A good play or had its day? What is the future of SP’s?
9 replies (most recent on top)
Just as AT&T is doing with certain Corporate Stores below a threshold in sales that are being sold to private owners on the mobility side. The same applies for the segment of AT&T wireline customers billing under $1M per year. These customers have been carefully aligned as a group with Sales Folks that will be eliminated before 2021. These Sales people are being forced to run their business through SPs now since virtually all of their support resources were cut. When the Sales people are let go; the SPs will have full responsibility for the clients. This is straight from the horse's mouth that is running the SP channel. SPs offer lower cost per sale and eliminate the HR expenses associated with direct hires (i.e. benefits, pensions, etc.). At the end of the day, the clients billing under $1M per year are the least profitable to AT&T.
“Solution” and “att” are complete opposites
The direct teams cost too much and do not add value in many cases.
To the comment earlier about it adding layers - for some accounts you need both the AT&T side and the SP side to secure the deal and in that case the company feels the cost is warranted. This could be:
- SP has the relationship and brings in the sales team as collaborative goodwill
- SP might have the relationship but their customer wants AT&T involved as an active partner because they've been using AT&T solutions for a while
- SP has the opportunity but needs to partner with the direct sales team to secure the sale either due to lack of relationship history or the customer wants their account rep involved
- SP is brought in by the direct sales team to help fill in the gaps from a use case or sales process view
SPs also make the sale in AT&T Alliance without the direct team ever knowing yet the direct team gets paid. That DOES cost too much and leadership knows it. Expect more SP-only sales channel options in the future.
Being an SP is good if you are actually good at sales. If you are a CSE and need to call your overlay on every call you will not survive working as an SP. Being an SP can be rewarding only if you have the skills to build it on your own.
Don’t go work for one, they are just trying to take percentage points off of your commissions. If you are interested, start up your own business and lean on customer relationships that you have built during your time at T.
They been saying for a decade now that SPs are gonna eliminate direct sales teams. If that was going to happen it would have happened by now.
SPs are already earmarked for elimination in the new structure by EOY.
Solution Providers are contributing to the ‘ too many layers’, IMO. When a sale is made, AT&T not only pays ALL the AT&T employees on the account team ... including overlays that may not have had a thing to do with the sale...,, but also the SP. ( Global Business/ Enterprise Sales under Chow). Ridiculous to pay 2 different teams for one sale.
outsorcing the work to the cheapest contractor..