AT&T Partner Opportunities

Chris Jones, AVP of sales channels at AT&T, discusses the changes, investments, and opportunities for partners at AT&T. The program emphasizes the commitment to the indirect channel, with changes in rules of engagement and compensation structure to be more partner-friendly. The introduction of the sales opportunity request process (SOAR) and inclusion in CableFinder for customer-friendly pricing and ordering are highlighted. The focus on the mid-market as the biggest opportunity for AT&T and partners is emphasized, with encouragement for advisers to sell a complete technology stack to customers. Overall, the special episode provides insight into the transformation of commission structure, internal reorganization, and the expectation of increased success with AT&T and Telarus by following the advice.

Introduction

Hey, Telarus Advisors. A special surprise for you today. On this episode, I have Chris Jones, AVP of sales channels at AT&T. But before I introduce Chris and start the questions, I wanna tell you just my personal perspective, which is there has never been a better time to be an AT&T partner.

Technology advisers all over the country are having tremendous success, and it’s been a long journey to get us here, from the early days of the SBC, Ameritech, AT and T, everyone coming together. There’s been this wild ride, but now we have this amazing cohesive program, lots of investment, lots of change. Chris has been at the forefront of all of that change since, I think, twenty seventeen, Chris? Twenty sixteen?

Twenty sixteen.

So Seventeen. You got it.

Twenty seventeen. So, Chris Chris Jones, AVP of sales channels at AT and T. Welcome. Let’s spend a few minutes together talking about the big changes, the investments you’ve made, what’s led us here today.

Opportunities with AT&T

I think there’s some hidden gems in the program that people just don’t know about. I wanna shine a spotlight on them. So, let’s go. I think, really, as I said at the to kick it off, there’s never been more opportunity with AT and T than now.

At every level, SMB, mid market, enterprise. You guys have opened up accounts. You’ve opened up resources. You’re making significant investments.

What are you most proud of? What are the highlights, from your perspective?

I mean, Tim, I first of all, thank you for having me. I look forward to talking having this conversation and and talking to the partners out there. I love talking to Polaris’ partners. And I think there’s a couple things.

It’s funny to say this. One thing I’m super proud about at AT and T is that we’ve become a little bit boring to the industry. Yes. There’s gonna be some things that we’ve changes we’ve made.

There’s things that we’re super excited about. But the thing that I’m most excited about is the overarching commitment to indirect at AT and T has been constant and steady.

And while we’re making changes and while we’re making improvements and I think I said it at a a Telarus partner summit a few years ago. Our goal is to be boring. Our goal is to be predictable. Our goal is to be something that when partners wake up every day, they’re not thinking about AT and T doing something crazy.

Changes in Channel Engagement

Right? So some of the things that I’m most excited about is our consistent and and continued approach at investing in the channel and being more and more committed to it. But some of the some of the really some of the more minutia kinds of things that we’ve done in the last sort of six months, we’ve changed rules of engagement. We’re much more partner friendly from our rules of engagement.

We used to be when people think about AT and T, we were a very direct centric company. Yeah. Direct kinda controlled the rules of engagement, and it was a little bit of mother, may I? Can I ask for ask for permission?

We’ve rolled out some new rules of engagement. We’ve rolled out we have something called the sales opportunity request request process, Sometimes called soar. Right? You and I were talking before we went on on camera.

Soar has two meanings. You can have a sore arm or you can soar like the eagle. Right? And I think the better way to think of it is soar soaring like the eagle.

And what we’ve been what we’ve done to it is try to take the direct sales team out of play and have the SOAR process kind of work with an independent, shareholder minded in team inside of AT and T to look at those requests, to look at the opportunities that our partners that are that partners are bringing to us to really assess what’s in AT and T’s best interest. Historically, we would have gone and asked the direct sales team, and the direct sales team might have talked about what was in their best interest. Now we’ve changed the process.

It’s more partner friendly. It gives the it kinda levels the playing field. At the end of the day, we don’t wanna partner we don’t wanna open up accounts where it doesn’t make sense for the customer, the partner, and for AT and T. But where it makes sense, we wanna make that process better.

Compensation Structure Update

We wanna make it faster. We wanna make it easier. Another thing that we’ve done, Tim, this year is we’ve changed our compensation structure. We we’ve historically had a a one x upfront comp tied to residual.

Yeah. We’ve built a a model, and and the partner community through the TSEs has really embraced this where we’ve removed the upfront. We’ve increased the residual.

And that is more consistent with what other suppliers do in this space, and it really we think is a benefit. And when you actually cut into it, do the math a little bit, when we went from one x in in a percentage to the zero in a percentage, the percentages went up. It’s actually more there’s more compensation to the TSD and the partner with our new plan without the upfront For sure. I than than our old plan.

Benefits of Compensation Changes

Sorry to interrupt, but I definitely saw, like, there’s a standing ovation around the country with the comp changes because the residual allows advisers to continue to make investments in that customer care long term. And that’s in the best interest of that trifecta you talked about, the partner, AT and T, and the customer, and it aligns with your core vision.

Yeah. We’re we’re all in much better alignment when we do that.

The the other thing just related to that, it helps a lot with comp inquiries. Right? That upfront commission creates a lot of noise and confusion and compensation statements. And the last thing anyone that wants to be successful in indirect wants to do is mess around with partner compensation.

And so by becoming more competitive, by eliminating that one x, by by going to a residual only. It also really helps partners with compensation statements and and having predictable compensation and eliminating comp inquiries. Right? Another thing that we’re incredibly excited about, and and I know that the, we’ve made a lot of noise together with this is CableFinder.

CableFinder Integration

Right? After years and years of being outside of cable finder, we’re now inside of cable finder. We’re inside of cable finder for both AT and T as well as the ACC business, and we have a lot of exciting things coming with CableFinder over the next several months.

And so what’s really exciting to us is for the first time ever, as we think about indirect, we’ve actually rolled out something outside of our firewall, which then means it’s way more customer friendly. It’s partner friendly. Right? And at the end of the day, one of the things that I wanted personally with CableFinder, all of the partners that are selling cable today are going into CableFinder.

I wanna be where partners are so that when a partner is looking to price out connectivity, we make it as easy as possible for them to qualify AT and T, to price AT and T, to contract AT and T, and to order AT and T. And by sitting in that tool where partners go to price cable, it makes it easier to to choose AT and T. We still have to earn our we still have to earn the right. We still have to earn the business. But what we wanted to eliminate is the complexity of different system, different tool, different password, different process. Let’s let’s make it easier to be included in the customer conversation.

Reducing Friction for Partners

For sure. In reducing that friction, you see it, I see it, and we have a front row seat to it. More at bats because of less friction, and more at bats is creating better results.

And people partners who did not know AT and T, that’s sometimes their first exposure now to AT and T is through that cable finder process. They’re impressed with it. It’s easy. They find out about the commissions.

The commissions are lucrative. We’re creating this great experience for their customer, and then they come back to AT and T and continue to add and grow their customer with a trusted brand that the customer knows. So it’s sort of like everything old is new again. So this great legacy brand of AT and T has modernized, created less friction in the sales process, has really opened up windfall situations for a lot of the partners in the field because they’ve taken some friction out of it.

Transformation of Commissions

So it’s impressive. And then the on the commission side, Chris, it’s really been a transformation. Right? We went from commission friction to really commission ease, and it continues to get better and better.

And our partners, again, are are applauding those efforts, so it’s very, very good.

Absolutely. The other the other thing, Tim, I would just say that to everyone out there. Right? When you think about AT and T, and I sort of touched on this, we’ve been a direct centric kind of company.

Shift to Indirect Focus

We’re we’re we’re we’re becoming incredibly indirect centric, incredibly indirect focus. We’ve recently gone through again, why I said we’re trying to be boring. It’s not that we’re not doing things to improve. We’ve gone through some internal reorganization.

We’ve changed where we sit inside the company. We’re now a part of the mid markets organization.

And when we look at the customer opportunity, whether it’s small business, whether it’s the mid market space, whether it’s the enterprise space, whether it’s the public sector space. The thing you see inside of AT and T, every segment is looking for ways to get more and more focus from indirect in their segment. Now why are we sitting in mid market? Mid market has twenty plus million customers.

That’s the biggest opportunity. When all of us really think about where is the customer opportunity, a lot of people go up into the enterprise space, the really big accounts. There’s a handful of customers that bill a ton of money. Right?

Then you get down into the small space, and in the small space, there’s a lot of customers. But, you know, it’s a lot of small sales. When you get in the mid markets, mid markets is really the bread and butter for indirect. It’s customers that are have complex needs.

They may not have their own technical staffs. It’s the sweet spot of indirect. It’s where those customers in indirect symbiotically work together, and we made a decision inside of AT and T that we needed to align indirect closer to the team inside of AT and T that was responsible for the mid market customer base. Because that way, we could we could speed the cycle of what did we need to be successful in indirect.

Focus on Mid-Market Opportunity

Because we do really believe that space, that customer segment is the sweet spot where we collectively, the partners, the TSD community, and the Spire, specifically AT and T, obviously, in my case, there’s so much opportunity in that mid market space. And that’s why we’ve made a lot of the changes we have so we can really take advantage of where the opportunity and the growth is.

Yeah. Look. You and I get to travel the country and talk to advisers all over the place, and the mid market is the sweet spot for all the reasons you mentioned. And the biggest one to me and the one that resonated the most with what you just said is there’s the most upside there. These are customers that are growing. They’re thriving. They’re adapting to new technologies.

They’re gonna they’re going to soar, right, with our advisers’ help. And AT and T is there now, especially where you’re positioned in the org to give them the resources and tools that they need to really accelerate.

Potential for Advisers

We our time’s gonna come to a close. I have one quick question for you. Look. You’re known for being a really straightforward guy, so this is a little bit of a curveball, Chris.

Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see how this turns out. You’re known for a tell it like it is style.

Like I said, you and I get to travel the country, talk to advisers. You get to see best practices.

Is there something when when you’re getting through your Uber headed to the airport or you’re on the plane and you think, you know, no duh. Like, if every adviser would just do this, we’d all be more successful. Is there a best practice that you wanna make sure everybody knows, especially when it comes to AT and T? Like, if you do this, you’re a thousand thousand times more successful than if you don’t, like, a obvious thing?

Best Practice for Success

Yeah. You had to the thing is I talk to partners all over the country that astounds me is the number of partners that sell their customer one solution. Yeah. And I I think about the Telarus portfolio and how many suppliers you have in your portfolio.

The reality is a a partner should sell connectivity. They should sell UCaaS. They should sell CCaaS. They should sell mobility. They they’re colo, what whatever it is.

And the the biggest thing that blows me away is the number of customers that I encounter that have four or five partners selling to them Yes.

In each of those product categories. And if any one of those partners expanded and got slightly out of their lane, what they would realize is the amount of money they can make selling other services to that customer is so and and at that point, you’re not acquisition selling. You’re now farming. Right? If I think of the old historical hunter farmer model, you’re a hunter when you’re trying to get the first product category sold to a customer. You’re now farming when you’re adding category two, three, four, five, six.

That’s right.

And it blows me away when I talk to partners that only sell a single category and don’t move partner, it always shocks me how how they’re successful and how much more successful they could be if they sold the whole portfolio, not just what they’re most comfortable with.

Yeah. My favorite analogy I love that. My favorite analogy is the general contractor analogy. If you were gonna build your brand new dream home, you wouldn’t look for a plumber first. You know, unless you’re maybe your best friend was a plumber, but then he’d refer you to a general contractor. So it used to be that advisors, they wanted to specialize in cybersecurity or they wanted to specialize in connectivity, and what they really did is limit themselves.

Now the big winner according to what you just said and what I’m also seeing is the biggest winners in the space are the best general contractors. They come in. They show value. They show that they can help partners or help their customers source, select, implement, manage, and evolve the full technology stack.

They’re truly the general contractor of technology services. And I don’t think of there’s a better way to end this than say, you know, think AT and T first when it comes to that complete stack. I mean, you have the services and solutions and products and team and the momentum in the market to help people accomplish that goal if they think about more than just connectivity. Of course, they can use you for connectivity, but the whole stack’s available at AT and T.

Emphasizing the Full Technology Stack

And if they do that, if they follow your advice, they’re gonna be more successful with Telarus, more successful with AT and T. And at the end of the day, they’re gonna have more wallet share, more mind share of their customer. So, Chris, hey. Thanks.

It’s been great as always hanging out with you, sharing some wisdom with our partners around the around the world, and I’m looking forward to seeing you real soon on the road.

Take care.