Selling RFID technology? NOW you are connected

The consensus of the VARBusiness 2007 State of the Market survey was that the best route to growth involves three fundamentals: understanding your market; setting business goals; and ensuring a business structure that maximizes profit potential. This Sales Tips & Tools section will provide the tools to grow your business based on these three key fundamentals.

Chances are your company specializes and works with certain types of industries and certain technologies – and that you do not offer any form of RFID technology products. At the start of 2008, less than 2% of all of these companies selling IT services offer RFID, according to research by RFID Switchboard.

When the early RFID hype cycle was followed by bad press and disappointments with compliance related business, many VARs had no reason to rush onto the bleeding edge of this technology. Slowly and surely, many are seeing more seasoned, and now certain, RFID applications their customers can truly benefit from. And now they also see if they do not offer them, their competition will.

Those established VARs now adding RFID technology to their repertoire are coming in for the right reason, matching a success profile reported by leading VAR consultants JS Group: they are coming for the profits to be made, not for the technology. A VAR servicing office networks does not want to “add RFID,” but can make a compelling case selling file tracking or IT asset tracking. (see related section)

To these ends, The JS Group and their CEO, Janet Schijns, have agreed to help us here at RFID Trade Mart to make it easier for you to be successful. And what better help would you want then from the leading sales and marketing consultants serving IT channel partners. This introductory article, as well as others in this section, was co-authored by them.

Savvy VARs can start fast and generally begin with the infrastructure in place to make selling RFID quickly profitable. You likely already have engineers, salespeople, support staff and clients. Best of all, you have one hard-to-match asset that gives you a big advantage – you know the territory. Whether in a market vertical or working a geographic radius, you are close to the ground and know what buyers are looking for.

If your company has not included RFID services in your offerings until now, the good news is you have skipped the early, expensive, trial and error. The flip side is that you are likely a bit behind the curve on knowledge and experience. Elsewhere on the RFID Trade Mart, you will find hardcore sales and installation information to bring you up to speed. It will even detail how to anticipate and overcome technical implementation hurdles.

According to the same survey mentioned above, services are driving VAR revenue and profit. Solution providers reported that 50% of their revenue and 60% of their net profit are derived from services. Consulting (86%) and break-fix services (75%) dominate the services landscape. Managed services are offered by 46% of VARs, but are cooling down a bit. Picking up a hot new line, offering quick ROI to clients, might be just the thing for growth.

In recent RFID Switchboard surveys, a quarter of VARs said they want to find partners “to help us with our learning curve.” More than 32% want to find “qualified RFID integrators to partner with internationally.” This means there is opportunity even among the VAR community. Close to 40% of VARs are looking for “qualified RFID integrators to partner with on large jobs.”