Leading cloud communications platform, Fuze, recently announced the expansion of their global partner programme, to allow certain partners to resell their solution in a way that moves beyond the previous “referral only” model. The new initiative will form an important part of the company’s strategy for internal growth and reward partners who choose to collaborate with Fuze in their expansion through areas like the UK, Europe, North America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
I had the unique opportunity to talk to Chris Doggett, the Chief Sales Officer for Fuze, to find out more about what prompted the company to make this decision about their partnership opportunities. Chris recently joined Fuze after more than 15 years of experience in the technology sales leadership market, and today he’s focused on helping the brand make the most out of new sales strategies.
How Do You Feel About the Channel Partner Programme?
Chris told me that he’s been a “technology guy” since he was a kid.
“I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and I’ve seen all the different sides. I’ve done marketing and sales, channel management, and systems integration. My experience serves me well by giving me an opportunity to really structure things in a way that’s good for the vendor and solution provider alike.”
According to Chris, good business is all about getting the balance right with everyone involved. “If you have the foundation right, then you’ll be on the right track.”
The new Fuze expanded channel programme will support partners throughout the whole of the sales process, allowing partners to choose their own involvement level, and access a range of benefits like sales tools, sales incentives, business planning strategies, sales certification programmes and more.
What Made You Decide to Expand the Channel Programme?
I asked Chris whether Fuze has always had an “indirect” approach to sales, and he told me that the answer was “yes and no”. Traditionally, the brand began like many other companies with an internal sales team. “The partner model was built up mostly around referrals – which was a conventional practice in the telecoms industry. Our partner model up until the launch of the program was almost exclusively a referral model, and that was very productive for us. About 50% of our new customers came from referral partners.”
Doggett acknowledged that although Fuze wanted to maintain the referral part of their business, the company also knew that they weren’t engaging fully with a series of other potential partners that could give them greater exposure to the market. “The new partner programme is about taking what we were doing, making it better, and adding the ability for new kinds of partners to come in and sell the product.”
Chris believes that the new strategy is the perfect step forward for Fuze.
“It means we can deliver a better solution for customers by giving them a broader set of options, and we can access a wider set of partners too.”
What Does the Cloud Mean for Today’s Channel Partner?
Now that more companies, including Fuze, are focused on delivering cloud-based solutions to a software-focused market, I was interested to hear Chris’s thoughts on how much work the channel partner actually has to do in the current space. He told me that customers and small businesses generally take the same approach to SaaS and cloud solutions. They take what they get, and they don’t generally need a lot of customisation.
However, things are different with the enterprise space. “The enterprise expects their products to be tuned and configured to meet the specific needs of their business. Over the course of hundreds of large enterprise deployments, we’ve found that you need to invest in a lot of custom work if you want to exceed customer expectations. Because of that, there’s a lot of partner opportunity out there to go in and customise the services we offer.”
Doggett noted that Fuze have been piloting the “professional services” part of their new program for the last nine months or so, and it’s been going very well.
“There’s clearly a big opportunity out there for partners.”
Do You Think a Versatile Go-to-Market Strategy is Important?
For a long time now, many of the companies in the UK at least have been taking an “indirect” approach to business. Pure cloud-play companies like Fuze have the potential to be disruptive with their direct approach to market, but they’re keeping their feet in both camps. I asked Chris whether he thought it was important to take a versatile perspective with go-to-market strategy.
“I think when you’re introducing a disruptive technology at the beginning, it’s important to go at things directly because there’s not an established business model yet. People didn’t necessarily share our vision in the beginning, and partners want to attach themselves to something that’s transformational, but they also don’t want to be a guinea pig for a new brand.”
Chris noted that UCaaS is becoming very popular for a lot of companies, and we’re finally moving beyond the early adopter stage. “It’s a huge market. There are 400 million knowledge workers worldwide, and only about 5% of the enterprise space has moved over at this point. We can’t reasonably expect to scale at speed with an internal direct sales organisation, which is part of why we’re moving to this new, expanded model.”
How Do You Think the Market is Changing?
We’ve seen significant transformation recently in the UC marketplace, with lots of new entrants, consolidation, and even innovative technology. Chris noted that there’s a huge shift going on in the channel too because while there’s still business to be had in the on-premises PBX world, channel partners are beginning to recognise that they need to prepare for the future too.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from people who want to get into the cloud or UCaaS camp. It’s an interesting landscape at the moment, but when you have visibility over the spectrum of communication people are using today, you can get some amazing insights into your business.”
