Gamma CEO: Partners need to ‘sell the whole jigsaw’

John Murphy tells CRN why telecoms partners must move beyond traditional resale as customer demands become more complex

Five years ago, the telecoms partner market was a whole different ballgame.

There was still significant new growth available, and partners could grow by simply selling standalone communications products.

However, this is no longer the case.

“What's now much more prevalent is that in order to satisfy what customers actually want, you need to have a broader range of capabilities in your business,” John Murphy, CEO, Gamma says.

“You need to be thinking about IT as much as telecoms, and I think the impact that's had on partners over the last five years is that we've seen many partners make that step from being a traditional commerce specialist or reseller, and moving into a more managed service type of provider, and engaging with companies that provide IT solutions that they can put together with communications to provide a more rounded solution for a customer.”

While customer demand has moved beyond traditional resale, Murphy believes that shift is also creating new opportunities for partners.

Speaking to CRN, John Murphy, CEO at Gamma, a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) vendor, discussed how AI has changed the market, which partners will succeed in the years to come and where partners are consistently leaving money on the table.

The biggest opportunities for Gamma’s channel partners

For Murphy, one of the biggest opportunities lies in extracting more value from existing customer relationships.

“We are moving into a switching market, and actually, partners are best trying to focus their efforts and time, in terms of driving value, on existing customers and actually winning customers on similar platforms from other businesses as well.

“I think that’s forcing partners to think more about what it is that they’re doing that’s different to others, and how do they really drive value into a realistic customer base.”

That differentiation could involve providing more products to individual customers to increase value and “stickiness”. But Murphy argued the bigger opportunity lies in delivering managed solutions rather than simply selling an ever-growing list of products.

And it isn’t just larger partners looking at this avenue, “Even some of the smaller partners are trying to think about how to become a solution type business, and how to sell outcomes to customers.

“You can take that in lots of different ways, and it can take lots of different shapes and sizes, but I think there's real opportunity there for partners to stand out.”

For partners unwilling to change their sales approach, Murphy warned that money is being left on the table.

“I think partners leave money on the table because they're stuck in sales motions that they have been in for many years,” Murphy said.

“I think partners, historically, have been in a luxurious place of being able to tell a customer what they need, and they’ve been able to sell them what they want to sell them.

“I think that is now flipped.

“Customers know more about what's available, and actually, they're demanding what they want.

“The biggest challenge for partners is that they have to have people in their sales team that can have the right conversations with customers to explore that, and then have a portfolio behind them that can provide additional services to fulfil the customer's requirement.

“I think at the moment there are still partners that struggle to make that move happen.”

Where partners can add value

There is opportunity out there for Gamma’s partners to serve more customers and develop their businesses via managed services.

However, where can partners build value, when the landscape is so competitive?

At its core is the ability to understand customers and their needs.

“I'd say to our partners, really know your customers, understand what industries they're working in, and what sort of problems they are trying to solve, because the same problems don't exist in every industry,” Murphy said.

“Some problems are quite common, but actually, the real opportunity for partners to serve their customers better, or to drive their business in a slightly different direction, is to really understand what the needs are.

“I'd say that's more important now than that has been.”

How AI is changing the channel

AI could accelerate that transformation further, particularly around voice communications.

“I think AI will disrupt standalone legacy communications,” Murphy predicts.

“Voice has been something that's been commoditised to a certain degree.

“It's been really important, but more recently, before the rise of AI, it became something that was reserved for high-cost, critical services.”

He explained that companies were trying to avoid voice contact where possible, because having people take calls in their business was becoming overly expensive.

However, voice was the key to making interactions smooth – where emails and chats can be misinterpreted, voice provides context, and interactions are often much smoother and dealt with faster.

Now, the rise of AI has meant more businesses are once again able to implement voice functionality.

“I think the combination of AI and voice makes it much more scalable now than it ever has been, and I think there's a real opportunity to put those two things together.

“AI is very complementary when it's integrated into voice services, but it's a threat where it's standalone and it carries the intelligence away from the communications platform.”

Why competing on price is no longer enough

Despite that shift, Murphy believes some partners are still operating under an outdated assumption: that communications remains primarily a commodity market driven by price.

“I think they assume the market is driven by commodity pricing, and actually, the reality is the market is driven by reliability, is driven by security, is driven by innovation, and it's driven by trust,” Murphy said.

“If you can provide services that cover all of those aspects with confidence to a customer, then actually, in the market that we're moving into now, you can't rely on a price game, and you cannot rely on being the cheapest in the market.

“I think the assumption that customers will only buy the cheapest products is probably the one, the wrong assumption to make right now.”

For Murphy, that means partners need to compete on the factors that matter most to customers, rather than relying on being the cheapest provider.

How will the channel evolve?

Looking ahead, Murphy expects that convergence to reshape the make-up of the channel itself.

In Murphy’s opinion, “I think we will see more channel partners specialising.

“We will see more channel partners taking on wider IT services into their portfolio, and I think we'll see more channel partners offering a higher level of managed service to their customers.

“Comms, IT, AI and security is all becoming integrated, and you're not going to be able to sell one piece of that jigsaw, you need to be able to sell the whole jigsaw.”

Ultimately, Murphy expects trusted-adviser status to become increasingly important as customer requirements grow more complex.

“I think the future of the channel looks like partners that are the trusted advisors for customers in their specialist field.

“However, the future is more complex from a technology perspective, and it's more outcome-driven and solution-driven from a customer's perspective.