REVEALED: How much everyone in the channel earns
From sales staff to technical roles through to the CEO: here's what everyone in a reseller business earns. So are you being underpaid?
A reseller is a diverse business, with a wide range of job functions from sales creation to technical implementation and support. CRN has aggregated its own wages research to reflect roles in three major areas: sales, technical and CEO or managing director.
The wages can differ based on the size and success of the reseller business, alongside the location, with London-based firms having higher wages. As such, a median wage has been used for some sections of this research.
So what do the major positions in the reseller channel earn? First up, sales roles.
Sales wages
IT industry recruiter Robertson Sumner has freshly updated and channel-specific numbers on sales wages. The following were from April this year:
Reseller/MSP
Sales director: £55,000 - £70,000 (On-target earnings - £150,000)
Sales manager: £55,000 - £70,000 (OTE - £100,000)
Business development manager: £40,000 - £50,000 (OTE - £90,000)
Account manager: £30,000 - £35,000 (OTE - £50,000)
Graduate sales: £18,000 - £24,000 (OTE - £30,000)
Distribution
Sales director: £70,000 - £100,000 (OTE - £130,000)
Sales manager: £50,000 - £65,000 (OTE - £100,000)
Business development manager: £30,000 - £50,000 (OTE - £90,000)
Account manager: £24,000 - £28,000 (OTE - £37,000)
Graduate sales: £18,000 - £24,000 (OTE - £30,000)
Vendor
Sales director: £75,000 - £150,000 (OTE - £230,000)
Sales manager: £50,000 - £75,000 (OTE - £140,000)
Account manager: £45,000 - £95,000 (OTE - £180,000)
Senior ISR: £35,000 - £65,000 (OTE - £95,000)
ISR: £27,000 - £50,000 (OTE - £85,000)
Graduate sales: £25,000 - £30,000 (OTE - £40,000)
"These numbers are based on the candidates we are registering," said Marc Sumner, managing director of Robertson Sumner. "We are registering over 100 a week, so we have collated all the information we have received from candidates working in specific roles in certain industries."
Sumner said wages for salespeople in the channel have continued to grow, but it is the sales roles around bringing in new business which are growing particularly rapidly.
"When business salespeople are on the hunt for a new role, they might get a 25 to 30 per cent lift in their pay package, so those people are really in demand. However, an account manager would be more likely to get around a 10 per cent pay rise."
In terms of the difference in wages between reseller, distributor and vendor, Sumner said wages in distribution continue to lag behind.
"Distribution is the bottom rung and they are notoriously the lowest paid of the channel. Then you have the vendors and the resellers, and depending on which reseller you are at the wages can be very similar," he said.
"However, in general, the vendors are top of the food chain in terms of pay, the services providers and resellers are in the middle and distribution is the lowest paid."
Sumner added that distribution is easier to get into and the sector often takes on staff with limited sales skills, meaning it is unlikely to see a spike in wages any time soon.
Continue for technical and CEO/MD wages…
REVEALED: How much everyone in the channel earns
From sales staff to technical roles through to the CEO: here's what everyone in a reseller business earns. So are you being underpaid?
Resellers have a wide degree of technical roles, from the IT support through to the implementation roles. These are often designed by vendor specifications, as illustrated by the below numbers from ITJobsWatch:
Technical wages
Cloud consultant - £62,500 (median wage)
AWS engineer - £60,000
Microsoft Azure engineer - £60,000
Cloud engineer - £55,000
SAP engineer - £50,000
Network engineer - £46,000
VMware Certified Professional (VCP) - £45,000
Software engineer - £45,000
IBM storage engineer - £45,000
IT support manager - £42,768
Citrix Certified Administrator (CCA) - £42,500
HP ExpertOne HPE Accredited Solutions Expert (HPE ASE) - £42,500
Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) - £40,000
Veritas Certified Professional (VCP) - £40,000
Oracle Certified Professional (OCP) - £39,325
Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) - £37,500
IT support - £27,000
Helpdesk support - £23,000
Source: ITJobsWatch (data based on the six months to 30 Aug 2017 - all median wages)
John Grant, data scientist at ITJobsWatch, told CRN the firm's methodology is to look at the demand side of the market.
"We have formal relationships with IT job boards and recruitment services that supply us with data feeds which we sample on an hourly basis around the clock. Each job advertisement has a certain number of attributes that we can work with, such as job title, job location, a salary or contractor rate and the date the role is available," he said.
"We use all that as a common denominator for features of job roles in the market. The figures we have are six-month medians for the UK."
Grant said that when the figures are viewed on annual basis, there is an upward trend for the industry in recent years, but there was a dip in 2009 around the financial crisis which was then followed by a plateau of wages for several years afterwards.
Continue for CEO/MD wages…
REVEALED: How much everyone in the channel earns
From sales staff to technical roles through to the CEO: here's what everyone in a reseller business earns. So are you being underpaid?
So what do the people at the top of a reseller organisation earn? Many of the country's biggest channel players are listed on the stock exchange and as such detail the remuneration of directors in annual reports.
CEO/MD wages
Mike Norris, chief executive of Computacenter, the country's biggest VAR, was paid £1,913,700 for the 2016 fiscal year, and £2,763,900 in 2015. This works off a base wage of around £500,000, with various annual bonuses and benefits making up the remainder.
At Softcat, the country's third-biggest VAR, CEO Martin Hellawell earned £562,117 for 2016, topping up his £227,734 base salary with bonuses.
As you scale down CRN's Top VARs, as expected, the CEO salary does the same. But only marginally. At Redcentric, positioned 28th in our rundown, outgoing CEO Fraser Fisher earned £369,000 for 2017, down from the £429,000 he made in 2016.
At RedstoneConnect, ranked at 71st in our Top 100, CEO Mark Braund notched up £365,000 for 2017. Adept Telecom, at 92nd, CEO Ian Fishwick made £325,210 in 2017.
However, most CEOs and managing directors of resellers are outside our Top 100. Our analysis of a cross-section of resellers with public information about directors' remunerations found that CEOs generally earn between £240,000 and £280,000 per annum.
Outside resellers and the IT industry, payscale.com finds the average pay for a UK CEO is £91,617 per year. It puts the average managing director pay at £72,223.
"These numbers are what I would expect for bosses of a reseller," said Sumner. "Even the smaller reseller CEOs will be earning more than the national average for CEOs of £91,617.
"I'm not surprised by the wages of the likes of Mike Norris and Martin Hellawell. I also think the wages are a reasonable reflection of what CEOs at resellers do. If you look at the success of Softcat, Martin and Colin [Brown, Softcat managing director] have been instrumental in that."