(Editor’s note: contributed blogs like this are part of ChannelBuzz.ca’s annual sponsorship program. Find out more here This blog was authored by Roy Rivers, vice president of sales at D&H Canada.)

There’s an old saying: “80 percent of life is showing up.” That’s what VARs and MSPs in the field deserve, and that’s what D&H Canada is dedicated to in 2019. We’re showing up, locally. 

Engagement is a crucial part of doing business in the channel. To that end, adding significant training and educational opportunities—especially to customers located in areas beyond the typical metropolitan centers—is essential to helping our customers grow. We believe in not only discovering what those resellers need in the field, but also in establishing an ongoing structure for education and communication, one that will help us to deliver on the action items that VARs demand. This has been a strategic D&H focus from the outset, in order to assemble the resources and knowledge that our small business resellers need to take advantage of new opportunities, increase business, expand their core competencies, and thrive. 

This initiative comes at a time when many channel companies, particularly in distribution, have been facing low growth and a less-than-stimulating market. To compensate, they’ve shifted focus to larger sales opportunities and enterprise-level deployments, while diminishing the amount of services and engagement they provide to SMB resellers.

However, it’s D&H’s philosophy to offer more resources to customers when competitors reduce theirs. We find this is a sure-fire way to fill a market void and generate customer loyalty. That said, we don’t just assume what the reseller needs, we ask them. All our programs are based on reseller feedback.

Loud and clear, our resellers have told us they want greater enablement opportunities from their partners. They want more training, better access to market intelligence, and more face-to-face opportunities to learn about emerging trends such as the latest cyber security threats or even gaming. 

Larger, more enterprise-oriented solution providers typically maintain in-house specialists who can help those companies remain on the cusp of technology for the modern office. However, independent resellers in the SMB space don’t necessarily have the resources to add specialized personnel or to consistently re-educate their existing staff as technology evolves.

To that end, D&H has implemented several new SMB training opportunities, including events in Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec. What’s more, we’ve launched a virtual “Partner Presence” program, by which we deliver interactive training sessions to select resellers in regional geographies via powerful videoconferencing solutions. 

We’ve also implemented a series of “Solutions Roadshows,” taking place in London, Quebec City, and other locations to be announced this year. It provides face-to-face, “Round Robin” meeting opportunities with a roster of vendor representatives. For example, the Markham, Ontario, session in March included representatives from APC, BenQ, Cisco, Comsale, Epson, Intel, Lenovo, LG, NETGEAR, Patriot, and Seagate. These events bring the training value proposition of D&H’s larger Technology Conferences to resellers who might not otherwise have been able to attend, in a more intimate setting, and with more time devoted to one-on-one meetings.

Through these new opportunities, our solution providers will learn what categories to invest in, how to identify opportunities, and how to leverage D&H’s services in ways that will help them grow and succeed. We consider it a privilege to bring these tools to more of our customers, no matter where they’re located. The goal is to help VARs and MSPs position themselves as the trusted IT advisors of their regions, proliferating more sophisticated technologies in small business workplace environments—even in far-flung territories.