Title: Vice President, Indirect Channels
Years in current position: 6
Years with current company: 6
Years in the indirect channel: 20
Past jobs in the indirect channel: channel sales, channel marketing, channel business development.
Main channel goal: “Our main goal is to identify, recruit, train and reward the best-of-breed telecommunications agents and other solution providers who provide communication solutions to mid-market enterprises and regional service providers across the United States. Our top priority is to serve our partners well and make it easier to do business with us than ever before in 2010.”
What is the importance of the indirect channel to your organization? “The indirect channel is critical for Level 3 as we are rapidly trying to increase our overall market share in the mid-market space. We view our partners as an extension of our direct sales force. Moving forward, we see our partners growing at an exponential rate in terms of their relative percentage of our overall enterprise sales and we will continue to support them by providing the tools, resources, and information that our partners will need in order to make them a strong indirect channel for us.”
Why do you consider yourself to be innovative in bringing new ideas to the channel? “My focus on innovation lately has been oriented around scaling our business through the implementation of better pricing tools, support models, and extensive use of our master agents as a distribution model. In addition, we are now catering to a broader partner community, many of whom are largely focused on managed services and cloud computing offerings since we serve as a key cloud computing services enabler. I believe that our advisory council (BPAC) is one of the best in the industry, and through their feedback and other partner’s views through our “voice of the partner survey,” I believe that we are on the cutting edge of executing on some of the most exciting new strategies in the indirect channel in telecom today.”
Childhood career choice: Cartoonist
What others are saying about Craig:
“Craig has consistently been a thought leader for our channel. His leadership and ideas are putting the entire industry in a position to be successful for the long run. Additionally, he has proven success by turning Level 3’s program into one of the best in the marketplace.”
— Ian Kieninger, CEO, AVANT Communications, agent
