Demand equal status from vendors
By Dhaval Valia
 Over the last couple of months, I have been closely following a legal battle in the US between Cisco and its erstwhile partner, Infra-Comm.
 The partner company had alleged that Cisco breached the channel partner agreement and also the terms of the deal registration program, by passing a potential large deal to another Cisco partner (in this case AT&T), even when the deal was first registered by Infra-Comm.
Last week, the court gave its verdict, pronouncing Cisco guilty of breaching the reseller agreement and the deal registration program; and it ordered the networking vendor to pay $6 million in damages to Infra-Comm.
What’s significant is also the fact that court in its judgment termed parts of Cisco's reseller agreement as unconscionable—a legal term used to describe contracts that are unfair to one party.
This could prove to be a landmark judgment that may change the way vendor-partner agreements are drawn up, not just in the US, but around the world.
In India too, most partner agreements are unconscionable—highly skewed in favor of vendors. For instance, most partner agreements have a clause that gives vendors the unilateral right to terminate the contract without providing any valid cause.
I want you to think of all the deals you have lost to your peers despite registering them first with your vendors. How many of your locked-in customer accounts have vendors sold directly into? How many of your trained professionals have left your company to join your vendors?
All this while partners (despite being called partners) have always got a raw deal from vendors. Its time for partners to demand an equal status in a business relationship, which benefits vendors equally.
I earnestly hope that, following the Infra-Comm judgment, vendors will wisen up and amend their reseller contracts to give partners an equal say in the relationship.
If they don’t, its time for partners to claim it. The Infra-Comm way! |