Since moving on after the sale of my second integrator company Atrion Networking to Carousel Industries, I became a free agent doing some consulting work. At the ISC West Conference in April I sat in a room with a vendor, distribution and integrator as they talked about new products, go-to-market strategies and pricing models.
As I sat there, I realized the only one missing in this room and from the conversation was the customer. The conversation was rich with the vendor providing ideas of how to present the new products to clients and benefits and features. The partner became excited about the opportunity to roll out the new product line to their clients and begin building their business around being able to support it. The conversation went from technical bits and bytes to distribution to talking about volume discounts.