Two Words I Despise: Trusted Advisor

“I’m a trusted advisor.” The VAR Guy hears that sentence over and over again from VARs, resellers and managed service providers. Frankly, the term has become meaningless in the past year. Here’s why.

Consider the following scenario.

Small Business CEO: “Our network is down.”

Small Business Manager’s response:

A) “I’ll call our network guy”
B) “I’ll call [insert VAR name]”
C) “I’ll call The VAR Guy”
D) “I’ll call our Trusted Advisor”

Answers A or B win. Answer C is illegal because The VAR Guy is now trademarked by Nine Lives Media Inc. (Sweet!) And answer D is laughable.

Fact is, The VAR Guy can’t think of a single small business owner who thinks of their VAR as a “trusted advisor.” Unfortunately, many resellers don’t even know that the term comes from the best selling book “Trusted Advisor” — which describes how you can build deep, lasting relationships with customers.

But in recent months, the book got lost in the shuffle. And the Trusted Advisor term has lost its meaning. The IT media hijacked the term to  make resellers feel more valuable.

Alas, everybody has jumped on the Trusted Advisor bandwagon, even the low-margin resellers who consider four-port consumer switches to be profit opportunities.

Other than this blog entry, you won’t catch The VAR Guy throwing around the term Trusted Advisor. Oh, unless he’s referring to the fantastic book on the topic.

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