This week, an account executive from SharedVue attended EverythingChannel’s annual XChange Solution Provider conference in Las Angeles. In a recent email, she and I discussed how she should proceed with talking to VARs about SharedVue’s cloud marketing services. I mentioned that she should simply try to differentiate as much as possible from the other vendors at the conference.

Dana proceeded to tell me that her favorite presentation of the conference thus far has been from Steve Burke (@stevenjburke) of Everything Channel – Hot Vendors of 2010. His talk focused heavily on how to differentiate vendors from their competitors. Several ideas were tossed around, such as cloud computing, unification, and centralization. All of these provide overall solutions through the channel, but nothing that can help differentiate.

The panelists focused on the fact that technology is lead by the thought process of vendors and the channel. One of the trends that the panelists agreed on was that in order to succeed and prosper as a vendor, you must increase operational efficiency while exceeding customer service expectations. Thus, customer service is the critical differentiator. For the VAR/Vendor relationship, skill will never be beat out by intimacy. If you allow your process to be granular enough to encompass great customer support, you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice the ability to be nimble. The bottom line is delivering a consistent consistence response that is both accurate and personable.

If you take customer service as the differentiation point for vendors today, then the advice I gave Dana wasn’t that far off. Don’t just make yourself appear different – be different. When it comes to channel resellers, vendors must be accessible and helpful to the consumer. By making the VAR look good with superior customer service you  are able strengthen that relationship. The last thing a vendor should do is pass the blame to the VAR. After all, the VAR is your representative to the customer.