Working with Reseller Partners calls for some skills!

It was around 8 pm. I was in office working on a proposal. There was no one else. The phone rang. I answered. It was Shiv, Head of Sales with one of our Reseller Partners. I was with Sonata, a major distributor of various packaged software products in India, then.

Shiv wanted to speak to my colleagues Ravi / Shankar. Told him that they were in a meeting with Srihari, RM South at Nilgiri Nest. He said he will speak to them. I didn’t bother to ask him what was it regarding.

A little background before I get into the main story.

Couple of days before this call Shiv had called up our office & talked about a lead. It was Vaalco Energy, an Oil & Gas Exploration company. That happened to be my account. I had sold a great deal of software to them. To be honest, I was not aware of the current needs. I promised to work with Shiv on this account. He sent his best sales person. I fixed up a joint call and took the partner along. We closed the deal in our favour. We left the account with the order.

I was thinking that the order should be placed by our reseller partner on us in a day or two. I didn’t pressurize them. In fact, I forgot about it.

This is exactly when Shiv called up that evening.

After few minutes, he called me back. He said he spoke to my Manager & the RM and that they had asked him to speak to me. Then, he asked me for the price for Vaalco order. I gave him the standard prices as per the price list. He said he wanted special prices. I asked him why he wants a special price since the order picked up from the client was not at a discounted price. He then told me that Redington, our competitor, was giving a better price than us.

I said: “Shiv, I had come on a call with you, supported you & helped you close the deal. Redington didn’t do that. They never will. Hence their prices are low. You need to make more money for your Organization. Hence, you do what is good for your organization. You can go ahead & place the Vaalco order on Redington. I have no complaints. After a little pause, I said, But I know what to do & how to deal with you in future.”

The next day morning, when we opened office for business, the reseller partner’s sales person walked in with the order & cheque.

Our relationship only grew stronger from that day. Shiv was a great guy. And the Reseller Partner was SSI Technologies.

I took good care of reseller partners. There was another partner who was a one man show. He worked with me very closely. We did good business together. He never said he will not do smaller deals. I passed leads to him, sometimes as small as one license of some software. He closed them too. What a dedication he had towards work. He always placed his orders with 100% advance. He was one of the entrepreneurs I admired those days. Much before I became an entrepreneur myself.

Did you like this story? Did this story give you inspiration that you can use in your day to day sales calls?

Happy Selling!

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