What Matters When Choosing A VAR

Yesterday, I blogged about how small companies planned to boost their IT spending. We'll today I took a look at the full research report behind that stat, and noticed something else interesting: the top criteria small companies use to select an IT reseller or service provider.In yesterday's post, I concentrated on how many dollars smaller companies were spending, and what they were spending them on. Today, I'm interested in who they're spending those dollars with, and why.

According to the CMP Channel Quarterly Business Spending Survey,small and midsize busineses differed slightly on their key criteria for choosing resellers and service providers.

For small businesses, the ability to provide ongoing tech support was top of mind (68%), followed by reputation (64%), price (63%), and existing relationships (61%). Communication, product line up, referrals, financing, and company size rounded out the list.

For midsize companies, reputation and tech support topped the list (60% each), followed by price and products(58% each). Financing and relationships came next, trailed by referrals and company size.

I think these results shatter some myths about small companies. Sure price is important, but it seems that support and reputation matter even more. It seems most small businesses realize that the lowest price isn't always the best value.