Your Roadmap to Success—Build, Expand, and Future-proof Your Business

With global technology spending on the rise—particularly in managed services and cloud—business buyers are consolidating partners and seeking more comprehensive solutions. To stay competitive, technology partners must scale effectively and deliver end-to-end offerings that meet these evolving demands.

Top-performing companies share four key pillars of digital success, as outlined in our blog How to Thrive in the Digital Economy—The 4 Digital Keys to Success.

3 strategies for advisor growth 

As a technology advisor or channel partner, how can you apply these principles to drive growth?

Renée Bergeron, AppDirect’s Chief Operating Officer, introduced a three-stage framework to guide your growth in the digital economy. Watch Renée’s keynote at Thrive for additional insights.

• Build: Focus on customer acquisition and expanding market reach.

• Expand: Cross-sell a wider range of technology solutions to existing customers.

• Future-proof: Upsell advanced technologies, like AI, to position yourself as an indispensable long-term partner.

Let’s explore each of these stages in detail.

1. Build: Lay the foundation for success

The build phase starts with generating digital demand and engaging today’s buyers, especially Millennials and Gen Z, who tend to rely on more self-service tools and independent research before making decisions. In this environment, B2B marketplaces are surging—In this environment, B2B marketplaces are experiencing a surge, with transactions tallying to $14 billion last year alone. It’s projected that by 2025, a third of those transactions will be driven by partners.

“You have to convert this digital demand into digital engagement and the best way to engage your customer in a digital manner is via a marketplace." —Renée Bergeron, AppDirect COO

AppDirect offers marketplaces to help you capture this growth:

• Builtfirst marketplace: With this feature set, companies can create a branded storefront to showcase products and services. With a Builtfirst marketplace you can track everything from clicks to quotes, and the functionality is all integrated into your website.

• AppDirect marketplaces: For those seeking advanced functionality and customization, AppDirect is built on the leading commerce platform for selling, buying, and managing recurring technology services. With this marketplace platform, technology solution providers, ISVs, and managed service providers can launch branded marketplaces. Offering greater customization and tools, it enables partners to generate digital demand and seamlessly convert it into digital engagements.

2. Expand: Cross-sell and grow

The expand phase of the roadmap to digital success focuses on extracting greater value from existing customers through cross-selling. 

 “It’s all about cross selling from one technology solution to another in a very methodical and intentional way. To thrive, partners need a platform that offers flexibility in terms of sourcing and in terms of supply chain management so you have the power to source directly your own first-party producta, as well as any third-party products.”

The AppDirect catalog provides flexibility to maximize cross-sell opportunities featuring thousands of solutions from over 600 technology providers. In addition, new upcoming functionality, will let partners source first-party products, third-party products, or integrate distributors like TD Synnex and Ingram Micro via API connections. This flexibility allows partners to create a hybrid catalog tailored to their specific business needs.

Create guided selling paths

Successful technology advisors typically begin with core offerings, then expand strategically. With the AppDirect catalog, partners can create guided selling paths based on essential business technologies like productivity tools (e.g., Microsoft, Google) and telco or connectivity solutions. Advisors specializing in telecom can expand into unified communications, and from there, explore customer needs in areas like email backup, disaster recovery, and storage.

Managed services are one key to helping advisors build stronger, long-term customer relationships, differentiate themselves in the market, and deliver greater value. By integrating managed services into their offerings, advisors can accelerate business growth, with the market projected to exceed $520 billion by 2032—unlocking growing opportunities.

As Renée points out, offering managed services is one path to expansion and creating a solid foundation for delivering additional in-demand solutions. Providing managed services can help you expand your portfolios, adding a broad range of solutions across the tech stack—from cloud and energy services to networking and more.

AppDirect advisors earn 2x to 3x more revenue for every additional category sold.

3. Future-proof: Focus on high-growth build your digital customer experience

The third and final step to success in the digital economy is to future-proof your business. “When you future-proof your business you ensure longevity by establishing yourself as an indispensable partner for your customers,” said Renée. That means upselling into new categories, such as artificial intelligence. This is a Kodak moment.

One way advisors can future-proof is by harnessing innovative AI solutions like the AppDirect AI Marketplace and Creation Studio. AppDirect AI enables advisors and all users the ability to create customized, no-code AI applications tailored to specific needs. This AI marketplace will soon include specialized advisor apps for connectivity serviceability, SaaS quoting, and more. With provider-specific AI sales assistants and specialists, advisors can provide essential insights on providers and solutions, making sales journeys more efficient and data-rich. Supported by AppDirect’s training and sales teams, these tools help advisors streamline workflows and build stronger customer relationships.

Renée described internal procurement marketplaces as akin to “putting a vending machine into every business.” Procuring through a marketplace simplifies customer transactions, reduces complexity, and improves the purchasing experience. This approach enhances procurement efficiency and a customer’s lifetime value, while generating recurring commissions for advisors on future purchases made through the marketplace.

For advisors, the AppDirect platform enables you to to position yourself as an indispensable partner, all while setting your business up for long-term growth.

Stay tuned for upcoming insights on enhancements to the advisor experience and upgrades to the AppDirect platform.

Discover the four keys to digital success

Read our blog How to Thrive in the Digital Economy—The 4 Digital Keys to Success to discover the strategies that rocketed B2B commerce giants to achieve 300%+ growth using marketplace platforms and how you can use them to future-proof your company.