Leveling Up: Going Up-Market?

Spremo said that although channel partners built the industry around the SMB customer, those foundations may change. 

Forty-eight percent of Avant’s top 50 partners have sold to a company worth more than $1 billion. That number stood at 23% three years ago.

Spremo, however, said growing opportunity exists for partners to break into the enterprise market. Nelan noted that large customers show strong demand for high-touch partners such as Accenture that deliver consulting services.

However, that high-touch must truly be high-touch in the enterprise. Agents will need to evolve beyond sourcing, as this story has already suggested.

“The customer experience has to be better. Just brokering is no longer going to be acceptable in the midmarket to enterprise,” Spremo said. “You must deliver business outcomes.”

Some partners argue that tech purchasing for the SMB segment will become a more automated, digitized process. In other words, they say marketplaces will take hold for smaller customers.

“I think what’s going to happen is, people are going to come in and they’re going to create packages for the SMB. And it’s going to be in a box,” Nelan said. 

Several players are already trying to crack that code. Digital platform Beyond Now recently exorted telcos to start building marketplaces to sell into the lucrative SMB opportunity. 

The counterpoint remains that some agents are actually growing their SMB base. However, it requires speediness and high frequency to keep up with compressed prices, as well as a knowledge of the segment’s particular challenges.