Closing Connectivity Deals: New Enhancements Drive Advisor Growth

How can AppDirect help you close more deals, focus on customer retention, and also find the best possible connectivity solutions for customers?

In the June State of the Union webinar, we welcomed several key executives from AppDirect to share their vision and to talk about current updates happening within their various business groups. This includes:

• Phil Keenan, AppDirect Vice President, Telecommunication Services

• Joe Fizor, AppDirect Director of Solutions Engineering

• Jason DiFulvio, AppDirect Director of Channel Sales

Together, these leaders explore how the AppDirect Marketplace, sales engineering, and support systems continue to evolve to meet advisors’ needs, adapt to changing buyer preferences, and ultimately help advisors accelerate growth.

Van Murray, Managing Partner at Aeolus, also discussed how the complete AppDirect ecosystem—including the platform, catalog, advisor tools, and team of experts— continue to help advisors remain competitive, close more deals, and improve customer relations.

Elevating your business: How AppDirect enhancements help you grow

Jump to 4:31 in the webinar to watch on demand

The AppDirect team has been hard at work building a world-class telecom services support experience that makes advisors more competitive and adapts to the specific needs of each advisor.

Top enhancements to the AppDirect telecom services team:

1. Expanded organization: Telecom services

While SaaS remains a top focus of advisors and the channel community, it’s important to not overlook connectivity. Connectivity—everything from public Internet (fiber, cable, wireless) to the robust private circuits (MPLS, VPLS, P2P) services, and SD-WAN—remains a crucial element of every company's tech infrastructure.

Ultimately, a robust telecom and connectivity practice enhances your appeal as a full-stack technology advisor. This becomes particularly vital as businesses seek fewer tech partners to address their challenges. To best support you in driving additional revenue from connectivity sales, AppDirect has made some significant enhancements to our connectivity organization. We’ve added additional internal experts to deliver premier, top-tier support, recently growing the support team to 200-plus people

Heading the new organization is VP of Telecom Services, Phil Keenan, and below him is a team of Partner Success Managers (PSMs), whose job it is to get to know you and your business extensively to help support and operate in a way that’s unique to you.

Within the connectivity organization, the AppDirect Central Back Office team (CBOT) is involved with order management and project coordination. Next is advisor finance. The advisor finance team is involved in provider statement processing, advisor commission tickets, revenue assurance, and data operations. This team is also responsible for performing detailed audits and commission validation processes. Account Support Services are responsible for enterprise support, AppDirect Invest support, and other complex projects.

Finally, the Strategic Provider Relations team within the connectivity organization will look at provider operations, provider relations, solution engineering and solutions architects. With over 500 providers partnered with AppDirect, this is a strategic priority for the team. 

2. New support platform

AppDirect has also integrated a wide range of support models from various strategic alliances and partnerships. These activities have added dozens of experts to the AppDirect team, growing the support team to more than 200 people. Pulling from a range of experience from acquisition deals and partnerships such as TBI and Stratacore, the AppDirect team has the ability to deliver a wide range of support options, solution engineering resources, and solution architect expertise.

This new support platform is designed to be flexible and comprehensive. Current AppDirect advisors, be sure to connect with your CSM and our Sales Engineering to learn more about these support resources.

3. Premium back-office support & connectivity experts

What do these enhancements mean to your business? As an advisor, we can engage with you in the way that best supports your business objectives and growth strategy.

If you’re an advisor that wants to focus primarily on selling, the AppDirect connectivity organization has you covered. We’ve made several adjustments and additions to our back-office team to support. For advisors that want to be more involved throughout the sales cycle, we can also support you. 

Listen to the full webinar for more details 

We’ve added the following areas of focus: 

• Back Office Services

• ProActive Commissions

• Concierge Advisor Support

• Enhanced Pre-Sales Support

• Advisor Account Support Services

How one advisor is closing more connectivity deals

Jump to 22:23 in the webinar to learn more

Van Murray was one of the early leaders of AppDirect who was responsible for expanding the AppDirect presence in the channel and for advisor growth. He helped to build the foundation of our SaaS offerings. Now that he’s started his own agency, Aeolus, he shared his unique perspective on AppDirect resources.

One way using AppDirect has helped his business is by providing a unique way to differentiate his services. What does Van highlight as some of the top differentiators?

• Catalog breadth and depth—With a huge catalog of providers, there are multiple options Van can present to customers. This means that the team at Aeolus can focus on recommending solutions that truly fit the customers’ needs rather than suggesting whatever provider they’re locked into a contract with.

• Expert engineering support— Other AppDirect resources include improved sales engineering support, which means that advisors can ask questions about solutions they’re not necessarily an expert in and get specialized advice. This is a huge value-add for the end customer who gets to benefit from the experience of advisors and sales engineers as well.

• Streamlined back-office— Having the ability to create accurate connectivity quotes quickly is essential to unlocking greater value from connectivity deals. AppDirect simplifies this process with tools to locate and add products for customer requests, searching by parameters like service type, location, and specific providers.

Double-down on customer satisfaction 

In an increasingly competitive market, forming a close working relationship with your customers is key to customer retention and satisfaction, and for Van, AppDirect helps him achieve that. With better support, and enhancements to the AppDirect platform and Marketplace, advisors can focus on building customer relationships and selling without spending time or worrying about the rest of the sales process.

To learn more about the changes coming to AppDirect and how the Marketplace can add value to your business, watch the full webinar today.