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

This will be a brief series of posts describing the relationships that vendors and vars have and how they can effectively use their positions to screw one another. I happen to sit on both of these chairs so I’m offering you my insight, take it for what its worth.

 VARs want..

.. free license
.. free demo unit, for at least a month or a quarter
.. no sales commitments or volume
.. no credit checks
.. no shared marketing costs (vendor covers 50% expenditure)
.. free literature
.. free product training
.. free or heavily discounted certification that takes no effort to obtain but keeps the people they don’t like out
.. geographic exclusivity
.. the next release, today
.. direct access to developers
.. sales persons cell phone #, or at least a callback within 5 minutes of the voicemail
.. sales assistance (“Client is asking questions, can you please call them and close?”)
.. free vendor conference or at least an annual paid trip to the headquarters
.. paid tour of the headquarters, time is money
.. at least a 10 year roadmap
.. static price, year over year
.. new features every year
.. vendors complete and immediate halt to any direct contact with the market, segment, geography or any point of contact other than that of the VAR
.. direct referral to the VAR when vendors advertising campaign drives the end customer to the vendors web site
.. personal phone call from the vendor when anything of relevance changes at the vendors side
.. vendors commitment to keep its employees on staff for at least 2 years without an ounce of promotion or advancement
.. complete rebranding of vendors product, but with the enterprise-grade support and facilities (“Can we put our logo on your building too?”)

I’ve seen others but they tend to be unreasonable (email from vendors domain); Some of you may laugh at some of these, I assure you that they are both no joke and that I’ve been personally asked at least 3/4 of them, the others I’ve seen people request of Microsoft. Tune in tomorrow to find out what the vendor wants..