Q&A: How A Longtime VAR Built Up Its Telecom Practice

Describe the cultural change that Carousel faced when determining that carrier services – generating recurring revenue – was something the company wanted to emphasize.

It was a big change, and we still sell a lot of one-time transactional equipment, along with cloud, carrier and managed services. It’s a cultural change, for sure, and we had to first assess the skillsets of the sales teams. I advocated to hire a dedicated carrier team, and also tried to convert the hardware sales reps into carrier reps, so we've had to do a lot of training. We also had to think about compensation plans to drive the right behavior. It’s been a long effort.