By Khali Henderson

Phoenix-based Telesphere, a nationwide hosted PBX business phone and Internet services provider, announced Wednesday that it has hired Greg Rosengarten, a former regional sales director for Qwest Business Partner Program (QBPP), as its director of indirect channels, taking the reins of the two-year-old program.

Rosengarten has more than 15 years of sales and channel management experience. He comes to Telesphere after 10 years with Qwest Communications International Inc., six of which were spent working for QBPP. Rosengarten also served on the QBPP advisory board, assembled to review and make ongoing recommendations for best-practice improvements to the indirect channel program.

Rosengarten is taking over a position previously held by Dean Jordan, who left the company earlier this year. However, this is the first time that Telesphere will have someone 100 percent dedicated to driving the channel, said Angela Leavitt, Telesphere’s director of marketing. Telesphere’s channel program was launched in spring 2008.

Telesphere, she said, has been growing swiftly and is investing in its channel infrastructure. As an example, it is beta testing a new agent portal and plans to release it in 60-90 days. In addition, it is reworking its onboarding and training processes for partners that are, for the most part, new to selling hosted telephony services. Rosengarten will be leading those initiatives.

Also as part of that shift, the company has changed the reporting structure so that its five channel managers will report to Rosengarten rather than the regional general managers, Leavitt said.

“I am looking forward to my new role here at Telesphere,” said Rosengarten in a press statement. “Based on research and my experience, agents are ready and searching for a reliable hosted player in the telecom industry; our timing couldn’t be better for placing an emphasis on the channel. Strategy is beginning to fall into place and in combination with a savvy indirect channel sales team, a supportive upper-management team and agent tools supported by our innovative and knowledgeable engineers, I know that we have some major success ahead of us.”

Rosengarten will be based in the Telesphere’s Denver office and will report to Jeff Savage, vice president of sales.

“We were looking for a candidate who had the experience and the strategic drive to lead the indirect channel program initiative, and we believe Greg is a great fit,” said Savage in a press statement. “This role required a dynamic leader who can help our indirect channel partners drive sales and support in this very exciting world of hosted cloud communications.”