Successful companies are never content to rest on their laurels. Inevitably, the question arises: “Could we be growing faster?” It is often this question that leads organizations to explore outsourcing partnerships. The right partner can serve as a springboard to new opportunities, providing expertise, reach and bandwidth in key areas that lie outside your core capabilities, and enabling you to invest elsewhere. People often think of back-office functions such as accounting and human resources as ripe for outsourcing, but forward-thinking companies are also embracing outsourcing models that include tech-savvy sales and customer experience specialists to help them achieve their goals faster than they could on their own.
In the tech industry, channel partners have long been viewed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as essential allies. Initially serving as the “market through” arm of a sales team seeking to broaden its reach, channel partners also play a key role in shaping customer experiences and preserving brand reputations. The customer experience has a long tail, and many post-purchase sales and service motions lend themselves well to outsourcing. With them come opportunities to upsell, cross-sell and renew services. Not only do channel partners help organizations increase incremental revenue, but they are also important avenues for building trust and customer loyalty.
How Do You Assemble a Best-in-Class Sales and Services Team?
The best outsourced service partners are those steeped in product knowledge and customer management techniques who place value — not simply volume — at the center of their efforts. So, how do you find a partner you can trust among the thousands out there to choose from? It’s certainly not an off-the-shelf exercise, especially when key aspects of your business — not to mention your brand’s face to the market — depend on your partner’s capabilities.
There are, however, key steps you can follow to ensure that the customer management services you outsource are every bit as thoughtful, innovative and high quality as the products in your portfolio. And you can learn from technology leaders such as Lenovo who are already outsourcing key customer management services and reaping the benefits.
In this example, five key steps to building a best-in-class sales and services team include:
- Seeing the signs and knowing when to outsource customer management services
- Finding a customer management outsourcing partner
- Developing a world-class business development program and dedicated inside sales organization
- Accelerating sales through a channel partner concierge program
- Evolving and growing with greater firepower
Step 1: Seeing the Signs — When Do You Need an Outsourced Customer Management Partner?
It’s easy to miss the signs that a customer management partnership may be in order until something negative rattles the business. A disciplined approach to assessing the customer experience can help you spot signs of stress and give you the runway you need to find and onboard an outsourcing partner who can help. For example, the sky is the limit for Lenovo when it comes to growth, but these aspirations proved challenging when going to market in a world that demands agility and scalability. The team knew they’d need a strong partner with deep experience, channel connections and far-reaching capabilities to achieve these goals.
If you’re thinking about outsourcing to a customer management partner, asking yourself any of these questions may be your sign that now’s the time:
- Have people stopped buying our products or services?
- Have longstanding customers changed the way they engage with us?
- Does our team have the bandwidth to properly serve all our customers, both big and small?
- Are customers getting the most out of the products they’re investing in?
- Is internal innovation impacted by engineering or technical skills gaps?
- Are we capturing as many post-sales opportunities as we should be?
- Are our maintenance and repair services meeting customer expectations?
- Can we achieve our grandest goals and aspirations with our current infrastructure and resources?
Step 2: Finding a Customer Management Outsourcing Partner
You want the most qualified, professional salespeople and service teams representing your business — because for all intents and purposes, they are your business in the eyes of your customers. Customer management partners are well-versed in the ins and outs of the technology market, but each has their own areas of expertise and approach to managing the customer experience. Finding the one that best suits you begins with understanding your own needs first. Here are a few key questions to help you understand your organization’s customer management outsourcing needs:
- Who, and where, are your end users?
- What would your ideal partner look like in terms of the services, solutions and complementary offerings they provide?
- How much support do you need, and what does that entail?
- Conversely, how much support are you prepared to provide to ensure your partners are successful?
Once you have a good idea of what you need, fire up your professional network, recruit opinions on LinkedIn or tap into communities at The Channel Co. and other industry organizations. Once you’ve identified a handful of solid candidates, vet them to make sure their expertise aligns well with your product offerings, desired reach and customer service ethos.
Keep in mind, too, that they may already be right in your backyard, so to speak. For Lenovo, that existing partner came in the form of distribution. As one of Lenovo’s top global product distributors, TD SYNNEX had a deep understanding of Lenovo’s business, the technology landscape and the essential role of partners in OEMs’ success. TD SYNNEX also had extensive experience building channels to market for OEMs to sell through a global partner base. In 2010, Lenovo engaged TD SYNNEX to help them further expand their sales capabilities via the company’s services division, Shyft Global Services.
So, if you’re pleased with a partner already on your roster (maybe they’re handling distribution or depot repair or field services for you), it’s worth taking a closer look at their full suite of service capabilities. You may be able to simplify processes and grow with someone you already know by bringing many services under a single outsourcing partner.
Step 3: Developing a World-Class Business Development Program and Dedicated Inside Sales Organization
If your company sells software-as-a-service (SaaS), you may be downplaying renewal opportunities at your peril. In 2024, the SaaS market is expected to reach $247 billion — a whopping $100 billion more than it was in 2023. Companies of all sizes are in the market for SaaS solutions, from customer resource management software to e-commerce solutions. Since SaaS is generally sold via subscription or consumption models, reaching out to customers well in advance of contractual deadlines is just good business. And so is taking the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell complementary products and services.
With regular customer outreach, knowledgeable customer management partners can assess how successful customers have been at using your offerings, whether they’re getting the most out of product features as well as additional products or services that might help them accomplish their goals faster or more efficiently — all of which open the door to more revenue. Upselling tactics drive 21% of company revenue on average, and 91% of salespeople do it. Cross-selling is also responsible for 21% of revenue. So, the quick math says that if almost half of a company’s revenue comes from upselling and cross-selling, it pays — literally — to do it well.
However, when getting started with outsourcing, you don’t have to boil the ocean — it’s not an all-or-nothing situation. Oftentimes, like in Lenovo’s case, outsourcing starts out as a small pilot program and then expands or changes based on initial results. Lenovo’s engagement with Shyft began as a 12-person telesales unit focused on reaching out to prospective partners from Shyft’s customer management services team in Costa Rica. This proof-of-concept program proved successful and led to the funding of other areas ripe for outsourcing, including a dedicated inside sales organization that handles important customer outreach on Lenovo’s behalf.
When considering this path, be sure your customer management outsourcing partner offers:
- Native speakers who can deliver multilingual support across different time zones
- Scalability, so that their team can accommodate your business as it grows
- Technology experts who can quickly hit the ground running once trained on your products and services
- Adaptability, so they can pivot as your needs and the industry evolve
- Continuous improvement and collaboration opportunities to find new ways of solving challenges
Step 4: Accelerating Sales Through a Channel Partner Concierge Program
The wise among us always remember that channel partners have a choice. Lots of them, actually. And they’re continually vetting you, too. A partner program with well-defined targets, levels, benefits and rewards is a must-have, but that’s just the ante in this game. Partners need to be engaged. They need to be excited about your portfolio and what you’ll bring to market next. And they need to understand your offerings inside and out — no one likes to feel undereducated about what they’re trying to sell.
Once you’ve found your ideal channel partner — and in all likelihood, many of them — you have to manage them. That’s where a channel partner concierge program pays dividends. Empowering your channel partners with training programs, sales planning and support and other essential services is the key to successful, long-lasting relationships. Helping them “level up” in your program to unlock greater financial and relationship-related rewards is appreciated as well.
Such programs are a sweet spot for companies that specialize in customer experience and channel partner management. It may seem counterintuitive to engage a partner to manage your channel partners, but it can make a real difference in terms of satisfaction, revenue and brand loyalty. Think of it as a one-to-many relationship.
In Lenovo’s case, channel management expertise and reseller community connections were also major characteristics they needed in an outsourced services partner. The team worked closely with Shyft to build a channel concierge program focused on pipeline generation, support for channel partners and capturing incremental sales opportunities. Hundreds of partners advanced through program tiers in just one year, proving that one exceptional channel management partner can make a big difference across your entire channel ecosystem.
Step 5: Evolving and Growing With Greater Firepower
Many outsourcing partnerships begin with a small engagement and grow from there as the relationship strengthens, as evidenced above, and each company develops a good understanding of how they complement each other. As the partnership expands, it allows you to free up funds and resources to invest in innovation, research and product development, acquisitions or other core areas of the business. Customer management partners can also help you build net-new offerings to meet customer needs.
Today, Shyft’s dedicated Lenovo team is 220+ people strong, having added roughly 30 additional team members in less than one year to support the growing business. Certified engineers, inside sales specialists, channel development experts, business analysts, customer service professionals and product training/certification leaders all work together on behalf of the partnership.
Shyft’s dedicated Lenovo team also serves as an innovation incubator, regularly piloting new programs to accelerate Lenovo’s growth across its entire product portfolio, including the development of flexible workflows for evolving global business needs as well as a bespoke business analytics practice to help forecast partner sales. Lenovo continues to invest in the partnership through sponsored Shyft headcount, confident that the return on investment will exceed expectations.
Choosing a Single Partner for Scalable Partner and Customer Success Solutions
There are many strategies for managing your customer experience effectively throughout the customer journey. The right partner can deliver thorough and thoughtful outreach grounded in product and service knowledge, industry expertise and customer management wisdom. Outsourcing partners with customer experience at their core and customer management in their toolkit are invaluable resources when it comes to assessing needs, spotting trends, analyzing behaviors and pinpointing additional revenue opportunities.
Partnering with an outsourced customer management partner like Shyft can help you increase revenue, expand into new markets and geographies, transform your channel partner program and optimize processes for a better customer experience. A program tailored to your business may incorporate an array of complementary services supporting channel partners, pre- and post-sales activities, engineering and technical staff, business intelligence needs and any other customer management efforts.
Learn more about the Lenovo-Shyft outsourcing partnership and discover how a global technology lifecycle service provider can tailor the just-right customer management solution for your company.
About the Author
Gonzalo Guillen serves as the Senior Director of Operations and Business Development for the Customer Management Services (CMS) organization of Shyft Global Services, a division of TD SYNNEX. Gonzalo manages the end-to-end CMS organization, including implementation and onboarding of net new customers, day-to-day operations, strategic growth and renewals. He is also responsible for leading global sales and operations teams; developing and executing go-to-market strategies; overseeing business intelligence, project management and contracts management; and driving engagement with more than 15 global OEMs in the IT industry.
