Business Development
&
Marketing
Plan
ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
This document is to serve as a building block for
the restructure, new vision & business development of CSP. It shall outline
marketing plans & a vision for the future that will ensure growth
experience, year on year into the future. Emphasis shall be placed on setup of
'point of presences' in
Our Vision is to be a number one it distribution company in the region.
HOW WE ENVISION THE MARKETPLACE & OUR FUTURE THEREOF
Concentrate on where the revenues are coming from.
What we know based on our experiences must not distract us form the focal
epicenter of our business,
Software piracy legislation & enforcement thereof - This opens up whole new opportunities. We shall continue to focus on as it is guaranteed business. We shall also pay great attention to license renewals, which I have a database that mentions every license that was sold in the last couple of years.
Increased product & service offerings within
Being more proactively visible in
THE TEAM
Myself - top level
Robert - Symantec Product Manager
Joshua - overall sales assistant
A body - hardware sales
A body - Ug & Tz
Receptionist
2 technicians
Channel Retrenchment & Regional expansion - Our Mission & Goals
Establish a base development
strategy for
My thoughts were to: -
Have a CSP representative covering the
Have an opening cocktail ceremony with a dealer roundtable session in
each country. This will basically inform
the channel who we are and what we do. The same exercise needs to be replicated
in
Have an end of year event - "Thank you for your business" kind of an event where we can invite all dealers and present an award the dealer with the highest sales.
Look into most cost effective way of servicing the region.
Regular travel to
Collate pricing training requirements & structure requisite
seminars as required (both
Find out what is happening in those markets in terms of proposals out there, where can we expect future revenues to come in from & generally how we can help as the Distributor & Microsoft.
Hold meetings with the channel, individually and as a group to explain the benefits of being a successful channel partner - BOTTOM LINE IS MONEY TO BE MADE BY ALL.
Strengthen the dealer marketing campaign, emphasizing product availability and support issues. Talk of incentive programs / Spiffs & the like for feedback & revenue forecasting.
Strengthen the end-user marketing campaign, emphasizing localization issues - support, availability & cost.
Review & renew channel relationships
Hold meetings with the channel, individually and as a group to re-assure them of localised CSP presence.
Build dealer/reseller relationships through one-on-one site visits and marketing.
Set up order processing systems. Collect credit applications & sign up entire target market using dealer membership cards? Create this for all existing dealers as well. Trying to create an 'Easy to buy from CSP program'. Look into payment option programs per country. E.g. post dated cheques, bank guarantees, LC's, etc. Also create & rollout cash + early payment discount programs & late payment penalty programs. Credit management is going to be a MAJOR factor to success.
Begin dealer marketing campaign, emphasizing product availability and support issues
Begin end-user marketing campaign, emphasizing localisation issues - support, availability & cost.
Develop goodwill through immediate and visible improvements in inventory & support management.
Re-trenching CSP visibility in the Kenyan channel:
Spearheaded by myself - I will be responsible for visiting the local channel partners daily and the regional ones once or twice a month. In the kind of business we are in, relationships are very important and it is equally important for us to make our customers important to us. Target 5-10 meetings per week at a minimum.
Collate pricing training requirements & structure requisite seminars at our local offices or at a hotel. It is very important for us to hold sessions every month atleast with the top dealers. We have to be very visible and proactive in the market.
Finalize and formalize support relationships with suppliers, including communications structure. Currently all communications are strictly by email (pre-requisite to becoming a dealer).
Have SP/dealer fun-days and informal gatherings.
Organize and sponsor events such as Golf days, charity funds etc.
Sell, Sell & Sell More
Turn up the market communications, focus on dealer support issues, particularly localization
Develop and implement anti-grey marketing campaign through advertising, seminars and roadshows.
Monitor and encourage dealer sales performance through tight delivery and marketing/tech support
Target user groups / market sectors through seminars and dealer specialization
Emphasize, encourage and incentivise sales targets through flexible, goals-oriented credit management
Have special offers every month on various product lines e.g sell Office and get x dollar rebate, highest sales person in a region wins a ticket to Mombasa etc. These kind of incentives will drive revenues for us.
Create special offers within various product lines e.g buy an Office Pro and get a press book for free or buy Win 2K Server and get a NAV free.
Liase with the local Microsoft office and do join events with them. Also liase with other suppliers and see if you can piggy-back off them for marketing events.
It is time we started approaching the cooperate market ourselves and then appoint SPs or dealers to close the business.
"Review & Renew" channel relationships
Guarantee supply through systematic and managed inventory handling - POS Bar-coding System being looked into
Ensure channel loyalty through visible and consistent public marketing
Offer strong and credible technical support, initially free of charge to resellers
Develop internal channel communications through dealer associations and events
Encourage and reward technical certification, monitor & weed-out non-performers
Develop reseller specialization (esp. SP's) and target marketing accordingly
Implement distributor-specific marketing campaigns:
Develop advertising campaign focusing on localization, support, business and technical know-how
Implement 'sub-channel' mailing campaign (following the SP mailing system)
Provide sponsorship, participation and support to events (Golf Open, Racing, Rhino Charge).
Develop a 'regional' profile, i.e. a 'major (IT) name' in the East / Central African region
Solidify & structure Information flows
Price lists delivered by email to
We should create a CSP web-site to host price lists, product information and also can place an order on-line.
Stocks & Special offers will also be rolled out on our web site, but for now Newsletters & special offers will be rolled out via email.
All Microsoft headline news will also be pushed through to the channel customized with the CSP identity.
Training the channel on their needs & areas of weakness
Based on feedback received from the above we shall then strive to focus channel training needs on defined areas that need work.
So far it is evident that pricing issues will be an on-going process as staff turnover in the channel is quite high.
Emphasis on profitable areas for the channel to focus on would also be of importance. Solution Providers need to be told about all our early experiences so that they can start becoming more focused & niche market oriented. For example, no one in the region has yet implemented a major scale SMS site.
Develop reseller specialization (esp. SP's) and target marketing & inquires accordingly. Need to build some of the smaller SP's to be able to compete with the likes of Fintech & LANTech.
Target user groups / market sectors through seminars and dealer specialization.
Encourage and reward technical certification. Try to work closer with the CTEC's on coming up with special deals for Microsoft dealer channel training schemes. CSP will give out NFR product to those successful candidates at our cost (yet to be negotiated).
Educate the channel on the Anti-Piracy developments that are & will be taking place. The BSA & how we can all benefit from their presence. Obviously will be done in close conjunction with the local office.
Dealer Awareness of Sales tools that are available from the program
Become more aggressive with a dedicated marketing team that keeps pushing information to the channel in terms of price lists, availability, specials, product information, support services etc.
Use of the website should be well in place by this time, but shall always have part of the market with limited access that will have to be reached as outlined above.
Pricing training will become a quarterly session or upon request from dealers.
Creation of new Spiffs in conjunction with Microsoft should work as it has in the past. Spiffs will be based on channel feedback & Microsoft collaboration.
Emphasize, encourage and incentivise sales targets through flexible, goals-oriented & credit management, such as,
Creation sales incentives for smaller vendors. Buy X dollars worth in this month & get a box of Y for free kind of deal. Need to look at finite costs before rolling out.
Am going to propose an early payment discount of 2.5% to those on 30 days credit. Those on COD or 50-50 arrangements will also be given some form of 'pay & play incentive'. Freebie games perhaps.
From discussions with KPMG & through past experiences, the above incentive is probably the best way to get away from late payment problems.
Concentrate on channel feedback on the above schemes and then re-deploy what's working & change what's not.
Achieve "Major Name" status continentally:
Develop continental strategies addressing direct presence, dealer marketing and product availability
Build dealer channel for major product groups and diversify through cross-selling and reverse channeling
Implement continent-wide marketing campaigns through press, seminar and on-site activity
Our Vision is to be a Major Continental Force in Software Distribution & Information Technology Service Delivery
Other Considerations & Options for market sales growth.
Targeted end user Seminars in conjunction with pro-active resellers and specific to their market niches. This would be something like Microsoft in Banking with Fintech, disaster recovery & support with Computer Revolution, wide area networking with LANTech & Cyber Networks, Microsoft & the Internet with ISP's etc.
Move the same concept to non-traditional channel partners such as audit firms. The BSA and the potential impact to your customers kind of a concept. Educating this sort of a market on the asset value of software to an organization is another concept that I think will work.
Expansion of the retailer sales market as & when we see more companies in our region evolve into true IT retail outlets. E.g. S & S setting up a retail outlet ASAP.
Become broad line IT distributors of non-conflicting product lines.
Marketing:
is expected to grow very rapidly, will require dedicated systems resources -
software, hardware, etc. - as well as personnel and floor space. The need for
Public Relations will also grow in the mid- to long-term.
Internet Web Site:
In conjunction with CSP Kenya the distribution unit will set up an
Internet Web-Site, available within throughout the region, that will contain
product information, market communications, technical notes and forms-based
data collection interfaces. Not very practical to dealers at present as
Internet connectivity speeds are regionally prohibitive. All this will change
as satellite technology & licensing become a reality in
Support on Site:
CSP Kenya will offer dealers and end-users (as our own service & also through dealers) on-site technical support, especially in mission-critical areas such as NT / IIS & SQL set up. The service will be chargeable to the dealer (or channel as a whole).
Consulting:
CSP Kenya can offer consulting and pre-sale feasibility studies to dealers to ensure that only approved and technically sound set ups are installed, positively increasing the overall market perception of Channel services.
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