What Really Is "Value-Add"?

Mike Baur, CEO of ScanSouce, talks with Jameson Publishing and Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy in this exclusive Executive-To-Executive interview. In this interview, Baur discusses services a VAR should expect from their suppliers and distributors, recommends actions VARs should take to provide more value to their customers, and details the biggest mistake he's seen resellers make recently.

"Find something that you own that's unique," Baur says. "You'd love it to be something that you can actually go and patent or copyright -- that's the ideal. But that's not always possible in the reseller industry. So one of the things that I suggest as a strategy is go find something that others don't want to do, and make sure it's something you do want to do and have a passion for, and that you can get the capability for. ...

"We hear this every year (from manufacturers), and I know you do, too, Jim, 'No one seems to go after the SMB market enough.' Or they may not say it quite that way. They may say, 'We don't want you calling on the same customers we are' which are the Fortune 500. So I think as a way of differentiation, if you separate out that everyone would rather have something unique like software or service -- if you look at your market, and by market not just the technology but who are your customers, and make sure that the customer set you're going after is different than where the manufacturers are going, you're going to have a long, long run in this industry."