Telecom agents are hammered with messaging that they must offer managed IT services to their customers. The do-it-yourself route usually is dismissed as an option for these sales-centric organizations. Partnering with an MSP is the next logical solution.
That’s the path that master agency Outreach Technology took. It signed up to be a VAR for CharTec, a pioneer in the flat-rate managed IT services space. After attending the training for a day and a half, Outreach President Pete Keane and Vice President Joel Allinson, concluded: “If we do this, we will fail."
IT is very complicated, not only from the bits-and-bytes standpoint but from a logistical standpoint, Keane said. “If a local VAR has a customer with a problem, they make a decision about whether they go out in their jammies or wait until the next morning. We have to deal with national dispatch," he said, citing an example of a challenge that nationwide agents-turned-VARs necessarily face.
Rather than walk away from what they perceived to be an emerging opportunity for their company and their subagents, Keane said the two partners considered how Outreach might instead leverage its agent network to sell the services of CharTec VARs. They presented the idea to CharTec CEO Alex Rogers, who was enthusiastic about the opportunity to further evangelize the flat-rate IT concept. In April, the two companies signed a three-year exclusive agreement; a kickoff was planned for July.
“What we did was create the bridge [between Outreach agents and CharTec VARs] and be the toll-taker at the top of the bridge," Keane said.
So here’s how it works: Outreach agents find the opportunity and bring it to Outreach, which contacts the CharTec VAR in the area. The agent and the VAR go together to the customer site where the VAR assesses the customer’s needs. Outreach prices the opportunity based on the VAR’s recommendation. After it’s sold, the account is billed by a third-party biller under an Outreach logo. The billing company then pays Outreach ongoing commissions and pays the VAR for the setup, installation and on-site support as well as the monthly residual. Outreach pays its agents per usual.
“We are able to take several hundred salespeople and bring opportunities that both we and the CharTec VARs can profit on and bring more value to customers in the process," Keane said. “It’s a total ‘agentization,’ if you will, of the IT model."
This process is based on a contractual arrangement agreed to by agents and VARs that participate that prohibits them from competing with one another. Uniquely, it allows for one-off deals between agents and VARs that otherwise would not be possible.
