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Prashant Mehar is very upbeat about Emerson's entry into the SOHO market
segment in India. Given its fair share of challenges, he believes that there is
a need for Emerson to create good brand equity for itself to get higher mind
share among its channel
What have been Emerson's biggest challenges in the SOHO market segment?
What are your go-to-market strategies for these buyers?
The SOHO segment has its fair share of challenges. Most customers have known
Emerson in the corporate sector. But as far as the SOHO segment goes, we still
need to create a good brand equity for ourselves. We are still not very well
known in this segment. So getting the mind share of our resellers and also
convincing them to sell our products has been quite a challenge for us.
As far as our go-to-market strategy is concerned, Emerson is looking at
developing an entirely new channel to cater to the needs of its customers in the
SOHO segment. We are working to create a database of partners and resellers who
will be provided regular training to enable them to sell our products better.
We have thus far conducted channel meets in about 18 cities across the
country to enable us understand the needs of our partners and also develop
strategies to sell better to the SOHO market. The response to our efforts in
this direction has been very positive so far.
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Prashant Mehar
Corporate Champion-Channel, Uptime Solution, Emerson Network Power (India) |
Elaborate on the channel strategy that you propose to set-up for the SOHO
market segment?
As a company we do not believe in over-distribution of our products. As part of
our go-to-market strategy, we are looking to identify and sign up new
sub-distributors for our products.
Depending on the size of the city, the number of our channel partners could
vary. For example in a city like Bangalore we would have one or two
sub-distributors while Mumbai would probably have at least three partners.
Emerson is all set to acquire more value-added resellers and devise more
competitive, channel friendly programs for its partners. In addition to new
products, we would attempt to get the channel fully aware of the need for
profitability and overheads in their business. We would also work with the
partners and focus on a more solutions approach rather than continue on mere box
selling.
What qualities are you looking for in prospective partners? What
value-adds would they get for working with Emerson?
First of all, we need partners who have a readiness to push our brand. Our
partners need to put extra efforts to sell our products. We are therefore
looking for partners who are reputed players in the market. Financially sound
resellers are the ones that we would sign up as partners.
Today, partners are looking forward to do business with reputed players who
can provide them with good sales and after sales support besides good service
infrastructure. Since we have high quality products supported by excellent
service infrastructure, reputed partners are willing to do business with us.
These strategies are the same for partners across all cities irrespective of
whether it is a class A, B or C cities.
As part of our strategy we ensure that our partners especially SIs, talk to
our resellers and sub-distributors and convince them to sell our products. We
also conducted channel events for our partners to increase their awareness of
our new products and brands as a whole. In addition to serving as back-end
support to these events, we are also providing our partners with a lot of
merchandizing material so as to enable them to increase visibility of our
products.
Over and above this, our partners have known us for the last 20-25 years and
are convinced about our brand, our vision and our values, so we would have no
difficulty in getting the bright partners to do business with us.
India has a large number of resellers. How do you manage to interface with
the really important ones and ensure they are part of your channel fold?
What makes India challenging for us is that the number of partners here is
higher than anywhere else in the world. Communicating with all of them and
getting their mindshare has been very critical for us. As far as our products
are concerned we have had to do considerable amount of R&D so as to ensure
that they can become best fits for Indian power conditions, given the huge
voltage fluctuations here.
We internally need to get our pricing right for all our products and then
convince our partners about the same. Once we do that selling it to the end
customer would no longer be an issue.
What new products can be expected from the Emerson stable in the near
future?
New products would be brought into the market on a regular basis. We have now
entered the SOHO segment and we are looking to launch many new products for the
sector. Many new UPS series are also on the anvil. Emerson would launch ITON
products as well as an entire range of online products, in the days to come. All
of them would be feature rich and aggressively priced so as to ensure that
customer satisfaction is fully met.
Already the launch of two UPS models, the 600VA and 1000VA under the ITON
range, has made Emerson the only vendor in the India market to offer a complete
spectrum of air and power solutions across large enterprises, SME and SOHO.
Your comments on the emerging market scenario in the country.
India as a market is in a state of maturity and growth. Yes, it is still very
price sensitive, especially segments like SOHO. That is all set to change in the
future. As markets mature, partners would also change their mind-set and realize
the need for setting up brands in the market.
Subbalakshmi BM Page(s) 1
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