Level3 2012 Channel Strategy

So here is the new strategy for the Channel for Level3.

“Late 2011 was a busy time for the Level 3 Indirect Channel. Our first priority after the acquisition closed was to determine a partner program structure that best supports our partner bases followed by the immediate need to create an organization which can provide greater resources to further enable your success.< br/>”After gathering feedback and careful consideration, we are instituting a model that will provide support at a national level for our Master Agents and a regionally focused Channel Manager strategy for our Direct and Sub Agents.< br/>”Our newly created National Partner Sales team will focus on the Level 3 Master Agents, facilitating the strategic relationship with the Master Agent as well as their sub agent base. The team will work closely with our Master Agents to reignite the sub agent community with targeted recruitment and joint sales activities. In conjunction, we will continue to have regional sales teams, concentrating on driving sales with local partners. Direct Agents will receive dedicated regional resources which will provide greater attention and ability to become more intimately engaged at the partner level. With the combined sales teams, we now have more resources available allowing smaller territories per Channel Manager equating to more time to support you on sales opportunities.< br/>”Furthermore, our partner support has expanded with a larger Sales Engineering team focusing on the pre-sales solution design. We also created the Partner Experience Team, which will be focused on empowering the partner and providing the tools and knowledge to be able to take an opportunity from Quote to Order. There will also be an expanded Quote Desk which will provide dedicated resources to our Channel Managers during the sales engagement cycle.< br/>”The new structure is effective today, January 5th, although the Partner Experience Team Pod structure is currently in development. We look forward to sharing those details with you as they become available. Please continue to leverage your legacy processes and teams for Partner Support. In addition, Partners should continue to use MasterStream and uCommand for quotes for the legacy companies.< br/>”We will notify partners of their new Channel Support Team over the next few days and look forward to providing more resources and assistance to be successful.< br/>”We look forward to working together to achieve mutual success in 2012!”< br/>Regards,< br/>Mike Jerich, Vice President, Indirect Channels, Level(3)

Seems like a good plan: add more people. And L3 already has an effective online portal for quoting, so this should help with sales increases for 2012 (which they desperately need.)