A vanilla solution would be an SBS terminal server, Cisco routers and an MPLS network from Pacnet. “It’s nothing expensive but we’ve seen a lot of other IT companies come in and say you need bigger pipes, or a data accelerator or some expensive technology. We are able to use what they’ve got and just make it run better.”
Premier Network is very tech- focused. Apart from two developers and two administrative staff, the remaining 12 employees are technicians. There is no sales department; instead, the reseller relies on its technicians to spot opportunities on customer sites and recommend solutions.
“Some techs are better than others. Some generate lots of work and some none at all,” Beesley says.
He is rolling out Enable to underpin the monthly maintenance program on which the managed services are based. He hopes this will free up the technicians with better sales skills to spend more time inventing solutions and recommending products, and passing the manual work to the other technicians.
Beesley doesn’t plan to hire any more techs; instead he is looking for management and administrative staff. He spends a lot of time doing human relations, customer relations and marketing. “They are not my strength at all. I’m a tech,” he says. However, he feels he is not quite big enough to afford full-time people in those areas. He thinks he would need to reach 25 or 30 staff before employing full-time marketing, HR or business development.
Dedicated sales, on the other hand, looks like an extravagance to this small reseller. “Every sales person is going to cost $100k plus car and all mod cons. Because there is a six-month lead time you might find in 12 months they have not made a sale,” Beesley says.
He’s open to poaching someone. “If I could find someone for that role I would be the happiest person. It would free me up too. A lot of the new stuff I’m lugged with and I’m so busy doing other things. The strike rates would be much higher.”
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