Foehn Looks to Increase Engagement with the Channel

Foehn is looking to engage more with the channel after around 20 years of selling direct.

The UK-based cloud communications specialist said that it was taking two decades of sales and marketing of cloud communications and offering it as a package available to resellers called “30 days to Revenue Success”.

Foehn aims to have partner’s clients up and running in no time with its solution that promises to solve the problem of complexity and collaboration overload.

Comprehensive training

Resellers signing up to Foehn receive comprehensive training and are supplied with a no-cost marketing toolkit that includes co-branded collateral, opportunities and content to help channel partners bring on clients.

Partners will also be assigned a channel manager and a dedicated partner support line. They can also expect high margins and ongoing incentives.

Brian Rocks, head of channel at Foehn, told UC Today that Foehn is keen to build an ecosystem of partners ranging from endpoint suppliers offering headsets and handsets to billing systems providers.

“We’ve been having conversations with billing companies and other entities in the ecosystem to find out what they are doing, what challenges they are finding in the market to see how we can support them,” he said.

“A lot of what we have been trying to do at the moment is listening. This means taking a lot of information on board and playing that back to the market”

He added that based on the feedback from partners so far, it has allowed Foehn to come to the market with new solutions.

Rocks said that one of the challenges most channel partners have in a competitive market is marketing and sales.

“You could take the best MSP or IT company in the world, but if they haven’t got an understanding of how to take Voxivo or a UC solution to market, then it is going to be difficult for them,” said Rocks.

Sales and marketing support

Foehn has put together conversation guides and marketing content as well as a marketing blueprint that includes website and social media content.

“So if a partner said to us, ‘we want to go to market with this, we want to go to market with you’, we’ve got an out-of-the-box marketing kit which is going to help them accelerate their go-to-market plans,”

Rocks said that his company has also put together a number of white papers which helps partners educate and advise and inform their particular target market.

Rocks was keen to point out that all the content and marketing material was not set in stone and if partners wanted something else to help them with marketing efforts and they get enough feedback on a particular topic then it made sense for them to put that content into the arsenal of the channel partners.

One of the main challenges for any technology business, according to Rocks, is growing sales, another challenge is staffing and resources.

“We’re now giving them access to professional services and project management capability, which means that there’s no excuse not to get involved in this. And along the way they will learn those systems and processes and best practice – so, if they want to take those project management and professional services in-house, we’re actually training the trainer in that type of scenario,” said Rocks.

source uctoday

Industry: Unified Communications