Getting 'the Reps' In: Bridgepointe Shares Secrets of Diverse Partner Base
"Show me a better financial plan. Show me a better business. I really think that this is the best game in town," one partner said.
![Bridgepointe IT strategists panel at 2023 Bridgepointe Tech Summit Bridgepointe IT strategists panel at 2023 Bridgepointe Tech Summit](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt486695555a46a394/6537c28f865b8a03da16778d/IMG_9423.jpeg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
IT strategist panel at 2023 Bridgepointe Tech Sumit
Some of the IT strategists in the panel worked in verticals completely foreign to the channel before joining Bridgepointe, though those careers also emphasized sales acument and relationship-building.
Bri Anderson, now a managing partner and vice president of customer success at Vinco, worked in hospitality. She recruited conferences to hotels. After her company furloughed her during COVID-19, a mutual friend introduced her to Vinco founder and sales ace Joe Vincent.
Scott McBrien came from the professional football world. The quarterback spent time backing up Brett Favre for the Green Bay Packers before playing in NFL Europe and the Canadian Football league. He continued to keep a foot in football, doing coaching and broadcasting, but he also took a step into the channel. He met CNSG founding partner Ali Niroo, who proposed a partnership; McBrien would use his connections open the door on prospective customer relationships, and Niroo would close business.
Some of the panelists most recently came from a CLEC background.
Daniel Acton was working at a legal courier services provider when he struck up a conversation with the company’s phone PBX provider. Acton asked them if there was money in telecom. Acton made the switch to a local CLEC and found that the answer was a resounding “yes.”
Josh Mitchell, partner at Arkitech Group (a Bridgepointe company), pointed to a twofold benefit that many people see in starting an agency: the residual compensation and the ability to work for yourself.
“The thing that I recognized really early on was that if you work for a company, someone else is controlling your destiny,” Mitchell told attendees.
In such an environment, success can come with negative consequences for sales people.
“What company lets a salesperson make $500,000 or more every year in and year out without messing with their quota and saying, ‘Hey, this is probably too easy. You’re making too much money, so let’s jack your quota up?’ And then you can’t continue to make that kind of money year over year,” Mitchell said. “I recognized that this model didn’t have those limitations.”
The glaring challenge all new technology advisors face is a financial one: generating cash flow. Agents receive a monthly commission from vendors for deals sold, but those commissions might take months to arrive after an already long sales process. As group of agency founders recently noted, partners need to save up for more than two years of famine. Many advisors come from a two-income household; others secure a funding from family or from a TSD partner; others roll the dice and count on an existing customer relationship to pay off immediately.
The walk through the desert, as Adaptiv Advisors partner Ashley Rowland puts it, takes patience and trust that you’ll make it past the difficult beginnings.
For Bridgepointe equity partner Peter Reiss, making the jump into the agency business is no doubt an investment that may or may not pay off. But we all make investments in stocks that we ultimately can’t control, he said. Why not make an investment in yourself?
“I think some of the things that hold them back really is the FUD factor: the fear, uncertainty and doubt,” Reiss told Channel Futures. If they had the same certitude that their employers had when they hired them, and had that same certitude in their own experience and looked in the mirror at themselves as their bosses looked at them when they were hired by that company, I think it’d be a no-brainer.”
While these individual contributors usually bring a Rolodex of customer relationships to their new agencies, that’s not the same thing as a brand.
For Bridgepointe IT strategists, many of whom are targeting large enterprises, they need to look larger than a one- or two-person shop, and they need to demonstrate their experience working with other big accounts.
That’s why IT strategist James Thornburg joined Bridgepointe.
“To go out on your own, build a brand, build a website, build all of that, versus leveraging what we built in Bridgepointe — it’s going to take you a lot longer to do that versus just being able to plug right and focus on sales and business development, as opposed to working on all the operational stuff,” Thornburg told Channel Futures.
While Bri Anderson’s firm, Vinco, uses its own branding, it leans on Bridgepointe’s bench of subject-matter experts. That’s key for Anderson, who doesn’t come from a technology background.
“I know enough to be dangerous,” she said. “I’m not the subject-matter expert, but what I do bring that is that I really, truly care.”
It’s common for technology advisors to turn to referals as a source of customer leads.
Mitchell advised partners, however, to stay proactive with their network if they expected to generate actual opportunities.
“You have to be in touch with them fairly frequently; otherwise, it doesn’t work,” he said. “If you have a referral partner and you’re bringing them in on your compensation somehow and somehow paying them a referral fee, that’s all great. But if you’re not constantly talking to them, they’re doing what they do, right? They’ve got their own job. They’re not necessarily thinking about how to help you. So in my experience, you’ve got to stay in touch with your referral partners pretty often.”
IT strategist James Thornburg holds a unique reputation in the channel for his use of cold calls. The Michigan-based partner dials up a myriad of IT leaders every day. Because these accounts are new to him, he’s not leading with a particular product. Instead, he’s pitching Bridgepointe’s vendor-neutral IT advisory services. He uses the Bridgepointe technical team to help with discovery and sourcing.
This approach bucks the trend of agents relying on referral partnerships for leads.
“For people that have that relationship, it makes a lot of sense. A lot of times you’re giving them a cut of the action, though, so they’re taking a piece of that,” Thornburg told Channel Futures. “For me, cold calling was a way for me to basically own the deal and not rely on any other external factor that really. It was just my own efforts to make it happen.”
Partners have a limited amount of time in their day. Mitchell said partners sometimes use that time on activities not core to their business. While it’s important to build relationships with vendors and train yourself on that products, those calls can dominate your time. The same goes for calls with referral partners.
“If you are just starting out, you really should measure yourself by one metric alone, and that’s setting appointments,” Mitchell said. “If you’re not getting in front of customers, you will not succeed.”
If you’re setting appointments with customers, whom at the customers should you be targeting? Bridgepointe co-founder Brian Miller, who moderated the panel, posed this question. He asked strategists if they would rather meet with 10 CIOs of Fortune 1000 companies or 20 IT directors of medium-size companies.
The strategists tended to lean toward the first option. Kyle Taylor said he chose CIOs because they see technology purchasing as a financial decision that they ultimately oversee. If the partner starts with the IT director, the IT director will ultimately need to convince the CIO to sign off on the deal, panelists said.
“Our time is our money. I want to talk to the people that are going to be making those decisions,” Anderson said. “I love my IT directors – don’t get me wrong – and I love when it’s collaborative and they’re involved. But I want that conversation with you at the C-level.”
Panelists added that there was a time when IT directors would have been a more logical target. However, the technology advisory industry has grown more visible, and as a result, has more of a seat at the table, Taylor said.
Linda Gattis, whose agency recently received an investment from Bridgepointe, worked in purchasing for a large retailer before joining the channel. Not enjoying the experience, she took up a job at Allnet.
She said she has seen the channel evolve dramatically since starting with Bridgepointe. Technology advisors notably can sell far more technology services than they could two decades ago.
“It was just voice … we sold that little piece, and we stayed in our lanes. Today there is so much overlap with VARs and MSPs and partners. When you first look at it, it’s all a little daunting because you think, ‘How am I going to do all this?” she said.
However, she said the blurred swim lanes spell opportunities for IT strategists if they leverage their resources properly.
“We don’t have to know it all. we just have to know enough to be able to have a conversation and ask the right questions. We’ve got a powerhouse of knowledge and resources to support us and now instead of just being able to sell a specific service, the sky’s the limit and we can do so much more to help our clients,” Gattis told Channel Futures.
A recent survey of technology advisors confirms Gattis’ observations about blurred swim lanes. Partners at the Avant Special Forces Summit noted that they’re approaching referral partnerships – particularly those with MSPs – with much more caution, as partners of all types attack the same customer from different angles. Moreover, many of those companies are wading into the agent model that they previously avoided model.
“Every IT consultant, every VAR, system integrator, virtual CIO, AV vendor, commercial real estate person – you name it – is trying to figure out how to monetize this if they haven’t already,” Miller said in a keynote speech.
Asked about his advice for IT strategists starting their business, Daniel Acton encourage them to “go all in” as they fight to establish a book of business.
“Embrace it. It’s gonna suck for a little while, but get over it. Show me a better financial plan. Show me a better business. I really think that this is the best game in town,” he said. “Most of us come from a corporate background, and if you’re gonna sell that stuff anyway, you might as well do it for yourself and keep the cash.”
26-year-old Acton said talent doesn’t matter as much in this business as “the reps” matter.
“Be tenacious, show up every day, put in an honest day’s work, and just keep going. It’s the repetitions day in and day out. It’s not anything else,” Acton said.
Asked about his advice for IT strategists starting their business, Daniel Acton encourage them to “go all in” as they fight to establish a book of business.
“Embrace it. It’s gonna suck for a little while, but get over it. Show me a better financial plan. Show me a better business. I really think that this is the best game in town,” he said. “Most of us come from a corporate background, and if you’re gonna sell that stuff anyway, you might as well do it for yourself and keep the cash.”
26-year-old Acton said talent doesn’t matter as much in this business as “the reps” matter.
“Be tenacious, show up every day, put in an honest day’s work, and just keep going. It’s the repetitions day in and day out. It’s not anything else,” Acton said.
A hospitality sales rep. An assistant manager for a legal courier. A Green Bay Packers quarterback. These are just a few of the careers Bridgepointe IT strategists led before starting a technology agency.
IT strategists (agents) at technology advisor firm Bridgepointe Technologies come from a diverse assortment of career backgrounds. Bridgepointe co-founder and chief revenue officer Brian Miller said 10 of the company’s top 20 strategists adopted an entirely new portfolio to sell when they started with Bridgepointe.
That trend seems to deviate from the average back story of an agent. Many agents, also known as technology advisors, started their businesses after working in sales at telecom carriers. They used in-depth knowledge of the telecom world and its processes to help customers source technologies. But while many of the strategists at Bridgepointe came from carriers (Evars and Miller came from Telseon), that’s by no means a requirement for Bridgepointe.
Bridgepointe’s Scott Evars
“Some of our most successful strategists came from outside the business. We have gold traders; we have software salespeople,” Bridgepointe co-founder and CEO Scott Evars told Channel Futures. “… [over the years] we found great salespeople. And our commitment to them was to help them monetize their relationships.”
Bridgepointe’s model plays a role in that diversity. Bridgepointe IT strategists (agents) typically partner exclusively with Bridgepointe for supplier contracts and back-office support. But more importantly, as many strategists told Channel Futures, they leverage Bridgepointe’s brand and its reference sheet of Fortune 500 customers. And full-time Bridgepointe sales people join customer calls with strategists to augment any technical gaps in their knowledge.
“We’ve done more four-legged, six legged, eight-legged sales calls than have most companies that are in this business,” Miller said said in a keynote speech last week.
Bridgepointe Technologies’ Brian Miller
Vendors, tech service distributors and technology advisors are all on the hunt for new talent. Moreover, industry leaders are seeking to replace a generation of agent leaders that sold their businesses. Vendor channel leaders hope that new agents will in turn create new customer logos, which in turn allows vendor channel leaders to justify their investments to their C-suite.
A new generation of partners is forming, and not just in Bridgepointe ecosystem. Some of them have branched off from large VARs, where they had led a carrier services practice. Others were working at an established technology advisor firm. Others come from outside of the channel partner world, like from the customer side of IT.
But starting a technology advisor practice is hard. Technology advisors stack juicy streams of recurring monthly commissions on top of each other, but that stack starts at zero and takes time to build. While leaving a corporate environment can spell freedom for a talented sales person, they must now reckon with building resources and infrastructure they hadn’t worried about in their past life.
Bridgepointe’s Peter Reiss
“When you were working for the carrier, you didn’t need to go create the marketing, the slides and create a brand from scratch — all those things,” said Bridgepointe equity partner Peter Reiss, who was a regional general manager at Level 3 before joining CNSG. “You weren’t weighed down with that. You were weighed down with really two things: building relationships and helping those relationships solve problems.”
A panel of Bridgepointe IT strategists – many who entered the channel from an unrelated industry – shared why they joined Bridgepointe and what helped them succeed in their business. Channel Futures also interviewed two other top-performing Bridgepointe IT strategists about their experiences.
Channel Futures uses the terms “IT strategist,” “technology advisor,” “agent” and “partner” synonymously in this article.
Go through the eight images above to see highlights from the panel and insights about starting an agency.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email James Anderson or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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