Empowering Resellers: Selling into the SMB market

Colin Hanks

3 weeks ago

According to our 2024 Data Protection Report, the IT industry is poised for significant changes, with small businesses facing increasing challenges related to cybersecurity, hybrid-cloud integration, and major shifts in the job market. For resellers, these challenges represent a golden opportunity to solidify their role as indispensable strategic partners for SMBs.

From Cybersecurity Concerns to Cyber Preparedness

The frequency and sophistication of cyber incidents continue to rise, disproportionately impacting small businesses that often lack the strong IT infrastructure of larger corporations. This vulnerability presents a vital area where resellers can add significant value.

Educating and Equipping SMBs

As a reseller, your role extends beyond supplying products; it includes educating your clients about potential risks and the best practices to mitigate them. Here’s how you can guide SMBs from being merely concerned about cybersecurity to being well-prepared:

Risk assessment questions: Encourage SMBs to consider their current cybersecurity posture by asking:
- “Does your company have the ability to recover quickly from a cyberattack?”
- “Do you have the necessary expertise on staff to manage and mitigate a cyber incident?”
Best practices for cybersecurity:
- Proactive measures: Offer solutions that include regular security audits, real-time monitoring, and advanced threat detection tools.
- Employee training: Provide training programs for SMBs that educate their employees on cybersecurity awareness and preventive practices.
Disaster recovery planning:
- Custom DR plans: Help SMBs develop disaster recovery plans that are tailored to their specific needs, ensuring they can restore operations quickly after an incident.
- Regular testing: Advocate for and assist with regular testing of these plans to ensure they remain effective and actionable during a crisis.

By emphasizing the need for comprehensive cybersecurity measures and effective disaster recovery planning, resellers can demonstrate their value and deepen their relationships with SMB clients. This approach not only helps secure the client’s business operations but also establishes the reseller as a trusted, proactive partner in their client’s success.

Legacy Systems vs. Hybrid-Cloud Architecture: A Reseller’s Guide to Modernization

For many small businesses, legacy systems are becoming a bottleneck to efficiency and security. As a reseller, you have a crucial role in guiding these businesses through the transition to more advanced, hybrid-cloud solutions.

Understanding the Challenges with Legacy Systems

Legacy on-premises systems often struggle to keep up with the dynamic demands of modern business environments. Here are the key issues you can help SMBs recognize:

Limited scalability: Legacy systems can be difficult and expensive to scale, limiting a business’s ability to grow and adapt to market demands.
High maintenance costs: These systems require significant resources for upkeep, often involving specialized knowledge that may no longer be readily available.
Security vulnerabilities: Older systems frequently lack the security features necessary to protect against contemporary cyber threats, exposing businesses to increased risks.

Addressing the Protection Gap

Many SMBs are unaware of the protection gaps that their legacy systems create. These gaps often manifest as insufficient data protection measures that fail to meet current standards and regulations. As a reseller, you can highlight:

The need for modern data protection: Encourage SMBs to modernize their data protection solutions to safeguard against data breaches and ensure compliance with data privacy laws.
Importance of Microsoft 365 backups: Emphasize the necessity of backing up cloud data, like Microsoft 365, which is often mistakenly assumed to be automatically protected.

Advocating for Hybrid-Cloud Benefits

Transitioning to a hybrid-cloud infrastructure can solve many of the challenges associated with legacy systems. As a reseller, you should explain the following benefits to SMBs:

Flexibility and scalability: Hybrid-cloud environments allow businesses to scale resources on-demand without significant upfront investments.
Cost-effectiveness: By utilizing cloud services, SMBs can reduce the costs associated with purchasing, maintaining, and upgrading physical servers.
Enhanced disaster recovery: Hybrid clouds offer better options for data redundancy and disaster recovery, improving business continuity planning.
Security enhancements: Cloud providers invest heavily in security, offering layers of protection that may be too costly for small businesses to implement on their own.

Significant Job Changes Lead to SaaS Opportunities for Resellers

The year 2024 is marked by considerable fluctuations in the job market, with many professionals seeking new opportunities. This shift is creating noticeable expertise gaps in small organizations, particularly in specialized areas like IT and data management.

Addressing the Expertise Gap

As a reseller, you can play a crucial role in helping SMBs navigate these challenges. The lack of in-house expertise not only impedes day-to-day operations but also exposes businesses to increased risks, especially in areas crucial for maintaining cybersecurity and compliance.

Promoting Managed Services as a Solution

Managed services represent an excellent opportunity for SMBs to outsource complex IT tasks that they cannot manage internally due to the expertise gap. Here are some key benefits you can highlight to your SMB clients:

Access to specialized skills: Managed services provide SMBs with easy access to the necessary skills and knowledge, ensuring that they are not left behind due to internal resource constraints.
Cost efficiency: By utilizing managed services, SMBs can avoid the high costs associated with hiring and training IT staff, turning what would be a fixed cost into a variable one that can scale with their needs.
Enhanced security and compliance: Managed services often come with guarantees of security and compliance with current standards, crucial for businesses that lack the capability to maintain these on their own.

The Role of BaaS and DRaaS

Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) are particularly valuable services that you can offer to fill the expertise gaps in SMBs:

Backup as a Service (BaaS): BaaS ensures that SMBs’ data is securely backed up in the cloud, protecting against data loss due to system failures, human error, or cyberattacks. This service is crucial for businesses that cannot afford robust in-house data protection solutions.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): DRaaS provides SMBs with rapid recovery solutions in the event of data breaches or disasters. This is essential for maintaining business continuity and minimizing downtime, which can be especially damaging for small businesses.

By offering these services, you, as a reseller, not only provide value but also establish a deeper, trust-based relationship with your clients, helping them to navigate the complexities of today’s technological landscape effectively. If this draft aligns with your strategy, let me know if we can proceed to the final section or if there are any other elements you’d like to add or modify.

The Time is Now for Resellers: Capitalize on Veeam’s Comprehensive Solutions

In today’s rapidly changing IT landscape, resellers have a unique opportunity to guide SMBs through their digital transformation journeys by offering Veeam’s industry-leading solutions. Here’s how you can position these tools:

Strategic Offerings for Resellers

As a Veeam reseller, you are equipped with products that can solve real-world challenges for SMBs in managing and protecting their critical data. Here are some strategic offerings you should focus on:

Veeam Backup & Replication: Promote this solution to SMBs looking for strong data availability across all environments. Highlight how its comprehensive backup, recovery, and replication capabilities can help businesses ensure data integrity and availability.
Veeam Data Cloud: Many SMBs rely on Microsoft 365 but lack adequate data protection measures. This solution is a key selling point for resellers to ensure that SMBs can recover quickly from data loss in Microsoft 365 applications.
BaaS and DRaaS Solutions: These services are vital for SMBs that do not have the capability or budget to manage complex IT infrastructures. As a reseller, offering BaaS and DRaaS can help you address your SMB clients’ needs for cost-effective, scalable, and reliable disaster recovery and data protection solutions.

How to Leverage the Veeam ProPartner Network

Joining the Veeam ProPartner Network can provide you with numerous benefits that enhance your ability to sell and support these solutions effectively. As part of this network, you gain:

Access to marketing tools and resources: Utilize Veeam’s extensive marketing resources to educate potential customers and drive sales.
Training and certification programs: Enhance your team’s expertise with Veeam’s products through training and certification programs, ensuring that you can provide high-quality support to your clients.
Technical support and insights: Receive direct support and industry insights from Veeam, allowing you to stay ahead of market trends and technical requirements.