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What role do sellers play in your marketing? Are they sharing content on social regularly? Are they trained on how to engage in Social? 

Jeff Mesnik:

People like Helane Cohen from Microsoft are actively building training programs around LinkedIn (FYI she is a Rock Star, along with Diana Ishak and Dave Fisk)

Kelly Nuckolls from IBM has built programming to support her sellers in the past.

Kellyn Smith Kenny how do you see the sellers at AT&T supporting your messaging? Or how about the Agents and Master Agents?

 Wendy Thacker how is ScanSource supporting the sellers in the channel? 

I would argue the sellers can be some of your best influencers, do you agree? But as a salesperson myself, I know few people allow me to write too much on my own. So there is that. If anyone is looking for support on how to build messaging for your sellers, Zach Messler is one of the best messages out there!!

Zach Messler, Product Marketing Advisor and Mentor

Sellers and marketers ideally should be working hand-in-hand.

I know I became a better marketer when I started going on live sales calls.

I know the salespeople I worked with became better sellers when they learned to hear and apply what I would hear as a marketer.

If your sellers are not playing a significant role in your marketing–and vice versa–you’re missing out on a big piece of your potential revenue.

Cheers, Jeff! Thanks for the mention!!

Kelly Nuckols, Ecosystem Marketing Manager, Distributors

Great points Jeff 👏

By working together with marketing, sellers can build stronger relationships with prospects without excessive pressure. Marketing helps sales teams find and qualify leads and maintains contact with prospects throughout the sales cycle.

Sellers should be proactive in providing feedback to marketing throughout the sales cycle (both positive and negative), so marketing is able to pivot and optimize the process and message to suit the needs of the target market.

The benefit of this conversation was it informed and engaged a good audience with comments, impressions and reactions. The ongoing challenge is generating these conversations. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and join my conversations- let’s keep these important conversations going!

With the increased availability of 5G networks and leveraging them to connect the edge computing, we are seeing the significant growth in the role telecom companies will play in the channel.  We wanted to hear more about this so, we decided to engage the audience on LinkedIn. And below is the conversation for all to see. 

Jeff:

Been thinking about the increasing role of telecom companies and the channel. We hear a lot of talk on working to supply the edge devices with connectivity, security, and management of big data. Will telecom companies work as the distributor for the edge? How are distributors at selling bandwidth consumption and the services that support it? Would love to hear thoughts. Jay McBain Brian Potts Rich Hume Jennifer Baier Anaya Michelle Chiantera

Jay McBain, Chief Analyst – Channels, Partnerships & Ecosystems – Canalys:

Check out the leading Tech Solutions Brokers (new name for Master Agents). ScanSource acquired Intelisys, Telarus just made another acquisition in June, and more activity is in the works with the large distributors. Interesting space as the edge increasingly involves distributing bits AND atoms.

Peter Chu- Digital Transformation Problem Solver

Brilliant response Jay McBain. TSBs are fulfilling the need

Jeff:

The Follow-up question is where will the marketplaces be? We know that Verizon, and T-Mobile have been building out their marketplaces for the edge support software. Will the TSB’s have their own, will they refer to others? Van Murray you and Jay McBain would have an interesting dialogue on this. Peter Chu do you see the TSB’s filling the marketplace needs?

Jay:

Jeff Mesnik about a half dozen types of marketplaces will serve end clients in this space – the question is what share will they each have in 5 years? I wouldn’t bet against the super marketplaces (hyperscalers) getting a big chunk of the pie.

Jeff:

Jay McBain Thank you Jay! For those following this conversations here is a link to Jay’s blog, which I would argue is required reading for people who work in the channel: https://canalys.com/insights/How-to-successfully-build-channel-ecosystems-to-drive-subscription-and-consumption-models

The benefit of this conversation was it informed and engaged a good audience with comments, impressions and reactions. The ongoing challenge is generating these conversations. Make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and join my conversations- let’s keep these important conversations going!