If you aren't in conversation with your customers or clients you are going to lose them.

Why?

This is not about nineties marketing yip on the back of the cluetrain manifesto. It is about a reality that unless you are providing something that your clients need, or are somehow enhancing a service that is out there, your clients are going to simply work around you.

Many entities deliberately interpose themselves into stream between a manufacturer and the end user. I should know I work with one. However that intervention needs to be necessary and it needs to add value. Putting yourself in the way where you are not needed, and where you add nothing to the process is downright stupid.
But it is amazing how many companies there are that still do that. they take something, resell it from a vendor or distributor and mark it up in the process.
But they add nothing of real value.

Want to call them for support on a device? – well yes you can, but your question had better be simple otherwise it will be deferred to the manufacturer. Want to replace a faulty part through them, well yes you can, but it takes longer because they don’t have the staff to run the RMA process attentively.

How on earth do such companies continue to succeed? Well mainly inertia on the basis of manufacturers and their current (but unsustainable) ability to put themselves into the middle of a process without adding value.

As of today, we are making a point of routing around these people. Where we don’t get value we will make every effort to get them out the way.

We are also continuing to be our own fiercest critics. We have to be, because if we are not adding something valuable – like knowledge, expertise or experience I fully expect our clients to route around us.