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Can a single network deal become the doorway to much more? In this episode of Inside the Win, host Graeme Scott (VP of Network & Mobility at Telarus) welcomes back Mac McClenathan of 11:11 Systems to break down a real-world Network as a Service (NaaS) win—and the cross-sell opportunity it unlocked.
Mac shares how 11:11 has quietly become competitive in the network space over the last 18 months, especially on the managed edge side. This deal came together the way many great channel deals do: through trust, relationships, and a partner who recognized the right opportunity.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
The Deal – A healthcare organization rightsizing from 11 sites to 7, battling aging firewall infrastructure, failed failovers, and configuration loss with their previous aggregator/MSP (running VeloCloud under the hood).
The Solution – A full network redesign built on managed Fortinet firewalls with built-in security, consolidating SD-WAN and firewall into a single appliance, refreshed switches, simplified failover, and single-vendor aggregation for one point of contact.
The Cross-Sell Proof – How following the wire led to attaching a backup tool and uncovering a future infrastructure opportunity (~$5K/month) on top of the ~$8K/month network deal. Mac reveals his internal 6-month cross-sell tracker currently sitting at an impressive 44% attach rate.
This is land-and-expand in full display. If you’re an advisor looking at network refreshes, renewals, or responding to a client incident, this episode shows exactly how strategic partnership with 11:11 can turn one opportunity into many.
Engage Mac and his team at 11:11 for your next network deal.
Subscribe to Inside the Win for more real-world wins and expert breakdowns.
Video Transcript
Transcript is auto-generated.
Welcome to Inside the Win. We’ll break down real world wins, showing you exactly how strategic partnership with our experts empowers you to tackle your most ambitious opportunities with confidence. Let’s jump in.
Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Inside the Win. My name is Graeme Scott. I’m the vice president of network and mobility with Telarus.
And joining me on the call here today is the one and only Mac McClenathan from 11:11. Mac, welcome to Inside The Win, your second time on Inside The Win.
Yes. Thank you for having me. Nice to have wins.
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s good to have wins. Now you guys might be looking at this going, well, why is 11:11 on a call about network?
Well, you may not know, but 11:11’s recently entered the network space and is actually knocking down some pretty good deals. So Mac, this one is a deal that I think is fairly indicative of some of the interesting things you guys are doing in the space right now. So why don’t you kinda break it down for us? Let us know how you guys got engaged and sort of how this deal came about.
Yeah. I mean, again, you said recently got into the network space. And while that’s totally fair, because we haven’t spent a ton of money advertising the capability over the last several years, and that was for a reason. What is recent is recently competitive.
So over the last eighteen months, we’ve rolled out much more national competitiveness on the connectivity side, but really more on the managed edge side. Right? So where I think we have been taking down some more deals and really adding value, what I kinda thought we would jump in and get onesie twosies out of the gate. Also, they kinda start with the biggest, most complex stuff because the the value add is a lot more in the managed firewall switches, APs, and then the the aggregation piece comes through.
Yeah. Right. So tell us a little bit about this deal. We would refer to this as NAS or network as a service, which is a hot topic of late.
Right? A lot of people talking about that. Yeah. So talk a little bit about how this deal came together and some of the unique components that are part of it.
Yeah. I mean, this deal comes together like many channel deals do. You know, my channel deal… Where my channel manager calls partner he’s worked with in the past and just said, hey. I’ll just throw him a little bit of an awareness because you probably don’t wanna run this business. And, you know, the trust was established already from a previous organization, and the partners say, actually, I think I have an opportunity for you.
Where the common thread comes in here is where we’re seeing opportunities, I guess, the right opportunities, multilocation, expansion contraction, NNA. In this particular sense, it’s health organization that was kind of rightsizing. They actually were downsizing, so they’re going from 11 sites to seven sites.
They had aging infrastructure really on the the firewall side, but they were also contracting with another aggregator MSP with a VeloCloud kinda under the hood. They’ve had some unfortunate configuration loss and some failovers that didn’t fail over.
So there was some dissatisfaction there and and some and some good timing there. What what ended up happening is a little bit more of a redesign. So we were able to come in, simplify, actually, the network, simplify the failover, obviously, provide the the of aggregation, so it’s kind of all in one place. We’ll move on to point, so the customer doesn’t have to manage multiple vendors.
In the the…
I guess, the end game or the the final solution was really managed Fortinet firewalls on the edge with all the security feature fact…
Functionality built in, so there wasn’t an SD WAN appliance and a firewall appliance. And then we also refreshed their their switches, you know, in there. So, basically, just a a full blown refresh, and I think it’s super complicated. This is actually more of a simplification effort.
Like a store kind of threw enough and they’re dying of it and maybe getting abandoned a little bit.
Yeah. And I love that because again, these are the kind of deals that our advisors are in all the time. Right? Either looking at a refresh or in this case, there was an incident, something happened, right?
Something was supposed to fail over, didn’t fail over. And so that sort of necessitated a whole look at the network. And those opportunities are out there for our advisors, right? Either you’re looking at just a straight renewal some kind of incident happens in the business.
And 11:11 is there to to be part of that picture now. Right?
So so let me tell you this. I I…
This deal is important because we have kind of a running statistic that I’m tracking internally where cross sell is super important. And I think a lot of people talk about cross sell opportunity. And what I’m trying to track is cross sell proofs. And in this particular opportunity led by the connectivity conversation before the deal even closed, we actually were able to attach backup tool and uncover another opportunity for infrastructure six months down the road that’s, you know, a little bit about 5 k a month. Right? So the the network deal here with everything all included is right about 8,000.
And then you’ve got another 5 k on the back end that’s uncovered by following the wire. Right? What does all this connect to? How are you connected from the outside?
And we’re kinda seeing those proofs really manifest to where I’ve got a six month tracker that is basically saying a very new connectivity install, how many of those have either a cloud proposal or a closed one deal attached? And right now, I’m sitting at 44%. So, again, that doesn’t mean that 44% of the deals are closing because it’s… I’m tracking on a six month window and some of those have long tails. But there’s an open proposal or a short one deal attached to 44% of the service we can start.
Great story. And, Mac, I know you’re on the road. You’re busy. Really appreciate you joining us.
The land and expand in full display right there. I love it. Mac, thank you so much. Folks, if you’re out there, you haven’t looked at 11:11 for your network deals, engage Mac and his team.
Thanks so much for joining us today, Mac. Really appreciate it.
You bet. Thank you.