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Another important element to examine during recruit-
ment is alignment. Does your product set align with the
current portfolio that the partner is currently selling? One
issue with cloud sales still being less than 25 percent of
the channel sales is that cloud may be adjacent to what
agents sell most – network services – but it may not be
aligned with their business model or portfolio.
Adjacency is important. It means that what you want
the partner to sell – say, cloud firewall – is adjacent to
what he primarily markets and sells – such as MPLS net-
works or IP-VPN.
If you are selling hosted PBX with a target market of
50 to 500 employees, then a T1 slinger agent is not go-
ing to be a good fit for you. Why? The T1 is not aligned
or adjacent to a 50-employee business today. It is more
likely that you will be getting quote requests for fewer
than 50 employees. You screwed up here. This partner is
not aligned with your target.
A company with 75 employees that has a hybrid
cloud strategy – meaning public SaaS and private
cloud (data center) – will likely be using more than
10MB of Internet bandwidth. They will use about
7MB up just on hosted PBX. Performing a little
cocktail napkin math where cloud services run about
100kbps per employee, this company would need an
upgrade or a dedicated VoIP circuit (can you spell re-
dundancy and disaster recovery?). Does this partner
ever talk about BC/DR?
How does a partner align with your services? This is
an important part of recruitment or at least on-boarding.
Most service providers have a large catalog of service of-
ferings. Match those services up with the proper partner.
If your partner is a VAR or MSP, what holes are there
in her solution? Does she offer managed router and fire-
wall, but could sell IDS (intrusion detection) and DDOS
services to bigger customers? Does she have clients who
need and would buy these services from her?
If your partner is a telecom agent, is he interested in
selling more than network? Does he have a design on
selling a solution that is a mix of network and cloud? Or
is he at a point where he is head down just scrambling to
keep his head afloat?
The migration to selling cloud services takes not just
a mental shift but a business plan shift, as well. It will
mean asking different questions, performing real discov-
ery and ultimately being uncomfortable. The partner will
be uncomfortable with asking new questions that may
lead to an area where they lack knowledge. I don’t know
why so many partners fear saying, “That’s a good ques-
tion. I don’t know the answer, but I will get it for you and
get back to you by Tuesday morning.” They are missing a
chance to (A) be authentic; (B) build trust; and (C) prove
your word by getting the answer by Tuesday.
During the on-boarding, after the alignment process
where the services are matched up with the partner
portfolio, there should be a product dump. The product
dump should include what the product is, who buys it,
why do they buy it, and what outcome does it deliver.
There should be a couple of questions that the partner
can ask that will identify opportunities.
This doesn’t have to be an 86-slide presentation either.
It could be a 10-slide deck that covers this information
and gives the partner enough to settle down from the
anxiety of not knowing, of being uncomfortable.
If the partner is already selling to the target market –
let’s say 50 to 99 employees – he already has a custom-
er profile. He already has a comfort level selling into this
segment. He should be able to knit together the informa-
tion provided in those 10 slides with his current prezo or
spiel. And with that uncover opportunities, which is the
best beginning.
Every service provider has channel managers more
than willing to help close deals. The partner should learn
to feel at ease with uncovering the opportunity then set-
ting the follow-up appointment to bring in the expert to
close the deal. This is becoming more common, espe-
cially with cloud services and security.
Speaking of security and alignment, the service pro-
vider offering cloud firewall or DDOS mitigation might
want to find partners with security certifications. If a
service provider really wanted to tie itself to the partner,
the service provider would assist the partner in getting a
security certification from ISACA (CRISC for risk manage-
ment or CISM) or from CompTIA.
Think about how much of the certification programs
of Microsoft and Cisco were really marketing programs.
The cable companies are allied with the Technology
Channel Association
(tcasite.org) to offer a required cer-
tification for partners. RapidScale, Alteva, Level3 and
other service providers offer a program of courses for
partners. It allows the partner to gain valuable knowl-
edge that is associated with the service provider. It
only works if the course isn’t just a pitch but some real
knowledge that can be a foundation for the partner to
educate the marketplace. The market for non-network
services requires a bunch of education. The smart part-
ner will be doing that heavy lifting.
Alignment of the service provider service offerings
with the appropriate partner is an important element of
the recruitment and on-boarding process. Success (sales)
will come if the partner is aligned with the service pro-
vider’s target market and product set.
Chapter 5:
Alignment
12
THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S
PLAYBOOK