If there is one thing Pino Biase, the new channel chief at CA Canada, wants to do it is to engage with more partners.
One of his first directives for his team is they be more hands on with channel partners. He believes this simple approach can be strategic in delivering on the company’s Enterprise IT Management (EITM) message.
“The EITM message will resonate with them, but it has to be the same to all partners and the team here is focused to reach out to partners that we have not touched in a few years,” he said.
What Biase wants to avoid is questions from channel partners such as “What is CA doing? And, “What is CA’s strategy?”
Currently, Biase’s team is made up of four field executives. He wants to hire a fifth person to handle the Montreal and Ottawa regions. Biase also has two inside sales representatives for partners.
CA also built a call centre in Tampa, Fla., focused entirely on the channel. This call centre will drive leads to partners along with pre-sales support and help with specific technology products.
“There will be no direct selling out of this call centre,” Biase said. “In the short term we are not going to see a truck load of leads for the commercial partners. The new people at the call centre will focus on enterprise solution provider leads. I want them to take those leads to about 30 to 40 per cent ready range and then pitch it over to the partners,” added the 17-year veteran of the channel.
Biase’s goal is to deliver 10 to 20 enterprise leads a month in the security, enterprise, system management, business service optimization and storage categories.
In the volume commercial side of the channel, Biase wants to push threat management technologies to those partners. He also wants to push more leads to these partners but in a slightly different approach. Those leads will be both new accounts as well as leads to maintain and grow the current install base of CA customers.
Back when Chris Devlin was running CA Canada’s channel, the goal was for the division to one day have more than 50 per cent of its sales go indirect.
Biase acknowledged that is still the goal.
“Honestly, I like to get there, but I know it will take some time. We are probably lower than that, but we have the commitment from Bernadette [Nixon, CA Canada GM] to partner better.”
Besides the increased commitment to the channel, Biase believes that working with CA’s direct sales team can lead to more indirect sales in the future. His target is to get 30 per cent of the business indirect within the next 18 to 20 months. He believes that after reaching that target, getting to 40 per cent will be much easier and faster.
“It will be a leap,” Biase said.
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