Collaboration

A
Cautionary
TALE
story by PETER JOECKEL | illustration by SHAWN OLSON
The original title of this article was going to be, “How I wasted over a year of my business life trying to
educate a start-up technology company on how to enter the Microsoft Dynamics channel, and in the
process become fabulously wealthy but instead wasted my time and now have nothing to show for
my efforts…not even a t-shirt”.
Evidently the problem with that title was that it would be too difficult to create the accompanying
illustration for the magazine.
Editor’s note (not really, it’s my own, but that sounds more important): The names of the dumb and mortified have
been changed to protect the guilty. Oh wait…never mind…my name is right there as the author!
Twitter generation article synopsis: Just because you build a better mousetrap the world will not beat a path to
your door, not if you do everything else wrong.
A little background music, please.
Well over a year ago, I received a random LinkedIn InMail touting a new technology that I might want to
represent. I did not understand the email, but something made me visit the company’s website. Once there I was
even more confused as the messaging did nothing to help me understand what the features were, never mind the
benefits.
At that point I should have deleted the email and forgotten I ever looked at the website, but something kept
nagging at me. Going back I suddenly
“thought” I knew what they were trying to say they could do, and if I was
right, I figured that we had a license to print money. Not that I need to print money, mind you: Being a Microsoft
Dynamics VAR has made me (and everyone else in the channel) wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.
So for purely academic reasons, I determined that bringing a new technology to the Microsoft Dynamics market
would be a great adventure.
Fast forward to today and painful lessons learned. If you are looking to work with a new ERP solution, an ISV
product, or even a new technology partner, you may save yourself a lot of time and money looking out for the
following potential pitfalls.
PRICING IS KING
Falling in love with your own technology is death.
It does not matter how much time and money
you spent developing your better mousetrap. More importantly, it
does not matter what you think is a fair price.
Hubris will blind you to what the market is telling you is a fair price. Pricing has to be based on what the market
is willing to pay…unless you are Apple, which in that case, charge whatever you want!
LESSON: If a company is not willing to listen to its Partners or customers regarding pricing…run.
CONTRACTS ARE COMPLEX
Partner programs have a myriad of complexities that require experience and finesse in structuring fair contracts.
If those are not in place, it can take years, not months, to get them ironed out.
Insert obligatory lawyer joke here.
LESSON: If fair and detailed Partner and end-user contracts are not firmly in place…run.
THEPARTNERCHANNEL.COM | FALL 2015 23