Good Technology partners welcome inside sales rejig

Secure mobility vendor aligns inside sales and partner resources following concerns over 'segregated' approach to channel

Good Technology has united its channel and inside sales team under one roof amid concerns from some partners the two were not pulling in the same direction.

The secure mobility vendor is bringing its channel and non-named account inside sales resource together under the leadership of newly appointed vice president of EMEA channels, John Taylor.

"One of my priorities is integrating the channel into Good to ensure we are aligned as one salesforce," declared Taylor, who joined from sole distributor Azlan in February.

As of last week, Good has also made the training it gives new internal sales engineers available to SEs at its partners, Taylor added.

The new structure will ensure Good's team of seven UK inside sales staff engage in more "proactive selling" with partners, including joint call-out initiatives, Taylor said.

Founded in 1996, Good marks itself out from competitors with its "containerised" approach to MDM, meaning it secures not the device itself but the data on that device.

Taylor (pictured, below) argued Good - which generates more than 50 per cent of EMEA sales from partners despite entering the channel only three years ago - remains a safe bet for resellers over and above newer names such as MobileIron and Aerohive.

"We're pure play," he explained. "This is all we do, and we do it really well. If you walk into our offices in London, you'll see 50 staff who live, breathe and eat mobile security all day, every day. We are an established player in a pretty immature market, with great referenceability."

Good currently has about 15 "really active" UK partners, including Softcat, Bytes, Vodafone, Computacenter, AVR International and Phoenix Software.

Hannah Clifford, sales manager at AVR, welcomed the move, claiming that partners had felt some disparity between Good's channel and direct strategy in the past.

"We enjoy selling Good's technology solutions but up until now, the channel stream approach didn't seem to be fully aligned with the internal sales stream approach and at times it felt a little segregated," she said.

"It used to be a challenge to know how to engage with the internal sales team and work together with a targeted approach. However, I am confident these positive changes will help us define our strategy with them."