What's Your Channel

You developed a great product, but you are surprised that you are having such a hard time selling it to small businesses. Before you start tinkering with your brand, logo, marketing approach and product development, take a moment to review your channel strategy.

It is important to determine your approach to selling to the small business audience early in your go-to-market strategy. You need to determine if you will:

a) Sell through retailers such as Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, Best Buy, CostCo, Sams or other retail locations.
b) Sell through and indirect channel of value-added resellers who not only sell your products, but also install, customize and train the customer on your solution.
c) Sell direct to customers through direct email/marketing campaigns or via your web site.

Your approach will be determined on how your specific audience segment likes to buy. Today, so many companies resist selling through traditional retailers citing the cost of entry as a barrier. Others complain that it takes too long to establish a strong VAR channel with committed and loyal partners. These two issues often lead companies to try to sell direct and drive small business purchases to a web site. This may work for many products, but often does hit the mark as a sole channel focus.

You may wish to take a multi-channel approach where you are implementing several strategies from direct to indirect models. This can be a strong method. Additionally, you may wish to evaluate less traditional methods for reaching your audience, via:

a) Trade Associations - more and more, trade associations are becoming a marketing and sales channel for companies selling to small businesses. Trade associations are looking for more and more ways to provide value to its members and special pricing and discounts on desired products can satisfy that strategy.
b) Less Evaluated SB Channels - Companies such as UPS Stores, FedEx Office, PakMail, PostNet, SOHO Hero and others specifically target the small business owner and home office user with shipping, copying and other services. These stores have retail storefronts and could be a good location to sell your products. I am convinced that some companies is going to figure out the value of these companies as a channel distribution partner and drive significant sales.
c) Portals - We outlined a couple days ago the value of portals as a co-marketing vehicle. Sites like AMEX, Intuit, SageSpark and others can provide a good distribution channel for reaching your target audience.

Whichever approach you take, recognize you will have to provide incentives and margin in order to secure committed engagement from your channel partner.

What do you think?