The Ingram Micro SMB Alliance (SMBA) is a community of Ingram Micro partners who specifically serve the SMB market. With exclusive access to reports and catalogues, the partners benefit from extra networking and events. ChannelPro-SMB was at the SMBA’s first event, the SMB Invitational, held April 11-13 in Orlando, and got the lowdown on the SMBA community. We spoke to Huy Nguyen, director of channel programs for Ingram Micro and Scott Young, president of PennComp and SMBA member.
ChannelPro-SMB: How do events like this help the SMBA community?
Nguyen: We see events like this as getting together with the organizations and having a much more captive, serious audience of people. They have skin in the game. They’re going to be much more attentive. They’re going to be participating longer term and regularly. We need to make sure that we’re going to have a long term engagement with them.
When you’re talking about an SMB partner who’s washing the floors, doing payroll, selling, running the business and all that – that’s not all cases, but there are partners that we deal with that are set up that way. And they’re great, but they need help to grow. We want to make sure we’ve got that right coverage in place.
And so that’s the guarantee that we give, is that everybody that signs up, we will make sure that somebody on the Ingram Micro team directly manages them versus them being handled in an overflow. We give them that coverage.
ChannelPro-SMB: How is the SMBA a critical partnership for members?
Young: Before I joined SMBA, I didn’t really know a lot about [sales and partnerships]. I knew business process. I’m a Six Sigma guy. Ingram Micro was a really critical partnership for me because I didn’t know it all. Relationships counted and they were very important. The whole on-boarding process was strong – I had people to call and work with, and that was hugely impactful. I sitting here now because it really does count.
It’s kind of like when we were growing up. You had a handful of people you really called your friends, but now, you meet somebody once, and you’re friends on Facebook. The definitions are evolving and changing. For me, I’ve got critical few vendors. I’m not trying to be friends with every vendor. I’m picking a few, and I’m going really deep.
I mean, we’re business – it’s a business relationship. And yes, I’m buying product, but it’s so much deeper than that. There have been a handful of times where things just weren’t going that great, or I really needed something over and above. I didn’t have to go to the executives to get help – the [support] relationships there are so strong at Ingram. That’s what this community is – tight knit. You feel that community, and it’s not just we’re in a group. A group is different to me than community, and even more intimate when you talk about [the SMBA being] a closer circle of friends.
