Idiots guide to vendor relationships: What does a vendor want?

In the dire contrast to the VAR list which looks like a Christmas wishlist written by a 2 year old, the vendor desire list is far shorter and specific though the delivery varies.

Vendors want..

To get to the customers money, either by empowering or compensating but preferably eliminating, the VAR.

It’s a very simple want. Whereas the VAR has to sing the remix of Queen’s “I want it all” and “Oh how I want to break free” at the same time, the only two things the vendor is concerned about is getting the customers check and having it clear. Some vendors are less evil than the others, some are more opportunistic than the others (“maybe if we networked our VARs and outsourced our support to India we won’t have to deal with support aside from occasional bitching about how much Punjab Frontline Support, Ltd sucks”)

The evil is indirectly proportional to the vendors desire to get the VAR involved plus the desire the vendor has in the customer using their product in the first place. Web hosting is a very simple way to illustrate this. GoDaddy hates VARs. They go through everything they can to get the direct sale, collect the money a year up front and never deal with either the customer or the VAR to begin with. Other turnkey web operations are the same, places like Vista Print, Google Applications, virtually any place where the only way to buy is to deal with the vendors site. On the flip side is the question of whether the vendor actually wants the reseller to use their app or not: For example, Google does not want you to be able to buy their Analytics product called Urchin. They want you to sign up for their Analytics package thats hosted, they don’t want you running that app on your side and cutting Google AdWords combo out so they make it very difficult to obtain through carefully chosen VARs that never answer their phone. Likewise, ExchangeDefender doesn’t publish pricing information nor a buy it now button because we don’t want to deal with the customer directly, we only want to work with a VAR thats intelligent enough to send an email or pick up the phone. Vendors always try to qualify their VARs.

So, now that you know what VARs want (if you’re a vendor) and what Vendors want (if you’re a VAR) how do you balance this equation to your benefit?