Nextiva has hired Mark Blanchard, formerly with Wow! Business, as new channel director for its West region.

Nextiva’s Mark Blanchard

Blanchard will be working with West region channel managers and helping to further develop partnerships in that area.

“There are so many exciting things going on at Nextiva,” he said. “As a fast-growing company and a market leader in their space, they’re seeing phenomenal growth in the channel. I jumped at the chance to be a part of helping to ensure the explosive growth continues.”

Blanchard comes to Nextiva with more than 15 years of telecom experience. He most recently was Wow!’s national channel sales director, and before that was vice president of channel sales and operations at Pensmore Software.

At Wow!, he was responsible for identifying new growth opportunities and developing marketing strategies to grow business in the channel. He also developed and implemented go-to-market growth plans for new product introductions.

“Working with the channel is a priority for Nextiva,” Blanchard said. “Their core focus in the SMB space combined with their amazing customer service and reliable, easy-to-use platform is appealing to partners. We strive to be easy to work with at every level — from quoting on through to implementation and ongoing customer service. This is key for success in the channel, and I’m proud to be a part of a company that places such emphasis on it.”

Blanchard said first on his to-do list is “meet as many of the great people and organizations in our partner community as I can, and listen to their concerns, recommendations and needs.”

“After that it’s pretty simple — I’ll work to address their needs and concerns, and then work with the Nextiva team to implement positive change,” he said.

In September, Nextiva appointed Mark Green as chief people officer, and Anne Brennan as CFO.

Early this month at NextCon 2019, Nextiva unveiled the latest innovations to NextOS, its customer experience management platform, and will roll out an all-new partner program in January. It also announced 12 new products to its UCaaS portfolio, such as single sign-on, an active directory and a video collaboration tool.