Education Series - Selling Vertical Solutions to the Midmarket

Solutions providers all desire success selling to larger, midmarket enterprises. This requires some level of expertise, particularly knowledge of market challenges that these companies face.

Health care and financial services verticals, for example, face a dynamic regulatory, competitive and end-user environment that is driving changes in networking and bandwidth demand. Such pressures are causing these midmarket organizations to invest resources in new and advanced technologies.

Both verticals, for example, are formalizing business continuity plans to satisfy regulatory requirements and to shore up operations. Even the smallest of these organizations are contending with maintenance and management of patient and client records with investments in data backup hardware and services.

As trusted business advisers, solutions providers (agents and VARs) serving these verticals have an emerging opportunity to help their customers with connectivity and network solutions. To do this effectively and profitably, however, they must understand each vertical's requirements, the recommended solutions and how to sell them.

Find out how you can tap into or better serve top midmarket businesses in the health care and financial verticals, in this Webinar sponsored by PHONE+ and Level 3 Communications.

In this Webinar, solutions providers will:

• Review the drivers for technology purchases among health care and financial verticals
• Identify solutions that can address requirements in the health care and financial verticals
• Learn how to position solutions to meet vertical market requirements
• Hear one partner's experience successfully selling to these markets

Sponsored by:

Bill Steen is the director of Marketing and Partner Programs for the Indirect Channel at Level 3 and has been at the company for more than fours. He is responsible for creating industry awareness, partner demand, core marketing materials, incentive programs, and training for the Level 3 Business Partner Program. Bill's team also works closely with top partners to support go-to-market and co-marketing campaigns.

David Gardner brings extensive sales, corporate development, strategic planning and business building expertise to the Advantage Communications team. In addition, he has either worked in, or consulted for the telecommunications industry for 10 years. Before joining Advantage in 2003, he served as the vice president of Business Development for AllResearch, Inc., an Internet monitoring and corporate intelligence gathering ASP. While there, Mr. Gardner spearheaded domestic and international strategic alliances, distribution partnerships and content agreements, establishing relationships in North America, South America, Europe and Asia that expanded sales and distribution capabilities twenty-fold. Prior to AllResearch, Mr. Gardner worked as the Director of Business Development for SmartRay Networks, a mobile media portal sold to LifeMinders for $36 million in 2000. Mr. Gardner has an MBA in Finance and Management from NYU's Stern School of Business and a BA in English from the University of Vermont.

Chris O'Toole oversees the financial services segments, Level 3's largest and fastest growing enterprise vertical. Prior to his current role, Chris executed Level 3's mergers and acquisitions in the Corporate Development Group and worked in investment banking and private equity in New York.

Carolyn Reuss, director in Level 3 Business Markets Group, is responsible for developing Level 3 network solutions for customers in Health Care and other key segments. Carolyn has held leadership positions in market and product management, including Ethernet and VoIP services, during her career at Level 3. Prior to joining Level 3, Carolyn managed Enterprise products for Internet Security Systems in Atlanta, and developed new services at Bellsouth Science & Technology and France Telecom. She holds a Management of Technology degree from Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Related Materials

Please log in to access the related material

• Selling Vertical Solutions to the Midmarket