Channel

WT: But another opportunity became channel, because what we found was we had multiple people talking to the same partner and partners dealing in multiple levels of the organization. And sometimes when people are selling different products, we’re giving the partner different direction. It all makes sense because everybody’s doing their best in their silo. But the whole point of 2.0 is, how do you unleash everything that Verizon is? When you say “Verizon” to a lot of people, they think of wireless. And what our partners know is, we are a whole lot more than that. I’m actually super impressed with what the business channel partners have built through our history. What we think now, though, is, it can be a much bigger part of our future.

So here’s the way I think about it. If you did business with Verizon for the first 20 years of our existence, you probably engaged with someone wearing a Verizon badge. You came to a store; you called us on a Verizon number. There was probably a Verizon employee. As we look forward, we still think that’s part of our business. We are super proud of the way we train our employees. We’re super proud of the way that we bring our products to market. But we also think customers are changing. Some customers want more agility, some customers want customization, some customers want additional services, some customers want products we don’t carry, and some customers actually do business with a partner somewhere else. And they’d love to just be able to do everything with that partner. Whether they want to sell with us, they want to sell through us or they want to sell to us for a customer – either way, we’ve got options for them. And I think that’s where I come in.