Upstack announced its 25th partner investment. At this point, it is just about tying up the existing selling partners. Press releases about 9000 partners aside, producing partners are few and far between – and new blood is not entering the channel as fast as people are exiting. {started this post on LinkedIn}
However, investing in existing partners does not grow the market. It is not a new mouse trap. It is not a flywheel. And it certainly doesn’t scale. The sad part is all this happened just when the Channel had hit its stride.
This is not me picking on Upstack or anyone in particular. Take the money, build the thing, but no one did. Not Upstack or Bluewave or Lightyear. Why? Because it is nearly impossible in telecom.
AppSmart being absorbed by AppDirect looks like a failure. Maybe AppDirect will look at Scansource and see that after 6 years 540 partners out of 30,000 will move to hybrid partners. Those 30K are VARs that registered users to buy hardware from Scansource. Actively that number is likely smaller – call it 20K and that is 2.7% that are hybrid. Maybe AppDirect can get 5% to sell QuickBooks or Dropbox except AppDirect doesn’t have a base of 20K VARs that they can market to. They have about 4000 partners, many of whom are re-evaluating their relationship with App-whatever.
The portal changes constantly. They may have developers but not a single UX designer. It is a bear to navigate that portal. They want me to spend 30 minutes on a tour. Why? I don’t have a half hour to waste to place an AT&T EaADI order that will net me less than $100. I need it to be intuitive. Why do I get hit with ads for an AppDirect credit card and SaaS every time I log in?
The experiment must be over because now it is AppDirect — and I imagine that before even with all the channel people they had there, no one got it, but now that all the channel people are gone, WTF?
Once again, M&A resulting in no synergies, just RIFs.
CNSG people are now at Bridgepoint after AppSmart acquired it in 2019.
I keep hearing how the brokers will help us compete with Accenture and that ilk, but those folks do a different kind of consulting; they don’t do TEM; and they bought a lot of cloud migration specialists – to actual do the cloud migration project – and bill hourly since that is what the Big Consulting firms do.
I look at Intrado, PGi, TPX, Fusion and Birch – and all I see are huge failures powered by bankers.
There is a boatload of debt in our industry.
I don’t see how this works out.
We aren’t recruiting new talent in, while the old talent is retiring or cashing out.
A few vendors have told me that they have maxed out a sales channel or two. Direct and our beloved indirect channel have maxed out the orders. So where is the next sales channel? The next avenue for revenue for vendors?
The SPIFFs are all shifting to emerging tech – CCaaS, SD-WAN and Security – this is NOT stuff that a marketplace will be able to sell. Network, voice seats, cell phones, SaaS licenses can all be sold on a marketplace. Buyers have an idea that they want Dropbox or Box. (Why they wouldn’t just buy direct is crazy to me, but there it is.)
It will require educated sales people and channel partners to sell emerging tech. There are not enough sales engineers and SMEs to scale this. Plus how much effort does a 50 year old want to put in at the tail end of his career?
I have seen the education for new partners. Sheesh!
Plus we are not recruiting. We don’t go after new blood. Everyone hired the veteran that has at least 5 logo shirts in his closet. The vendors do that: a guy gets a job at a new vendor and brings in all his pals. It is the headline on CF website every other day! Veteran so-and-so hired to run program. They didn’t hit a homerun before, but this time, for certain, homerun. Unlikely. Same stale thinking that got us here won’t get us out of this.
We can’t buy our way out of this.
I just hope some people actually got money, not just stock, a new title and promises, because that was what TNCI gave out.
Things are definitely bigger but not better.
The hope was that a new player or two would emerge. I have seen the regional brokers starting to make moves. Smart because there are partners looking for a safe haven. They need to have a refined message. They need to have proof that they are a safe haven. So far, I have not heard anything like that.