Enabling Channel Partners to Grow their Business

Communicating with prospects and clients in person was put on hold by the onset of the pandemic two years ago. Still, Daniel Herrera, CIO of TailWinds Technologies, said it didn’t put a damper on growth. Instead, his sales team doubled down on Zoom calls, emails, and just picking up the phone to call more prospects and keep in touch with customers.

Cisco relies on its channel partners to work with their customers to provide these solutions. During this year’s Channel Partners Conference, Andrew Sage, VP, Global Distribution Sales at Cisco, highlighted several programs to help channel partners work with their customers to reduce power consumption, recycle their equipment, and improve sustainability efforts.

Being intentional about best practices and sharing them are critical to the long-term success of New Charter Technologies, which consists of 18 companies in an equity partnership. CEO Mitch Morgan said the organization has developed a tool kit to help its companies upgrade their standards and implement their own processes to be more successful. “It's associated with business efficiency, growth, people, and client experience,” he said.

The channel’s future is full of uncertainty. To develop a fruitful partnership with technology heavyweights, partners must be prepared to shift gears, diversify, and not underestimate the growth potential that comes from serving smaller and medium-sized customers.

To cut costs, many organizations are bypassing solution providers and going direct to distributors. They believe this will save them money. What they don’t realize is they are costing themselves more in the long term. This is creating what we refer to as the “efficiency paradox”.