New Global Crossing VP Shares Vision for Channel

Last spring Global Crossing Ltd.  gave the reins of its partner program to Jeff Callahan, vice president of indirect channels. To find out how the new leader plans to re-invigorate the program, PHONE+ Editor Khali Henderson spoke to Callahan at its network operations center in Phoenix on Oct. 30. The following is an edited transcript of that interview:

What is Global Crossing’s view of the channel?
The channel makes so much sense for our organization. We’re not as big as some of our competitors in terms of the size of our direct sales force. For us to be able to leverage the relationships and the reach of the agent community, it makes a tremendous amount of sense for us. We have a great network, great products.

How many agents do you have?
We are in the process of narrowing that list down. My goal in 2008 is to have a core group. I think the previous leadership went through and signed up whoever was interested in being an agent and spread ourselves too thin. We have a finite number of resources as does everyone else. I want to make sure our support is best in class. So we are going to take those partners that we see the opportunity to grow with. They may not being doing a whole lot of business with us today, but we see they have the potential to expand and grow. They understand our niche and the Global Crossing story. And we need to make sure we build a support team around them that’s best in class.

Are you going to be “firing” agents?
No. The business that we have out there, we are certainly not going to throw away. There are a number of partners that have done business with us in the past when we were more voice- than data-focused, and we haven’t seen much traction over the last few years. Perhaps it’s a lack of attention from us. They are not aware of Global Crossing – what our products are, where we differentiate ourselves. It might just be an education process. It’s more of building the support around those agents that are producing that do see the value.

Is it a conversation about how you can get more of their business?
The existing base that we have out there, we are not going to start throwing away deals. That’s for sure. It’s going to be a conversation of let’s try to find a way to return to growth.

Some of the other carriers have created a two-tier model and are moving low performers under master agents. Will you be doing that?
We certainly have had those conversations. That’s certainly an option for us. It’s a question of the level of support. We are talking about some of the partners that are more in a maintain mode than and acquisition mode. They have their existing customers our there and they continue to support those. We don’t have to aggressively pursue the business if they are in a maintenance mode. It’s more of a moves/adds/changes type of support rather than quotes and getting pricing and service inquiries.

You are OK with that?
Yeah. We are. There will be some that will move under other masters. We’ll judge case-by-case for each partner out there. It’s a conversation we’ll have with each one to find out how they want the relationship to evolve. We’ve gone through a financial view of the partnerships, taking a look at the growth of each partner, taking a look at the existing customer base and the profitability by customer. We’ve taken our first initial financial view of the partners. What we need to do now is to spend some time with each one of these partners and find out how we are going to move forward with a relationship. How do they see the partnership forming? I want it to be a collaborative discussion and not necessarily Global Crossing dictating here’s how we are going to move this relationship forward.

Part of that discussion will be things you can use to form your program?
There are a number of partnerships out there – agents that we have that are very productive for some of our competitors. It’s been a lack of attention or how we market ourselves or that they are not fully aware of the products and services that we offer. If we can sit down and go through an education process and refocus our attention on these partners, we can see the rebirth of the relationship and some growth.

I certainly don’t want to eliminate potential partners that have the potential to grow and that stagnated due to a lack of attention by our organization.

Why do you think that happened?
We did spread ourselves too thin. We are growing again this year. We are heading new head count toward the end of this year. We have a few open heads right now. And, we are planning on adding new bodies as we end 2007. We will add probably four or five heads as we exit year. I am looking for a sales leader role [to replace Shane McNamara, who went to CDW]. It’s more of backfill than a new head – a director of sales and marketing for the channel.

We are going to add two additional channel managers to the sales side and we will add support staff, too.

In 2008, you will add people, too?
Yes, it will be more support-focused. We have a very aggressive growth target for 2008. I think it’s achievable as long as we continue to improve our support structure.

What is your growth target?
In 2007, we are the biggest, the fastest-growing portion of Global Crossing’s “invest and grow” business. In 2008, we are expected to continue to be the fastest growing.

What does “invest and grow” mean?
We went though a process about three years ago as we exited Chapter 11, focusing all of our attention onto the core products and services and channels that the company was founded on. ...The network was built for IP and data services and voice services surrounding that core network. We wanted to focus all of our capital and people resources toward what we considered “invest and grow” – what we are going to invest our money in and where we are going to see the most growth. These are the data services. I think our mission statement is to be the world’s greatest provider of enterprise global IP. So, it’s IP centric. It’s the enterprise market. It’s the global footprint. Our strengths are our global network. It’s the IP-centric nature of our build.

We will continue to be a player in the voice market, but the key strength of our network is it’s IP and it’s global. If you took a look at our product mix a few years ago, it was 75 percent voice. Today, it’s probably 60 percent voice.

Are you having the channel sell globally?
The channel is North America-based. We have branch agents throughout the world that generate leads and our direct sales teams follow up on it. We have seen traction (in North America) on the agents’ abilities to sell multinational corporations. More of the master agents are making the move to data-centric product sets. The agents are evolving along with the product sets.

You had a record sales month in October, right?
In terms of orders and monthly revenue, we have set records since May. We have been on an incredible roll.

Are there any particular products that are seeing growth?
I think it’s more the volume of the orders being placed. We are seeing a lot of MPLS network, IP-VPN. ...We see some activity in the voice area, too. We have a competitive product set, so we see increased volume there as well.

What are your plans in 2008?
We are going to roll out a channel advisory board in 2008 to take advantage of the partners and their experience within this channel. That’s something that we haven’t done in the past.

...We obviously have a lot to learn from our partners. I don’t think we have been very interactive in terms of two-way communications. It’s been kind of one-dimensional – us saying here’s how we are going to do things. I want to change the approach and be much more collaborative as we move forward. I don’t think we have taken advantage of the knowledge base that is out there. These guys are anxious to have their voice heard.