Jan-Feb 2020 - ChannelVision Magazine

VIRTUAL REALITY S D-WAN is too broad of a term. All the while, telecom likes to turn a technology term into a product. I don’t know why, except that telecom has been about selling replacement ser- vices for less money since the 1990s. Nonetheless, the marketing hype around SD-WAN has made it hard for partners and prospects to figure out what they are buying. Simplistically, SD-WAN comes in three silos. A number of hardware vendors, for one, have added SD-WAN to the functionality of their boxes. Quite frankly, this is what I prefer to call “CCNA in a Box” since a talented network admin could add that same functionality to any Cisco 2600 or better router. This functionality in- cludes failover, line bonding and packet shaping. This is the small business or branch office special. The other end of that spectrum is the re-marketed MPLS network. There are carriers that are offering a new network to replace or supplement the MPLS network. For customers looking to step back from the management of their WAN, this can be a good option. In the middle are carriers that have implemented a true software-defined network. These carriers include Veri- zon, AireSpring, TPX and others. There is an orchestration layer that requires NFV (network function virtualization) and SDN (software defined networking) to be in place. According to SDx Cen- tral, “One of the main goals of SD-WAN orchestration in the cloud is to enable customer provisioning, whereby a customer could go to a web portal and order services that can be automatically configured and delivered with the SD- WAN platform, without requiring human intervention.” This orchestrator allows the customer to gain functions such as performance monitoring, analytics, se- curity and policy management. Both the partner and the customer must understand the reason for moving to SD-WAN. Why is the customer look- ing at SD-WAN? What functionality are they adding? What results are they looking for? Or at least, What problem are they trying to solve? At the heart of sales, partners need to be asking these questions. All too often, salespeople get more caught up in the excitement of the prospect’s RFP or quote request and neglect the next step of discovery. The industry still sells replacement services for less money. It is a down- ward spiral that will drive any partner crazy. The next phase is to ask for more wallet share, but in order to do that partners have to ask questions. The why is more important than the what. The what today is ambiguous. The what in SD-WAN, UCaaS, cybersecurity, even broadband is too vague of a product class to just run off for quotes without asking some qualifying questions. The more a partner knows about the prospect’s business the better ad- visor she can be. The more the partner knows about a vertical the better advi- sor he can be. Asking great questions leads to being a better advisor. The simplest question can be, “What are you trying to achieve?” or “What are you trying to solve?” The better advisors have knowl- edge that allows them to bring best practices to their customers. “Mr. Jones, when my bank customers look at SD-WAN, these are the functions they are expecting.” Or “Mr. Jones, the last three banks that I sold internet bandwidth to also ended up buying SD-WAN, and here is why.” These statements change the con- versation. The conversation determines if you win with the lowest bid or if you sell a solution. Know which one you want to be providing. o Peter Radizeski is president of RAD-INFO INC., a telecom strategy and marketing consulting agency. He is also author of six books on sales and the channel and is avail- able to speak at your events on chan- nel, marketing, strategy or sales. By Peter Radizeski SD-WAN Answers & Questions 32 CHANNEL VISION | January - February, 2020