Learning to increase profits

Training is often quoted as one of the biggest staffing expenses in the channel, but with vendors now making efforts to ensure training is readily available to partners, network-focused resellers would be crazy not to take advantage of the often free opportunity to increase their skillset.

Apart from sometimes getting you access to the best margin discounts in the top tier of the channel program, certification and training will develop your business. Next time your customer contacts you wanting another switch installed to add a few more users, it’s a sales opportunity you really shouldn’t miss. Maximise that client contact to try to up-sell more products and services into your existing accounts and then make sure you are equipped to provide the margin-heavy services to deploy the solution.

Brian Allsop, director for enterprise and channel sales A/NZ at Juniper Networks said he knows the scenario well. “We find customers often ring partners with a ‘My remote Exchange servers are at full capacity, mail is unresponsive and I can’t manage them effectively’ type scenario,” he said. This creates several sales situations. There’s clearly the potential for Exchange server consolidation aspect, which involves consolidating your Exchange server hardware to a centralised location whilst also adding capacity.

“Then, to keep the application performance that the remote users were accustomed to we would also recommend application acceleration technology with Juniper WX and DX platforms which will provide up to 99X performance across the remote WAN network,” said Allsop. This effectively ensures users won’t notice the email server is now located in another city or country.

Does your organisation have the application skills, WAN skills and a good enough understanding of what the solution deliverables look like for the customer?

“Juniper has an extensive range of technical training, pre-sales training and sales training and is usually provided at no charge,” said Allsop. “Juniper training is delivered via instructor-led classes and is also available via the Internet.

This year the company invested heavily in training providing more than 1200 sales, pre-sales and technical training spots. “We believe it is the foundation for successful solutions sales and profitable professional services engagements,” he said.