I saw another LinkedIn post about a vendor helping Partners sell to Enterprise. It is exhausting to see this.
Historically, the Channel was built to handle SMB. Cisco and Microsoft had locked accounts – government, education, manufacturing, and Enterprise. That left the certified partners 99.8% of the market to service and sell to.
When I started as a telecom agent in 1999 selling BellSouth, partners could not sell to Large Business because SMB funded the commissions. There were many businesses that Partners were locked out of.
Alternative vendors like CLECs opened it up for partners but even the alternative vendors had channel conflict come up with Education, Healthcare and Large business.
There is another part of this that most don’t grasp. Agents or Trusted Advisors are very small business. They typically sell to other small business. They like the transactional nature of telecom. Quick sales. Quick commissions. Not much pre-sales work or post-sales work. This goes for broadband, POTS, SIP Trunks, and the like.
One key point: they are Motivated by this activity of getting ink frequently.
Now go up the ladder to UCaaS. Pre-sale work, post-sale work, longer sales cycle, follow up required. SPIFFs with qualifiers. Commission or SPIFF clawbacks. Now this is getting complicated — and we are still selling to small business.
Note that more sales skills are required as you go up the ladder of products and services. Not every partner has those sales skills. Not every partner is going to remain motivated to sell those services.
To get to Enterprise, as a sales rep you have to like the long game. You have to enjoy the dance. The budget cycles, the networking, the follow up, the planning. In many cases, there are expense management projects that must be done in order to win the deal. Not every partner wants to handle TEM.
The sales cycle is longer, but so is the pay out… maybe.
Enterprises like to do pilots or POC (proof of concept) which largely are not commissionable. This is more time in the sales cycle. More effort. More follow up. More risk. All without getting paid.
I have done enterprise. I don’t enjoy it. Figuring out which project is real – or more precisely, which project the CTO or CIO or VP of Whatever is being bonused on. There isn’t much about selling to Enterprise I enjoyed. There are partners who do enjoy it. And the super-agencies like Bridgepointe, Upstack and Bluewave are built to support that kind of sales cycle and prospect. The smaller agencies may not be.
I have found that the larger clients require a lot of post-sales work. After the sale, I have had to track inventory for the client; handle all support tickets; maintain historical data for when the IT Admin cycles; and so much more. They also are slow payers. I spend more time chasing payments for large clients than I do for small ones. When they don’t pay, the partner doesn’t get paid.
Historically, partners were built for SMB and that is why about 85% still sell to SMB. When you consider that 99.8% of the market is SMB, someone has to service to that segment. Partners, especially smaller agencies, are motivated by quick hits. They aren’t looking for a home run or a touchdown. They like hitting singles or catching a 5 yard slant. SMB all day, every day.
When you have a large client, a lot of your revenue comes from one customer. That isn’t a great strategy.