PAETEC Holding Corp. (PAET) has named a new channel chief. Effective Jan. 1, 2010, Donna Wenk, senior vice president of sales operations and customer care, began overseeing the agent channel program in addition to her responsibilities for the CLEC’s call centers, account development and sales operations.
Wenk, an original PAETEC founder, fills the post left open in mid-September when John Leach, president of the South region, left PAETEC after serving as channel chief for less than a year. Previously, the role was held by Chris Bantoft.
PHONE+ spoke to Wenk at the end of December about her plans for the PAETEC indirect sales program. What follows is an edited transcript.
PHONE+: PAETEC has an unusual structure for its channel leadership. Can you explain that and your role within that structure?
 |
| PAETEC Channel Chief Donna Wenk |
Donna Wenk: Yes, we designed this structure to stay close to our customers and business partners and meet their unique needs. Based on our combined experience in supporting the agent channel, we believed that to best support our partners we needed two distinct types of support — one specific to the needs of the region and one with a national focus to ensure consistency. For example, an agent competing in Manhattan will run into very different challenges and prospects than one in Iowa. So, it made sense for us to push the day-to-day management of the channels towards each region. As part of the structure, we run our company in four geographical regions with a regional president responsible for all sales and service in that region. Under each regional president is a vice president of channel sales who is responsible for channel sales and management of our agent partners in that region.
But, at the same time, we needed to ensure that each partner and customer has a consistent experience with unmatched support regardless of where they are. That’s where I come in. My current role running sales ops and customer care is to manage the inside teams that support the four regions. For the channel, that includes processing agent contracts and customer orders, agent commissions, contests and incentive plans, and managing our quote team and quote tools.
We believe that this two-pronged support strategy will better serve our partners than any other competing program nationally.
