Prepare to learn the keys to growth and the shift to managed services.
As hardware and software are increasingly being delivered as managed services, there are still many partners who have to adapt to recurring revenue. And those who are in every stage of the transition and want to grow their businesses are generating income in new ways. Some take aggressive steps to do so.
Channel veterans who have been on this road of industrial transitions before understand that staying run is not a good game plan to flourish. Michael Schmidtmann, who operates Trans4mers, knows many of those who were not afraid to throw out their old playbooks to deliver the new models for technology services.
Three of them meet each other for the first time at the MSP Summit, along with the Channel Partners Conference & amp; Expo, April 11-14. On the first day of the event, Schmidtmann moderated the session, “Radically Reinvent Your Revenue Engine.” The three panel lists include:
Channel Futures recently interviewed Schmidtmann, Lusko and Roman in advance of the upcoming session. What follows is an amended transcript of those separate conversations.
Channel Futures: What does a channel leader need to do to expand its revenue potential today?
Michael Schmidtmann: Well, as a business owner I always ask myself what’s new, what’s different and how can I take advantage of it to improve my business? Everyone is trying to grow their business and they are all wondering, what’s new, what’s different, what can I do?
Schmidtmann, Lusko and Roman are three of more than 100 top speakers at the Channel Partners Conference & amp; Expo / MSP Summit. Register now to participate with 6,500 citizens, April 11-14. You can also interact with more than 300 key providers and technology service distributors.
CF: There is of course no easy answer.
MS: It used to be easy. When I started this business, you grew your sales by adding sales. My business started in the Washington, D.C., area. I started with one seller, and in the end I had 15. If I wanted to add sellers, I would add them, and each one of them would sell. Now you have fewer sellers selling more, and you now have three flavors of marketing, some flavors of the new business generation, and customer events. You also have people who specialize in working with vendors to get promotional dollars, you have outbound salespeople, customer success people and vertical market overlays. Now it is very specialized.
MS: There are three moving parts I see that I plan to bring to the session. One is the dynamic that partners have less people selling more. It used to be if you want to grow sales, you have added people. Now it is the opposite, you have fewer people selling more. Second, is specialization. You went through the whole process of identifying a customer, selling and then selling, upselling, taking them through the stages of implementation, retention and growth. Now you have a dozen people doing …