It’s a question that many account teams fear but it’s growing more common in the tech industry. As more customers switch to subscriptions, vendors are wrapping up individual contracts into buying models like a Cisco Enterprise Agreement (EA). These vehicles are generally large, long-term and expansive in scope. More importantly, they may dictate ‘account control’ for the life of the agreement; customers often have multiple, specialized partners in their environment dealing with technology sets — EAs often force customers to pick one single company for a large percentage of their technology spend. With so much on the line, partners should be prepared to give a compelling answer to customers about what they’ll do with the agreement if they should win.
“Customers have been burned in the past,” says Joe Vlajcic, Senior Director of the TD SYNNEX Revolution team. “With early agreements, a lot of times customers didn’t fully understand what they were buying. Or sometimes the agreements were misunderstood or even misrepresented to them by a salesperson. Under-utilized solutions or surprise bills have led a lot of customers to be weary.”
Today, customers ask hard questions about what a reseller will do to spare them repeats of bad experiences. Faced with new concerns from customers, some resellers are finding that their services portfolios need expansion to meet the needs of a long-term enterprise agreement.
“Traditional VAR services are around getting technology ‘ready for use’ — assessment, design, installation, support. Even traditional managed services are around supporting a solution’s availability, not driving adoption — with a lot of EAs encompassing cloud-delivered solutions, how much do those services influence a customer’s buying decision?” Vlajcic goes on to explain with many vendors messaging EA benefits that include flexible consumption and new feature releases, customers want to know what partners offer for “Care and Feeding” of their subscriptions.
“The problem is not that account teams won’t think of an answer on the spot... the problem is that they will.”
Customers asking about invoice issues, feature release notifications or adoption barriers will often find sales, unfamiliar with the specifics of EA management, might readily agree to requests that will be difficult to support. Vlajcic zeros in on this point: “You have to understand these are multi-year agreements — whatever you decide you now need to deliver — consistently — for three, five or even seven more years.”
Faced with these concerns, partners should arm their account teams with clear, executable offerings without overcommitting. “Plenty of sales teams have said ‘oh, anything that happens — we’ll take care of it!’ in response to questions about partner responsibilities. That can be a real problem if you’re now on the hook to view, report, audit and reconcile every facet of an agreement.”
Knowledgeable partners, however, are starting to develop bespoke offerings to address customer concerns. Enumerated tasks and discrete scopes of work add clarity to partner responsibilities and reassure customers that support is available. Vlajcic explains: “We encourage partners to start small. There are probably things you’re doing today — reporting, reviews, feature activation — that are driving customer lifecycles. Package up ‘ad-hoc’ requests into defined solutions and use those to set guidelines for your sales teams.”
“We have an entire section on this in the Revolution Wiki with resources, considerations and examples,” says Valjcic. “But initial offerings don’t need to be expansive; demonstrate to a customer that you understand the mechanics of EAs and that you have explicit services to help the organization.”
Partners can build on existing value-added services to create formal lifecycle offerings. Those offerings can be built on or enhanced with resources from distributors like TD SYNNEX. “We’ve spent the last several years really seeking to understand the challenges and opportunities of technology subscriptions. With that insight, we’ve built the Revolution Team and equipped them with the knowledge and tools to help our partners win!”
Revolution is a recurring revenue-focused group of almost 100 experts to support partners around Cisco services, software and EAs. The team encompasses a variety of sales, operational and technical resources to ensure partners have a “one-stop shop” for all things Cisco annuity. Along with platforms like TD SYNNEX Stellr and the custom-built Revolution Insights in the Revolution team is helping partners create substantial and sustainable lifecycle services.
“We hope every partner engages with us on this topic,” Vlajcic concludes. “If you haven’t gotten this question from a customer yet then you can be sure it’s coming. We can help resellers understand common customer challenges, put together solutions around them and use our knowledge and tools to enhance their skill sets.”
“Start with a Revolution Ready assessment to look at what’s in your install base today. We can help you grow your EA business and make sure your team has the capabilities to support an expanded subscription base. We can even help you find additional post-sale opportunities!”
Technology subscriptions continue to be an evolving part of the industry but with programs like TD SYNNEX Revolution, partners should confidently be able to answer customer questions and position their organization for success.
As a TD SYNNEX Revolution customer, you have access to recurring training that covers various Cisco solutions, tools and processes. These trainings will help you achieve certification, business skills and professional development to grow your Cisco recurring revenue business.
Join our monthly RevolutionCX webinar series. These sessions engage the audience with topics covering all things Cisco and TD SYNNEX RevolutionCX.
Please join us for monthly recurring webinars delivered by TD SYNNEX, Cisco and industry experts discussing the latest Cisco solutions, tools and processes. These conversational and informative webinars will make sure you’re aware of the latest Cisco hardware, software and recurring revenue products across all Cisco architectures, guide you on processes to help you sell them and discuss available programs and promotions to help drive increased profitability.
Join the Next Cisco 101 Webinar
For additional information, please contact the TD SYNNEX EDGE Programs team at [email protected].
To further enhance your knowledge with in-depth information about Cisco’s Enterprise Agreement opportunities, along with the benefits of the program, take advantage of our CORE+ trainings. To learn more please contact the Revolution EA team.
As a TD SYNNEX Revolution customer, you have access to recurring training that covers various Cisco solutions, tools and processes. These trainings will help you achieve certification, business skills and professional development to grow your Cisco business faster and more profitably.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
Customer Success Manager Training
One of the keys to EAs is being able to explain consumption and billing to customers. TD SYNNEX is excited to announce the inclusion of EA consumption data into our Cisco Annuity Dashboard. TD SYNNEX partners can now easily view current EA consumption and billing — even instantly generate estimates for Cisco True Forward. With customers demanding more visibility into their agreements, partners can stand out by having “all the answers” in one place. Contact us for a demo today!
VIP is a comprehensive back-end incentive designed to increase your margins when you resell strategic hardware and software offers or solutions. VIP requires and rewards your investment in specific Specialization and/or Cisco Partner Program levels, reflecting a depth and breadth of your knowledge across Cisco Architectures, Solutions and Business Skills. VIP 44 begins July 28, 2024, and runs through January 25, 2025. For more details on VIP 44, visit the VIP page below.
In 2022, Cisco announced a change in strategy and a new specialization framework to create a portfolio of solution specializations. On January 25, 2025, Cisco will formally retire the Security Specialization, Advanced Security Specialization and Master Security Specialization designations. Cisco Security Solution Specializations will replace the Architecture Specializations for incentives and authorizations. Secure your specialization before retirements go into effect.
If you rely on the Collaboration Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Specialization for enrollment in other designations or benefits, you will need to acquire an alternative qualifying specialization before February 1, 2026. We strongly recommend exploring all the currently available specializations Cisco has to offer as soon as possible.
Think Cisco is complicated? Revolution has launched a Wiki to consolidate, curate and editorialize Cisco recurring revenue topics. Cisco has several knowledge bases like Salesconnect, but the Revolution team wanted a place to collect the content they thought was most useful (and write their own commentary and best practices).
Revolution Wiki can be accessed as part of the Revolution Insights platform or within the EDGE Focus tool. Within the Wiki, you’ll find hundreds of articles on recurring revenue topics like ordering best practices, provisioning steps or Cisco invoice FAQs. Additionally, there is custom-made content from the Revolution team covering partner lifecycle services, sample adoption material or tips and tricks from our experience in the field. All of which is available to Revolution partners today!
Don’t see something you need? We’re always taking suggestions for content that partners would find useful. Submit your requests to [email protected] or through a ticket in Revolution Insights!
We all have busy lives; that’s why we created a quick recap of past webinars, podcasts, and articles for you to reference at your own leisure.
As a TD SYNNEX Revolution customer, you have access to recurring training that covers various Cisco solutions, tools and processes. These trainings will help you achieve certification, business skills and professional development to grow your Cisco recurring revenue business.
Customer Success Manager Training
LCI, LCA and Funds Manager Training
ReadyOps Training: Cisco Modernized Operations
Join our monthly RevolutionCX webinar series. These sessions engage the audience with topics covering all things Cisco and TD SYNNEX RevolutionCX.
Upcoming Topics Include:
Revolution EA - Navigating the Meraki 3.0 EA, Revolution Ready Ops – Best Practices Matter Now More Than Ever, and more!
To further enhance your knowledge with in-depth information about Cisco’s Enterprise Agreement opportunities, along with the benefits of the program, take advantage of our CORE+ trainings. To learn more please contact the Revolution EA team.
We’ve got you covered! Check out our archived trainings.
Recent Topics Include:
Revolution Profitability- Leveraging the Cisco Partner Experience Platform (PXP) to drive additional opportunities, and Revolution EA – The Cisco EA Program and How to Manage True Forwards.
Join us for monthly recurring webinars delivered by TD SYNNEX, Cisco and industry experts discussing the latest Cisco solutions, tools and processes. These conversational and informative webinars will make sure you’re aware of the latest Cisco hardware, software and recurring revenue products across all Cisco architectures, guide you on processes to help you sell them and discuss available programs and promotions to help drive increased profitability.
For additional information, please contact the TD SYNNEX EDGE Programs team at [email protected].