Summary Bullets:
• Most service providers hold annual awards events to celebrate successes and thank their indirect channel partners.
• Although ostensibly glamorous and occasionally boisterous, they play a crucial role in cementing key relationships with this vital group of sales partners.
Vodafone Business recently “recognized the invaluable contributions made by its UK sales partners through the Indirect Partner Awards 2024.” This line could be repeated by almost every major telco as they rely on third parties playing a key role as a means of maximizing their addressable market and optimizing their go-to-market strategies. These indirect partners help telcos meet the wide and varying needs of target enterprise customers of all sizes.
Telcos usually hold plush black-tie events, together with a guest speaker (more often than not a comedian), and ‘a great time was had by all.’ Lots of food and wine get consumed, and many pictures are taken to be shared on LinkedIn or in press releases.
Service providers tend to focus on key areas of their portfolio and services delivery, such as unified communications or mobile services, but also more recently on other tenets of their customer propositions like sustainability or diversity and inclusion.
There are also regular industry awards hosted by luminaries from channel-specific publications. These have the advantage of appearing to make independent judgements using industry experts and editors. In a happy symbiotic coincidence, these ceremonies are usually sponsored by key players up and down the value chain, from equipment suppliers to telecoms services providers – depending on category of course.
These ‘soft’ incentives industry awards fit tightly alongside the hard commercial realities of using the indirect channel. Partners can serve to address ‘the long tail’ of target businesses that make little economic sense for service providers to spend money on expensive and extended direct sales teams, so online, telemarketing, and partners cover a very large and therefore substantial addressable market. Partners can also access potential enterprise customers by combining products and services from telcos and other key technology suppliers to assemble solutions for them. Again, such bespoke offerings tend only to make sense for telcos when it comes to the largest corporates or public sector customers.
As in most commercial situations, relationships matter. These events say ‘thank you’ for partners’ hard work and play an important part in bringing service providers and their indirect channel partners closer. We should lift a glass to awards ceremonies.
