Sellers' game

Since the acquisition, itX has taken on a new vendor, DIS, which supplies a different range of ID printers. Overall the move allowed itX to expand its product portfolio.

But, Sellers admits, itX is very selective when taking on new products: "It either has to be very complementary to what the distributor is doing or on the other hand it has to be a good niche distribution business, such as Briell."

But when it comes to the company's existing technologies, Sellers still believes there's a lot of untapped growth.

ItX's biggest hardware partner is Sun Microsystems. The distributor is the sole authorised distribution centre and channel development provider for all Sun products in Australia.

The channel team manages more than 90 percent of Sun's resellers in Australia. According to Sellers, Sun showed steady growth through the year and pulled in large wins, particularly around virtualisation.

Not even Oracle's US$7.4 billion takeover of Sun is dampening Sellers' mood - in fact, he says, "itX welcomes the news with a lot of positive enthusiasm about the future".

"We believe the combination of Oracle and Sun will create a very powerful portfolio of integrated business solutions which ultimately will present tremendous opportunities within the channel."

He adds: "Our relationship with Oracle actually stretches back even further, as we were first appointed as their distributor in 1995.

"We perform similar distribution services for them including managing their resellers, marketing their products, order vetting and processing and credit management. We look forward to working closely with both organisations."

Sun Microsystems aside, most of the distributor's business is software sales and much of that business has been coming from markets that have continued to perform.

Sellers mentions virtualisation, security, thin clients, server-based computing and storage as strong markets.

"People like Citrix and IBM, VMware, Trend Micro and Wise in terms of the terminals that go hand in hand with Citrix are doing very well and they've assisted in really producing our strong year on year growth," he says.

"In addition we picked up a number of other complementary vendors during the year and we've seen some good development, again around virtualisation predominantly."

On future breakthroughs, Sellers thinks there probably won't be great emerging technologies in the short term. "Certainly not in the areas we focus on," he says.

"Extraordinary growth opportunities based on new technologies don't come around very often. A good example was VMware.

I think in the current economic climate most customers are trying to be focused on getting more value out of what they've already got."

To maintain itX's market share the marketing team is working full-tilt. The distributor simply has to make sales, Sellers says.

"The focus is to generate leads and to convert them into sales, because without sales obviously you have no business." For example, the hot campaign at the moment is itX's $1 million cash giveaway.

"We wanted to have a major campaign that would really attract attention. In the first two weeks we've had close to 2000 hits on the website.

"It's certainly creating some attention and feedback. It's easily got to be the biggest campaign that's ever been run and certainly will help a couple of people beat the recession," says Sellers. 

There are a few things the company is developing in regards to reseller programs.

"Apart from providing them with what is effectively the life blood of their business - credit - we've invested in some sales-enablement universities across Australia, which are more focused on education.

"We created the Pipeline Program, a web-based lead-generation tool and that helps resellers create and send out to their customer base some very sleek, tailored marketing," says Sellers.

The distributor has also put considerable effort into training resellers. It is running two-day sales universities for all vendors and has enlisted consultants Channel Dynamics to run sales skills workshops to help resellers enhance their skills in competitive selling.

"We're getting some really good feedback," says Sellers.