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.
At Riverbed, Steve Dixon is also helping resellers break down the WAN barriers with training in its own Wide area Data Services (WDS) solutions.

“There are huge opportunities for partners that have the additional skill to assist companies in removing WAN as a barrier to things such as centralised back up and server consolidation,” said Dixon.

Riverbed takes its training around the country based on demand, waiting for six to eight students ready to attend before it travels interstate, though Sydney and Melbourne resellers have access once a month. There’s less opportunities for online training, but Dixon said a series of CBT that provides the practical skills to set up appliances is under development.

Apart from running its own training, Riverbed’s distribution partner Networld Systems is also delivering training that teams its WAN optimisation with other solutions from the likes of VMware and NetApp or Microsoft.

Fits all sizes

There’s a wide range of add-on and complimentary products that suit, whether you are selling to micro businesses or SMB, there are plenty of opportunities. Vendors are well-equipped with training programs that can get you or your staff up to speed.

Chances are you already have some sort of relationship with SMB network vendors such as NETGEAR and Linksys, why not check out what training programs they have on offer.

Graeme Reardon, country manager for Linksys said the Cisco subsidiary is focusing on a range of ancillary and add-on areas for its training program in 2008. In fact, its seems like a substantial amount with Webinars running about once every two or three weeks in one area or another. Recent examples included QoS, VPNs and network Voice and Video, which would put you on the road to all sorts of new solutions for customers. Reardon said that a recent Webinar on network storage solutions looks at things such as setting up the correct shares, how to open your storage to the Internet, replicate handle virtualisation and back up etc.

Another interesting training area is for the Linksys One channel partners. A relatively quick and painless way to get into hosted VoIP solutions, training up on this solution would have you reselling IP telephony systems hosted by the likes of Soul which will handle all the heavy lifting so long as you install and specify the solution. Best of all, you will be looking forward to a regular pay cheque as the passive income continues to flow through the door.

Apart from walking you through the set up of a standard phone solution, you can get into areas such as video surveillance, attaching storage or integrating CRM systems.

If you are looking for something a little different, Linksys is expecting big moves in the entertainment space in 2008 and is gearing up resellers to start selling media centre extenders for use in business environments such as feeding boardroom plasma screens. It will happen eventually.

NETGEAR is tackling some of the same areas, such as NAS, but country manager Ryan Parker said his organisation is currently focusing a lot of its training attention in cultivating a “you want fries with that?” habit among partner salespeople.

The pitch is to keep in mind to ask if they need more storage, or WiFi and this actually becoming a key message in their channel marketing as well. NETGEAR goes so far as to suggest the type of product and service you can pitch to your client dpending on the size of their network. If it is a small network, maybe they need this wireless AP, or that NAS solution.
“It’s more a fact that you have to get the salespeople trained to do these ‘mini-audits’ in their head,” he said. But of course the vendor is backing this up with advancing technical training such as a new network security program to be rolled out in the new year. NETGEAR plans to run that course in each of the major capitals once a quarter to make sure resellers have a a good foundation on the NETGEAR wireless product. It’s a one- or two-day course covering security basics from a broadband perspective.

A sure winner

Speaking of security, have you considered moving up the value chain with security services? You have to be certified to play in this space and Peter Croft, MD for Clearswift in ANZ emphasises the advantages he has over competitors because they are the “IP originators” for the product and have better access to product engineers at head office.

He also makes the important point that getting fully certified in his solution increases the reseller profit. “Without it you might have to rely on the vendor to do the services and implementation. By doing the service delivery yourself you can make full margin recovery on it.”

Clearswift is big on pre-sales training: “If they know the product well they can make more sales of more product more easily”.

The basic training is all done online with online exams, but the vendor also offers instructor-led training for the higher, engineering-type certifications. It’s done on a quarterly roadshow basis or if you are a large enough partner (or even an end-user) you can ask for specific training he said.

If you are feeling more adventurous you can start to position yourself for the growing demand in IP telephony.

Anne Wrencher, channel and operations manager for Mitel said the IP-PBX vendor is busy developing even more training offerings for resellers. Once you get past the company’s pre-requisite LAN/WAN test, a whole world of learning awaits. To ease the way for new resellers Mitel has reduced what used to be a two-week introductory course down to one week face to face and then a follow-up week online which you can do self-paced.

This one-week course will equip you to install standalone Mitel telephone solutions, the additional week extends that with specialities such as for contact centres or for Mitel Enterprise Manager so you can manage multiple nodes from a central location.

There’s also a library of online self-paced learning programs covering things such as teleworking or if you’re a committed reseller the company will look at specialised training for your people.

Bruce Coulthard, systems engineer at Quantum, the first of the two storage vendors we spoke to said the partner portal has plenty to meet the hardware, software, installation and deployment needs of resellers to help channel players “understand the brand and uphold the Quantum product in the right light”. The company also runs sales and pre-sales certification courses – a half-day for sales and one-and-a-half days for pre-sales so they can understand the granular issues of tape library installation, sizing and the like.

At NetApp, channel sales manager Nick Russell said the big push to increase Australian channel sales so they are in line with international company benchmarks means there’s “a big push on the reseller community” at the moment. So much so that this year saw the company boost its training headcount from one to three, adding a technical partner advisor to travel the Oceania, running three-day pre-sales or pre-sales technical training covering issues such as security and virtualisation. NetApp also added a trainer to focus on post-sales implementation training. Again Russell point out the business value in getting those services dollars, but the delivery courses are longer than the sales courses at a week for a standard certification or a full nine-day course to bring you up to the same level as the company’s own professional services engineers. NetApp plans to run that a couple of times a year. As part of the new-found commitment to the channel, the company is also offering all this, including the online NetApp University for free.

Whether its WAN acceleration, security, telephony or remote access, there’s a course you can do, usually supplied free.

By Adam Gosling