TechSelect Fosters Lasting Partnerships Between IT Resellers And Leading Vendors

CLEARWATER, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TechSelect — Tech Data’s (NASDAQ:TECD) SMB reseller community — has proven to be one of the channel’s most effective and sustainable avenues for leading software publishers and hardware manufacturers to deliver their technology solutions to small and medium businesses (SMBs) nationwide. At its 2009 Vendor Partner Summit, Tech Data today previewed the latest TechSelect developments that create new opportunities for vendors to work with resellers and grow their businesses.

“HP has been a TechSelect sponsor since the beginning”

“TechSelect will celebrate its 10^th anniversary next month, and one of the hallmarks of the community’s success has been the lasting channel partnerships its vendor sponsors have been able to forge with these top SMB resellers,” said Tech Data Senior Vice President, U.S. Sales Murray Wright. “TechSelect enables vendors to engage a select group of resellers, creating relationships and fostering tremendous loyalty. That’s evident by how and where these resellers choose to invest their resources and with which vendors they align their businesses. In fact, 75 percent of the community’s more than $1 billion in total purchases with Tech Data U.S. last year were for products and services offered by TechSelect vendor sponsors.”

Business Gets Personal

In addition to the relationships they build with one another through best-practice sharing and business partnerships, TechSelect members also use the community as a platform for one-on-one engagement with vendors.

“People like to do business with people,” said Gary Sims, TechSelect member and CEO of Advanced Technical Solutions. “As a reseller, the amount of attention you receive from vendors, especially out in the field, depends mostly on your size and location. No vendor has the resources to touch all the SMB resellers out there. That’s why TechSelect is so valuable. Through the community, we’ve been able to build relationships with key vendors, educating them on our capabilities, building mindshare and translating that into new business for us and them.”

“HP has been a TechSelect sponsor since the beginning,” said Gary Koopman, vice president distribution sales, Solution Partners Organization – Americas, HP. “Working with the channel to reach the SMB market is all about collaboration and partnership, and TechSelect embodies that. Much more than a forum to simply recruit resellers or talk about new products or program developments, TechSelect introduces us to growth-minded resellers interested in strategically aligning their businesses with HP for the long-term.”

Setting The Standard

TechSelect members consistently provide vendor sponsors with feedback on products, services, resources and channel programs that helps strengthen those initiatives before they are introduced to resellers throughout the channel.

“Symantec is focused on providing our VAR partners with innovative products, programs and incentives to help them build solutions that help our joint customers secure and manage the information that is critically important to their businesses,” said Randy Cochran, vice president, North America Channel Sales, Symantec. “Symantec’s involvement in the TechSelect community helps us more deeply connect with our partners and provides a valuable perspective that enables us to deliver greater value to all our reseller partners and ultimately better serve our customers.”

“We have a very rewarding partnership with Symantec, which has been strengthened by our ability to work with them through TechSelect,” said Novacoast Director of Inside Sales Rick Cox. “We always know what solutions from Symantec will hit the market next, and they are always interested in input from us and other TechSelect members, especially when it comes to how we feel customers will react to their new products.”

Creating New Business

The TechSelect Partner Conferences — where the community discusses technology and SMB spending trends — also provide an opportunity for vendors to build their partner base. For example, relative newcomers to the channel like Force10 Networks, Kaspersky Labs and SECNAP, are all TechSelect sponsors and successfully engaging its membership.

“At a TechSelect Partner Conference, we were able to have an in-depth conversation with Kaspersky and realized they were a vendor partner we wanted to do business with,” said Brian Fuher, VARassist program Manager with TechSelect member SoftwareONE. “From the start, we received tremendous support from them, were asked to join their VAR advisory council and even met their CEO. In less than a year, our sales of Kaspersky solutions have increased sevenfold with more growth projected.”

Leading Vendor Participation

TechSelect vendor sponsors include: 3M, Acer, Adobe, Brother, Buffalo, Check Point, Cisco, Cyber Power, Eaton, Force10, HP, IBM, Iomega, Kaspersky, Lexmark, Microsoft, NEC, Planar, SECNAP, Sharp, SonicWALL, Sony VAIO, Symantec, Trend Micro, VMware and Xerox.

To learn more about TechSelect, call 800-237-8931, ext. 84529, or visit www.techselect.com.

About Tech Data

Tech Data Corporation (NASDAQ GS: TECD) is one of the world's largest distributors of technology products from leading IT hardware and software producers. Tech Data serves more than 125,000 IT solution providers in over 100 countries. Every day, these value-added resellers depend on Tech Data to cost-effectively support the technology needs of end users, including small and medium businesses (SMB), large enterprises and government agencies. Ranked 102nd on the FORTUNE 500(R), Tech Data generated $24.1 billion in net sales for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2009. To learn more, visit www.techdata.com.