Title: Vice President, Dealer Sales
Years in current position: 12
Years with current company: 12
Years in the indirect channel: 17
Past jobs in the indirect channel: Dealer sales support, district dealer manager, district sales director, vice president of marketing.
Annual revenue responsibility: $3.8 million annually in net new revenue
Main channel goal: “We have put major focus to what we’re doing daily, aiming to take our sales approach ‘Back to the Basics.’ This approach includes 10 objectives which make up the whole: doing what we say we’re going to do, selling every day, remembering to fill the ‘sales funnel,’ recruiting new dealers, training dealers, staying in front of dealers, knowing our products, planning for profit, effectively managing our accounts (with the support of the account management team) and having a game plan. We understand that dealers have a choice in who they do business with. So, our primary goal is to always put our dealer and their customers first. If we stay focused on these simple tactics, we are sure to continue to be successful.”
Biggest challenge: “The biggest challenge we face at Windstream is coming up with new ways to retain our talented dealer managers. We just simply don’t want people to leave us! We try to provide as many opportunities for professional growth as possible, including training, events, and some excellent sales incentives developed by our channel marketing manager. We also want the very valuable relationship between dealers and dealer managers to thrive. To do this, we have to stay fresh in our approach in how we market ourselves and our products to dealers. To this extent, staying innovative is certainly a challenge, but it helps to keep our relationships alive and flourishing. We feel that we have done a great job at retaining our talent, but we are consistently faced with creating new opportunities to build a culture that shows people that we’re in this for the long haul.”
What is the importance of the indirect channel to your organization and what do you see as the future for your channel operations? “We know that dealers have a choice with whom they do business. So we’re out there, every day, working harder than our competitors to earn trust and respect from our dealers. This commitment to excellence is felt throughout the company. Before Windstream acquired NuVox, the indirect channel made up nearly 50 percent of the company’s total revenue. In fact, when John Leach (Windstream’s senior vice president of Business Sales and Support) was interviewed by PHONE+ back in November (‘Windstream Plans to Build on NuVox Channel’), he discussed the NuVox dealer channel and how it was an attractive aspect to acquiring NuVox. In the article, John discussed the future of our channel by stating that we’ll be ‘aggressively recruiting where [we] don’t have agents’ and he talked about how NuVox’s ‘existing agents will benefit by being able to sell the Windstream footprint.’ We are certainly happy about the transition to Windstream and know that our future is very bright.”
