News

Louis Hayner, CSO, Alteva 
The Role of the Service Provider
Service providers should take a more active approach with their channel partners by teaching them how their channel partner program works, how the channel partner should position your services properly and more importantly, how they can get compensated. Channel partners will have some initial concerns which will need to be addressed. Their questions might include:

• How do I get involved in effectively selling the cloud?
• How do I embrace the cloud when I only have limited resources?
• How do I move from being a legacy traditional telecommunications guy to a hosted VoIP/UC solution provider?
• How are you (the service provider) helping to educate the channel?
• What type of certification programs do you (the service provider) offer?
• How do we rebrand ourselves as solution specialists?
•  How do I get monthly recurring revenue that will replace and/or enhance my existing revenue stream?

Successful Selling with the Cloud
 
Successful channel partners and VARs are teaming up with hosted providers who are already versed in positioning and selling their own web-based services. These providers already have a backend in place with pre-developed components that can be easily adapted to work with any business process to get businesses integrated and realizing efficiencies in a fraction of the time and expense of what a premises based solution costs. When selling hosted services, one of the most important things a channel partner can do is to sell the cloud and not just a particular service, then the applications that the clients need today will be readily available in the future.