What Should Integrators Look For in a Manufacturer Partner? Lessons From Sonos
The best manufacturer partners do more than ship product. They use their own strengths to help business partners grow: brand recognition, introductions to builders and designers, products made for professional installs, and programs that take administrative work off your plate. And they ask how you feel about them as a business partner, not just whether you like their products.
That's how Casey Clemens, Senior Director of Americas Professional at Sonos, describes the difference between a vendor and a partner. On episode 6 of 1NSIGHTS, he talked with host Jason Griffing, OneVision's Director of Product, about what real channel support looks like for integrators and smart home installers.
What's the difference between a vendor and a partner?
A vendor makes a product and makes sure you can get it. Clemens calls that the basic requirement for doing business. A partner looks for ways its strengths can expand the business you're able to do.
For a consumer brand like Sonos, the biggest strength is name recognition. Clemens sees a partner's role as using that goodwill to open doors dealers struggle to open on their own, especially with the design-build community. A newer integrator may not know where to start with builders. A manufacturer with those relationships can make the introduction.
Brand recognition helps in the driveway, too. Some dealers put a manufacturer's logo on their vans, because a familiar brand makes the first walkthrough easier for clients who don't know what an integrator does.
What do integrators value most from manufacturers?
Help growing the business, more than margin. In a live poll, attendees ranked co-marketing and lead generation support and pro-specific products highest. Better margins and rebates came in last.
Clemens wasn't surprised. Margin matters, especially for firms doing a few very large projects a year. But for most AV companies, a bigger pool of opportunities does more for the bottom line than a slightly better discount.
What to look for in a manufacturer partner:
- Dedicated pro support: Faster answers for installers, separate from consumer support.
- Co-marketing and introductions: Access to builders, designers and clients you can't reach alone.
- Pro-only products: Products designed around how installers actually work.
- Programs that cut admin work: More time for selling, designing and installing.
- A real feedback loop: Evidence the manufacturer listens and changes course.
What does "taking the channel seriously" look like in practice?
Investment, not statements. Clemens says any manufacturer can claim the pro channel matters. Proving it means spending money on programs that address dealers' real bottlenecks.
Sonos has focused on administrative burden:
- Proposals. A free proposal software license for direct dealers, because turning a great walkthrough into a clear proposal quickly is hard for smaller integrators.
- Builder relationships. A rebate program that pays builders on the back end for including Sonos in new homes, which removes a cost objection when builders work with installers.
- After-hours support. Discounted access to outsourced service support, so owners aren't giving up their Saturday nights to a guest-room TV that won't turn on.
How do pro-only products get made?
With dealers in the room from the start. For its new multi-zone amplifier, Sonos involved nearly 800 dealers through interviews and on-site visits to see how they build racks. That was more research than it had ever done for a professional product. Dealers in the interviews called it a game changer so often that the team cut a 30-second clip of just that phrase.
Clemens says some products belong in the pro channel because they need installer skill to work well. A speaker powered over the network (PoE) requires power budgeting most homeowners have never heard of. A rack of amplifiers needs thermal planning. Products like these show a manufacturer is designing around the installer, not just selling through one.
How do good manufacturers measure the relationship?
By asking directly. Since 2020, Sonos has surveyed direct dealers every quarter with a net promoter score focused on one question: how do you feel about us as a business partner? Clemens notes that's very different from asking whether dealers like the products. He reviews the scores and every written comment with his team each quarter.
His advice to dealers: if a manufacturer you rely on sends a survey like that, fill it out. It's one of the few direct lines you have into its decisions.
How can integrators and manufacturers work better together?
Clemens offered three suggestions:
- Lean on each other's strengths. Neither side has to do everything. Find where the other brings something you can't.
- Think 6 to 24 months out. This channel moves slowly. Partnerships that start with a conversation today often pay off a year or two later.
- Start with shared vision. The best partnership conversations begin with each side sharing where it wants to go and looking for the overlap, not a list of demands.
Griffing added that the willingness to have uncomfortable conversations goes both ways. OneVision's biggest gains have come during the periods when it actively asked for hard feedback, and when its partners were willing to give it.
Watch the full conversation
Casey Clemens - Sonos | Rising Tides: How Manufacturers and Integrators Can Drive Innovation Together
1NSIGHTS Podcast
About 1NSIGHTS
1NSIGHTS by OneVision explores how integrators, operators and industry leaders think, build and adapt in a fast-changing custom integration landscape. Recorded live and shaped by audience questions, each episode goes past surface-level trends to the real decisions and trade-offs behind growing smarter and staying competitive. Explore all episodes →
