Following its October acquisition of Global Crossing Ltd., Level 3 Communications Inc. tapped Michael Jerich, the former vice president of channel sales for Global Crossing, to head up the new combined channel programs. As vice president of indirect channels, Jerich will lead Level 3’s channel initiatives, including Business Partners, VARs/systems integrators and Strategic Alliances.
The indirect channel also has been separated from enterprise sales and Jerich will report directly to Andrew Crouch, regional president — North America Sales. "That speaks volumes to our commitment behind this space," Jerich said. "In our opinion we have an opportunity of a lifetime to build a best-of-breed program to combine the strengths of Level 3 and Global Crossing."
Nigel Williams, who took over the channel and enterprise sales after longtime channel chief Craig Schlagbaum resigned, will no longer have involvement in the channel. Wayne Dietrich, who had added responsibility for management of the Business Partners, will return to managing the VAR/SI relationships and Strategic Alliances, reporting to Jerich.
Level 3 is familiar territory for Jerich, who joined Global Crossing May 1, 2009, after serving as vice president of sales at Level 3. While at Level 3, he helped build the first indirect channel program and was responsible for the company’s indirect sales organization and $75 million in revenue. Channel Partners spoke to Jerich at the end of October about his plans for the new Level 3 partner program. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Channel Partners: Besides yourself and Wayne Dietrich, who will be managing the channel?
Michael Jerich: We are going to have a national program as well as a regional program. As far as how many heads and who will be doing what, since it's day 24, we haven't got through that complexity yet. I can speak to the overall model we are going to roll out, but not who is going to fall in what bucket. ...
So on the GC side, we supported anywhere between 25 and 50 partners. ... The program we defined there was creating a pod-like structure where we would have ... a channel manager that supported them on a national basis. ...We didn't have the regional model focus that Level 3 has with channel managers in each NFL city. Then we had a couple of back-office support people supporting them as well as a dedicated pricing person. We didn't have the tool in place like MasterStream.
