PlanetOne Signs Sprint, Adds Ingram Micro, XO Alums

PlanetOne Communications has signed an agreement with Sprint Business and announced three personnel appointments.

PlanetOne’s Jake Schuman

The master agent promoted Jake Schuman to vice president. He had been serving as director of sales for strategic accounts. He’ll oversee technical business resources and the sales cycle. PlanetOne credited Schuman, who is CEO Ted Schuman’s son, with leading the deployment of Salesforce and launching an online proposal builder that channel partners use.

The company also hired Ed Cassell as director of business development and Jason Morris as senior solutions engineer. Cassell previously worked for two distributors — Avnet and Ingram Micro. He will focus on building relationships with MSPs in his new role. Morris is a former XO Communications and Masergy Communications employee, and he will boost PlanetOne’s field resources with an emphasis on cloud, data and security.

“PlanetOne’s success is unstoppable, and our team is holding nothing back as we continue to flood the sales pipeline and close more deals with our growing base of high-performance agents and MSPs,” Ted Schuman said. “The hiring of Ed and Jason is a power play that in the first 30 days has netted us new logos, greater engagement with our existing partners, and uncovered a series of new revenue streams. Add to the mix Jake’s appointment and ongoing efforts to elevate PlanetOne’s game around CRM, automation and partner resources, and we’ve got an unbeatable value proposition for our partners and providers.”

The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company also announced that it has signed Sprint Business to its Preferred Partner Program. This is the first master agent to team up with Sprint Business, according to PlanetOne.

The agreement gives subagents the ability to sell “fast, high-capacity, converged wireless and wireline networks.”

“We are thrilled to be adding Sprint Business to our Preferred Provider program,” Ted Schuman said. “It is a great honor to be the first master agent selected to join the Sprint Partner Program in Sprint’s new round of partner growth. Their portfolio of business connectivity, communication and collaboration, and managed security services fits well with our current offerings, and we are looking forward to leveraging Sprint Business solutions to help our partners take advantage of the burgeoning opportunities created by cloud computing.”

Sprint’s David Falter

PlanetOne said that the carrier is working to grow its channel program in conjunction with its wireline business unit. Dave Falter, leader of Sprint Business’ global wireline sales team, praised PlanetOne’s culture and reputation for partner experience.

“Our team at Sprint Business is excited to work with PlanetOne to deliver our innovative products and solutions through their growing nationwide network of solution provider partners and agents,” Falter said. “Our network solutions leverage the Sprint-exclusive Certainty network design model, an intelligent approach to multilayer network diversity, created to provide maximum network availability and application performance.”

Sprint joins an elite list of approximately 20 supplier partners that will accompany PlanetOne on its various “Tech Tour” stops across the country.

Sprint in January launched the Certainty model, which is predicated on network diversity and a 100% availability SLA. The carrier recently announced that its number of international SD-WAN deployments has exceeded 100 countries.

PlanetOne reported “double-digit revenue gains” and a 25% headcount increase in 2019.

“We’re growing fast and investing in people, processes, solutions and services that will generate greater value for our partners, and earn more business together,” Schuman said. “Our reputation for partner experience stands out for all the right reasons, with partner surveys showing a 95% rating for operational excellence and our compensation plans still paying the highest tiers from all providers. If you want to win big now and in the future, call us. We’re all in and have your back.”

Check out the speech Schuman gave about supplier agreements at a Tech Tour stop last fall.