Exclusive Networks, a specialty distributor focused primarily on cybersecurity and cloud platforms, this week appointed a new director for inside sales in North America.
Jenn Daddio will be responsible for helping to drive sales leads to partners that prefer to work with a specialty distributor that typically makes more technical resources available than larger distributors. Before joining Exclusive Networks, Daddio served as a sales leader for Kaseya and ABC Imaging.
The goal is to create a “white glove” service for partners based on resources provided by both the distributor and its vendor partners in more than 100 countries, says Daddio.
“We’re situational focused,” says Daddio. “There’s no one size fits all approach.”
Daddio joins Exclusive Networks at a time when larger distributors are seeking to make inroads at the expense of specialty distributors by acquiring them. Ingram Micro, for example, acquired Cloud Harmonics, while SYNNEX moved to acquire Westcon.
As IT becomes more complex there are no doubts channel partners will need to rely more on expertise being made available by distributor and vendors. While most partners have lines of credit with two or more distributors, partners will tend to favor one over another based on the resources made available. Those resources typically have a material impact on reducing the overall cost of delivering a solution, which in turn should boost the profitability of the solution provider. Of course, most distributors have rules concerning the percentage of business a partner drives their way before they make those professional services available to partners.
Some partners, naturally, are still looking for the best price when playing one distributor of another. However, as IT projects continue to require more expertise to successfully implement, the depth of the technical resources any distributor can make available will increasingly tip the balance one way or the other.
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