers, we will continue to hunt down further business which we will then hand over to these partners in turn, along with any other business they may be able to take from it. They are not very specialist products, really anyone with more than 10 pc's is a potential client and so far it has been very well received. The products have a lot of USP's, many advantages over the competition and are also competitive on price. We have also recently been backed by a very large and well known communications company which always helps.

I’d like some advice that anyone can give me that has worked in the industry. Obviously this sort of this happens all the time and plenty of companies are on the lookout for new products that they can sell to their customers. However generally people do not respond well to a cold call asking if their company would like to take on a new product etc. It is not the ideal approach, prepherably I’d like to go solely on referrals and recommendations but this is difficult to do at the very beginning…. Can anyone offer some advice as to which way might be best to approach this?

Any guidance would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Ruu_Old

Best suited for the Work forum Id say friend.

sharingan

I don't know much about getting to know VARs and setting up relationships with them, but basically a VAR will take up to 70% of your revenue or so.

Your software will have to effectively sell itself. You can't rely on educating the VAR's sales and marketing staff to push your products.

Zascar

Absolutely. The few vars I have spoken to are very happy with the price as it comes in well under the cost of other services they would sell like remote backup etc, plus as it is a managed service it can replace outdated hardware and software conbinations which require constant attention. We give them an RRP for the service but we do not publish these figures at all so the var can add as much margin as they like.

WizZard

What's the product?

Zascar

PM me for details I don't want to be accused of pimping...