Upskill to keep pace with technical and sales changes

Maintaining the balance between technical skills and business requirements is crucial amid IT complexity, as Brian J Dooley finds

By Brian J. Dooley, Auckland | Thursday, 03 June 2010
Keeping up with the continuing evolution of the IT environment demands development of a wide range of technical skills for resellers. At the same time, resellers need to focus on sales skills to ensure profitability. Good technical people do not necessarily make good sales people, so tension between these areas has the potential to develop.

In a healthy organisation, technical staff need to develop sales skills, with particular focus on a customer’s real business needs rather than on the technology itself. And sales staff need to develop technical skills to inspire confidence among customers and bridge the gap between technical jargon and business requirements. Maintaining this balance is critical, and it is becoming increasingly important as the IT environment continues to grow in complexity.

Compounding the problem of developing and supporting technical skills in sales organisations are current uncertainties over the economy, and simultaneous growth of new choices for customers based around cloud computing and virtualisation. These issues have implications for training, recruitment and business focus. New sales and marketing avenues based around social networking may also impact the types of engagements resellers have with clients, adding new dimensions to communication needs.

Keeping pace with technical training, online programmes and e-learning are becoming increasingly important because these can extend training options to the hinterlands as well as cut costs and make product instruction more accessible. Online training from vendors ranges from webcasts and brief seminars to multi-day courses. It is a good time to consider available options here, and ensure that you have access to this material. Now is also the time to examine the central focus of your business and ensure that training and support are available across both technical and sales areas.

“Technical staff need to commit to continuous training,” says Symantec’s trans-Tasman SMB director Steve Martin. “The industry is changing quickly, and business models [are also] changing quickly. Resellers and their staff need to be clear about where their expertise lies, and understand the surrounding technologies. For example, a specialist in virtualisation today needs to also understand networking, security for virtualisation, data protection, backup, and disaster recovery. It is important to maintain a holistic approach and keep abreast of the broader issues.”

Symantec maintains clear differentiation between back office technical staff and sales, providing clear training paths for both. It provides sales expert certifications and technical specialist certifications.

“One thing that we have done is to have the partner programme focus more on specialisations,” says Martin. “Instead of becoming a Symantec Partner, resellers can now become a Symantec Security Partner, Data Loss Prevention Partner, or Small Business Specialist. This makes it possible to achieve greater acknowledgement within a specialty areas, more focus, and more opportunities within that area. In many areas of the channel, the tech specialist is the lead sales person, so it is important that this role be recognised in incentive programmes.”

Symantec provides training and information to its business partners through three avenues:

• Webcasts on relevant topics through the partner enablement team, delivered on a weekly basis. This includes new product launches and new programme information, delivered in real time.

• Training through the Symantec Partner University, which offers a broad range of online courses for sales and technical specialists.

• Virtual, instructor-led, multi-day training, such as a three-day course on how to install or configure a security product.

“Symantec can’t be in every location around the world, but it is important that partners are in every location,” says Martin. “Ability to provide virtual instruction is crucial.”