In a post you saw here late in July, I shared thoughts from two experts about research from industry community GTIA showing that member satisfaction with partner programs is dipping. Everything both Danielle Ibran of IDC and Ryan Morris of Channel Mastered, the consultancy I help lead, are seeing in the channel tells them the issue is that partners want strategic advice on outcome-oriented growth strategies from their vendors, and partner programs aren’t providing it.
Turns out that’s what TD SYNNEX is seeing too. “We’re 100% getting that feedback from our partners,” says Augie Staab, the distribution giant’s director of MSP sales. “We saw it start to come up in our Direction of Technology survey.” Staab’s newly created role and the newly created team she now leads are a big part of how TD SYNNEX acted on that data, along with additional revenue-related data.
“We started seeing an accelerated clip of growth associated with the partners who either had an established MSP business practice or methodology, or were expanding into it,” Staab (pictured) says. Overall IT industry growth averages 7-9% most years, she notes. “Then you look at people who are working in that MSP space, and their clip is 12-15%.”
Probably, TD SYNNEX believes, because unlike traditional resellers who move on to the next client and project after implementing solutions, MSPs stick around to manage the technology they supply and help clients benefit from it.
“They’re winning more opportunities organically from those relationships,” Staab says, including in areas outside the services and software MSPs typically know best.
“It’s driving opportunities for incremental hardware as well,” Staab says, from businesses that need 10 laptops, say. “They’re becoming more prone to just go to the MSP that they’re working with day to day.”
TD SYNNEX has had sales resources for those MSPs before within its SMB reseller unit. The new group Staab leads is the first to focus exclusively on what she calls “pure play” firms making 70% or more of their revenue from managed services.
“We have the autonomy to build the support, train the reps, and build programs that are MSP-centric and going to help our MSP community grow,” she says. They also have 60 reps on staff, versus the roughly two dozen MSP-focused people in the SMB reseller group.
“We now have a lower account-to-rep coverage ratio, which allows us to get deeper with those accounts, have more strategic conversations, and do some consultation on what they should add to their service delivery stack,” Staab says.
Exactly what partners told TD SYNNEX they want in the Direction of Technology survey and implicitly told GTIA as well. It also aligns with TD SYNNEX’s larger people-plus-tech partner relationship strategy.
“One of the things that we’ve noticed in the market right now, especially with our competition, is that there’s this approach that MSPs need to be digitally led,” Staab says. “I’m all for digitalizing the business, making operations streamlined, smoother, and so on, but MSPs are specifically asking for a lot of consultation and guidance.” Staab’s new unit, along with the PartnerFirst portal the company launched a year ago, is part of how TD SYNNEX plans to give those partners both digital resources and personal attention.
The company’s forthcoming MSP partner program, set to launch toward the end of the year, is another component of that strategy. Staab won’t say much about it for now except that its design will reflect extensive partner input and that its membership benefits will include access to peer-to-peer enablement, in keeping with an aspect of the MSP community that Staab (like ConnectWise CEO Manny Rivelo once upon a time) marvels at.
“I’ve worked with traditional resale. I’ve worked with enterprise VARs,” Staab says. “I’ve seen every type of business and size of business. What I love about the MSPs is that they lean on each other.”