Aryaka’s Craig Patterson: Creating a New Kind of Leadership

When Craig Patterson made the big jump from his employer of nearly two decades, the people he needed came with him.

For Patterson, now senior vice president of global channels at Aryaka Networks, leaving Lumen Technol­ogies meant a chance to make his own mark on the channel. It also gave him a chance to put into practice years of observing and modeling a deep bench of leaders.

And in the early days after he joined Aryaka, the biggest val­idation of his leadership skills was seeing individuals pack up and join him at the SASE provider.

“For people to leave these secure jobs they’ve had for quite some time just to make this leap of faith and follow me to where there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot unknown was a major in­flection point,” Patterson tells Channel Futures.

Recently promoted from leading Aryaka’s North America channel strategy to leading their global channels, Patterson has his work cut out for him. One might have said the same thing when he joined Aryaka in late 2021. Important relation­ships with TSDs had fallen apart. On the recommendation of consultant Curt Allen, Aryaka decided to select a new channel leader.

A Personal Rebranding

Patterson was working as division vice president at Lumen Technologies when the opportunity arose. He was already pondering a new venture, anxious to revamp his brand.

“I’d been known for a long time as this Lumen telco dude. I wanted to start rebranding my own personal brand in the market into more of a technologist around new and emerging trends, products and solutions,” he says.

Patterson found himself leaning toward Aryaka’s market opportunity. He also felt that their employee and partner experience would lend itself to the recruitment efforts he would be doing.

“I wanted to find a company that had an unbelievable and unrivaled experience I could stand behind,” he says.

But the opportunity came with its own uncertainties — in part from joining a vendor whose channel footprint needed serious retooling.

He spoke with some of his closest partner contacts, in­cluding Bridgepointe’s Brian Miller, about what they thought, and they agreed with him about Aryaka’s market opportunity.

Although the opportunity would take him out of his cor­porate home of nearly 20 years and lead him into unchart­ed waters, Patterson decided he was ready to embrace change.

“If you’re not uncomfortable, you’ve become complacent, and you’re really not moving forward in life,” Patterson said.

A Revamp

Patterson started identifying Aryaka’s North American channel gaps upon his arrival at the company. The company needed to establish itself as truly channel-centric, and it needed to reposition its sales team.

The channel investment started with people — national channel managers and directors and an operations director who brought credibility in the TSD channel.

The company invested to brand itself in the TSD ecosys­tem where Patterson said the goal was “creating as much noise as I possibly could” on social media and at events.

“We needed to put all of our resourcing, all of our mar­keting dollars behind really reigniting our channel strategy,” Patterson said.

Patterson’s changes also included a POD model that aligned partners with channel sales directors for day-to-day interactions and solution architects for technical support.

Most recently, Aryaka has started offering lead generation to 20 technology advisors selected by four of its TSDs.

Perhaps most drastically, Aryaka created a new line of positions called strategic sellers. The company repurposed some of its most successful, most senior direct salespeople to help partners take on key customer accounts.

Patterson said those investments and changes are paying off. The number of selling partners has increased approxi­mately 60% increase over the last 12 months.

“The pipeline is almost 10 times what this company had prior,” he said.

Laying a Foundation

Every channel origin story starts with a person who didn’t intend to work in the channel. Patterson entered college with aspirations of a legal career. After taking undergrad courses at Ball State, he interned at Delaware County’s prosecutor’s office where he came to a stark realization: He didn’t like it.

Fraternity brothers suggested Patterson look at a tech­nology-focused graduate program at Ball State. The spe­cialized degree in information and communication sciences seemed to have set his friends up well for life. They were making solid money straight out of school and their careers seemed exciting.

He decided to give the program a shot, and it did not dis­appoint. His studies immersed him in the world of telecom­munications, a space where he would later build his career.

“I was writing 35-page papers on frame relay and all these different technologies,” he said.

Then came the call from AT&T.

First Steps

After graduation, Patterson moved to Tucker, Geor­gia, to cut his teeth on technology sales at the AT&T College Hire Sales Center. AT&T had launched the pro­gram, years later known as the Business Sales Leader­ship Development Program, to meet its need for more affordable salespeople.

“The whole premise was to take a bunch of college kids who didn’t know anything about business sales, give them the foundation to be successful and take a gamble on them,” said AT&T’s Chris Jones, who ran the program.