At the recent Acronis Summit and through subsequent conversations, Ingram Micro has made a point to explain they are differentiating through automation among other areas. A recent call with John L. Dusett, Executive Director, Cloud Services Business Unit of Ingram Micro reiterated this point.
The company just announced the global availability of the Go-to-Market Hub for partners and the Go-to-Builder for vendors to ignite and accelerate their cloud businesses. With the Go-to-Market Hub, partners get a single destination for through-channel marketing automation, with sales enablement content and tools across the Ingram Micro Cloud portfolio of cloud products. Additionally, vendors can now use Go-to-Market Builder, a new tool to maintain and publish sell-through and sell-to sales enablement and marketing content for partners.
MSPs have little time (Please make time for MSP Expo though – it is worth your time 🙂 ), which is why these offerings help with lead generation, product research and sales training. In addition, they assist with managing marketing and enablement programs for partners.
According to Forrester analyst Jay McBain, “We are entering the third stage of sales and marketing. With 75% of the world’s trade flowing indirectly, there is going to be an influx in investment and attention on indirect sales across industries.”
The concept of “Go-To-Market Automation,” – the fusion of sales automation and through-channel marketing automation – is designed to meet this third stage of sales and marketing head-on. It will help partners automate their go-to-market activities with over 120 products and services from the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace, enabling vendors to programmatically create and update go-to-market content for channel partners.
“By understanding both the opportunities and challenges inherent in the cloud-connected economy, Ingram Micro Cloud is shortening the digital transformation curve for partners and vendors,” said Locke Truong, head of global product marketing at Ingram Micro Cloud. “Go-To-Market Automation is designed to enrich through-channel marketing automation with pre-built campaigns, sales enablement, product guides, training materials and portfolio decisioning tools across hundreds of products and services. Our goal is simple: Help our partners and vendors sell more cloud products.”
Ingram Micro Cloud delivers Go-To-Market Automation through the Go-to-Market Hub and Go-to-Market Builder. Go-to-Market Hub, which is accessible from the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace, gives the company’s massive network of over 200,000 partners, more than 55,000 of which are already actively selling cloud solutions, access to prebuilt, customizable sales and marketing campaign resources for hundreds of vendor products. It also provides go-to-market capabilities to automate, execute and optimize tactics, including sales enablement and through-channel marketing automation, lead management, alerts and notifications, and more.
“We are already seeing positive results after adopting the Go-to-Market Hub,” said Don Nokes, President, NetCenergy. “It has helped us discover new products and markets faster than ever before. We have increased the number of opportunities and products in our portfolio, allowing us to focus on delivering a better experience for our customers.”
With Go-to-Market Builder, part of Ingram Micro Cloud Connect, vendors can easily create and maintain extensive sales and marketing campaign content for partners to access in the Go-to-Market Hub by simplifying channel distribution and accelerating time to market. It also provides promotional opportunities like banners and blogs to increase visibility with channel partners as well as full-funnel analytics to measure awareness, interest and conversion.
Early response to go-to-market automation has been enthusiastic and positive from both partners and vendors. For Go-to-Market Hub, which launched in the U.S. market in April 2019, adoption has been extremely strong, with more than 20% of active partners signing up. In addition, adopters are outperforming non-adopters in terms of the number of products being sold, as well as net new customers being converted.
The heyday of the VAR market was the 1990s when margins were fat and sales were easy. You pushed boxes and made a lot of money.
Things are far tougher now
Competition is everywhere. Cloud was a competitor and still sort of is but it can also bring tremendous profits and MRR. Likewise for VDI.
The bottom line is MSPs and VARs need to sell a lot more to make the profits they used to. With that, comes understanding what products to pick, carry and bundle together. All while growing their business. This increased focus on automation by Ingram is smart. It is a great differentiator when all sorts of new distributors are gunning for MSPs.
Attention MSPs: Be part of an event with $8.5 billion in buying power!
Learn about the latest in everything you need!
UCaaS, the Channel, IT, IOT, Edge, Cybersecurity, AI, SD-WAN, and the Future of Work at the world’s only SD-WAN Expo and MSP Expo, part of the ITEXPO #TechSuperShow, Feb 12-14, 2020 Fort Lauderdale, FL.
