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

Describe the process of educating the sales staff on selling telecom services.

It took a little time to educate salespeople across the company on the value of residual commissions and what it meant to them because they were used to making a big sale. It takes a little time to educate them on the benefit of residual commissions.

Some people got it right away, and some people said it wasn’t worth their time, but this has become less of an issue over time. One of the advantages that the carrier service business unit has brought to the company is a competitive differentiation when talking to customers. Quite often, we can actually free up budget dollars that can be pulled from equipment sales to pay [the sales team] and we've been embraced by the sales team, not only by how we've structured commissions, but how they can ultimately win business [with the addition of carrier services] they might not have otherwise gotten.