How Can Channel Sales Benefit You?

2600Hz Vice President of Global Sales, shares his expertise

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How Can Channel Sales Benefit You?
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Published: August 5, 2021

Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne

Journalist

Channel selling has been a cornerstone of the way enterprises procure and make the most of technology in their businesses for decades.  

From work phones, laptops and heavy duty equipment such as servers, to the platforms we need to carry out our day to day jobs, without the knowledge and support of the channel, businesses would make more mistakes resulting in a higher cost of kitting out their office. 

The same goes for the vendors, as 2600Hz Global Vice President of Sales, Demetrio Rico, points out, without the channel those producing solutions and hardware would find it a lot harder to service the customer base they have now.  

He said that the channel excels when it engages with medium and small businesses that are too busy running their companies and do not have large IT departments. “For a lot of these businesses they need a trusted advisor to recommend vendors, not just for telecom but for cyber security, storage, and more” said Rico.  

“That’s really the real value of the channel, it’s a face that they can put to the service they have, and starts a relationship that lasts for many years. 2600Hz works exclusively as a wholesale provider we only work with the channel, and I do believe in the concept of having a close relationship with your customer. As the vendor, it’s hard to do that, so to have these ‘guys on the street’ that are trusted advisors, is the perfect model.”  

Horses for Courses

Building up a customer base is, naturally, important for any business to succeed. However when providing a service that is relied upon, that customer base needs to have a place to go for support if things go wrong.  

Each reseller and MSP therefore carries that level of support, meaning that, from a small business point of view, they know the person they need to get in touch with to fix problems and, from the vendor perspective, they do not need to invest in support and can focus on their products. Although the channel models may initially appeal to the smaller businesses, Rico said that the larger enterprises, who are looking for a “white glove service” also benefit from the channel with the support that it can offer. 

“The channel offers all the support large businesses need,” said Rico.

“I think enterprises, as they get larger, their biggest worry is support, and, although the entire solution doesn’t have to come from one company from a creation perspective, they want to minimise the number of businesses involved in case something goes wrong”

“That may be where businesses would prefer to go direct, but that requires a much larger salesforce, larger marketing and it’s a new set of complexity for vendors to deal with. Some have done very successfully, but it’s usually the channel that produces the kind of growth that delivers the best services.” 

Direct 

But the channel can only supply so much support. After all, there will always be someone to go back to if a channel partner can not fix a problem that occurs. 

With that in mind, it’ll be little surprise that a theme that we have seen in recent years is the larger businesses going direct to the vendor, bypassing the channel completely. Rico said that  having a direct relationship will ensure greater control for the vendor, citing partners’ ability to embellish what they are selling to get a deal over the line, but added that, in his experience, businesses are more profitable through the channel. 

“The complexity of a solution will also feed into whether businesses go direct,” said Rico. “For example, it’s easier for someone to buy UC online than it is to buy Contact Centre solutions because of the complexity there. It’s also easier to buy online for a 10 person business than a 200 person business.  

“But I think channel is important to scale and we’ve realised that it’s important to scale because we have hundreds of service providers that sell direct and through partners. The ones that sell through partners are the ones that are growing the fastest, they’re the ones that are reaching larger customers and reaching more customers than the ones that sell direct. If vendors have a good partner community that understands your product and has been working well with you, the channel is the perfect way to really expand their customer base.” 

 

 

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