Lumen Channel Leaders Talk Program Evolution, C-Suite Sponsorship, TSD Consolidation
"[We're] working really hard to represent the channel inside the company," Dave Young said.
![Go to market Go to market](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt8ad46094e34580ff/65241c0db69d0d491bd48727/5-Go-to-Market.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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Channel Futures: Dave, does your new position look like, and how will your role change going forward?
Lumen’s Dave Young: A couple of months ago, we did some changes inside Lumen’s go-to-market from a customer-facing aspect. And I picked up what we call the enterprise East — Boston to Florida, direct to customers. With those changes, I did see some of the business I had been leading be more closely aligned to the region that it was in, which was the West. So the hyperscalers, the system integrators, the venture work all now goes to our West SVP. But I do see some really powerful ties between being responsible for the channel and being responsible for the direct East business. And some of the places in the East direct are some of our most healthy places where we’re working together with the channel to solve customer challenges together. It’s not just one or the other.
I think there are now a lot of times for me to be closer to the transaction on both sides of the Lumen fence, in order to understand the depth and breadth and power of working together, to be able to take those models other places across the business. So it’s really getting myself closer to those transactions and seeing the power of working together on channel-integrated opportunities, versus trying to solve for customer challenges with one channel or the other.
CF: Do you have any examples of being closer to a channel-integrated deal?
Sara Seegers: I was in the general manager role on the direct side for many years prior to joining indirect. The biggest thing we’ve talked about is investing in the communities we live in. And part of that local market plan is knowing the partners that are also talking to joint clients and where those conversations interconnect. Matchmaking between everyone who’s talking to our clients makes everybody more relevant to the outcomes those customers are driving. In that spirit, it’s knowing each other in the communities we live in. That sounds simple, but it’s incredibly powerful.
Our clients are recognizing it. It’s not the partner or us saying it; it’s when the the “a-ha” moment happens with the customer that really makes the difference.
Young: Where we have spent time understanding each other we create better together. And that’s a better equation than waiting until you have to create together. We’re working on how to foster these relationships before we have an event, a need, a cause, an RFP or whatever it might be. How can we build the rapport in the local markets with subagents and selling community? How do we put them together so that they know each other?
CF: Sara, what does your new position as regional vice president of indirect channel sales and opportunity management entail?
Seegers: I walked into the indirect channel with the mantra of “future together.” And I would say the future is now. The energy, the recognition of the synergies we just spoke of, the partners that touch engagements, our investments we’re making in the digital marketplace to make the experience of our partners more effective, the multiplier that we can have on adjacent conversations with advanced solutions for legacy solutions that a lot of our partners have brought to the business, are exciting for the partners and exciting for us.
Also, coming from the direct side, [I can say that] our company is making a bigger investment in the channel than I’ve ever seen in my 20-plus years. That recognition internal to Lumen and how that resonates outside of Lumen with our partner and client community is really where I see the high growth for Lumen in recognizing our potential in the market.
CF: I’m always intrigued how the senior leadership of a publicly traded company like Lumen view the channel. How they are understanding the channel and the different types of channel, and how are they valuing the channel?
Seegers: All the way from our CEO and CFO, we’re being asked at the table about what our view on product go-to-market strategy is and our investment to get return on investment on a product solution set. I think channel is always at the table. And it’s about how can we accelerate things. It’s great to be a lever in that equation where you can feel it from all parties. You can also see it from our life cycle management, the investments we have in our digital tools, our growth teams, our customer success, partner success. Having the full life-cycle investment really speaks to our commitment overall to the partner and channel. And those investments continue.
From my experience, these are the biggest investments we’ve made over the years in channel.
Young: I totally agree. Human capital, IT systems, money capital – all of those things are coming together for the channel at this point. When I came into the role a year ago now, there wasn’t way we communicated about the channel uniformly across that senior leadership team of the company. I spent a significant amount of my time traveling with that community, making sure they understood our quarter-over-quarter performance, but also the objectives. Where are we going? What are we seeing out in the marketplace? How are we adapting to what we see? What do we need the company to adapt to? About a year ago, the strategic leadership team (SLT) went through a separate motion, and we began to look at very precise things about the road map we were traveling.
We elevated the channel up into those meetings so that the SLT and the CEO were all in the staff meeting essentially looking at some of the critical paths that we needed to accomplish as we continue to evolve to support the channel. That readout was occurring at the highest levels of our company. I’m not sure that happens in a lot of other companies, but it happens in our company, because we believe in it. We see the positive traction that occurs, the relationships and the positive impact on customers. So we’ve elevated it inside our company.
CF: Was there anything the SLT said they needed from the channel?
Seegers: They feel it’s great to be one-third direct, one-third indirect and one-third digital. Right there is the immediate opportunity with our go-to-market as we educate our partners. It really is investing in the education and the connectedness of these adjacent solutions that we speak of that [the SLT] see the power of the channel. And that’s just one case study of many, which continues to be proven out internally to Lumen, that brings us to the table often. I think that’s now resonating with product folks and others that are really taking a deeper look at the channel go-to-market strategy.
Young: Some of the most critical roles that Sarah and I play for Lumen’s channel are understanding what’s happening in the company, in all of these digital marketplaces and how we’re connecting to customers, seeing what’s happening in the channel, making sure that we don’t diverge and making sure that we’re leveraging all of the things Lumen is doing in order to enhance and grow to some of these future states. We are simultaneously using that same technology – those same flows, tools and marketplaces in the channel – so that we’re not taking extra long cycles to build something unique. We’re going to modify what the company is doing to what the channel needs. Sarah and I spend hours every week making sure that we understand what’s happening in the company and posturing the channels needs inside those bigger needs, so that they’re met.
CF: Tell us more about emphasis on advanced solutions. Are partners adopting them? How is that conversation going?
Seegers: My platform adoption folks are the ones that are educating and doing certifications on security. SASE will be something in the next month or two that we’re rolling out and having those type of certifications. That’s elevating the brand of our partners, as they’re certified and going out to their clients. And that’s just a proof point. You have some of the largest IP backbone, and you then have the highest amount of threat intelligence. Putting those two together in adjacent conversations is just one of many synergy examples that we’re seeing. That leads to the edge. Infrastructure is all about latency and application performance. When we start putting those conversations together, it’s the “a-ha” moments for the partners. And it’s a-ha moments for our customers. And I think that’s what really is elevating everybody’s brain in the conversation.
Young: The company has given us some investments that we’re using to go out into the marketplaces that maybe are not the traditional TSB marketplace where we’ve operated. That’s the other thing about the TSBs. No two are alike. Some are similar, but no two are alike. They’re all embracing technology at different rates and different types of technologies. And it’s up to us to understand where they’re navigating in their futures as well, that we can bring something that’s just not one-size-fits-all. Maybe this TSB wants to connect more toward a security platform and other TSBs want to be more cloud-based. Maybe there’s a combo or a pro service. We’re spending a lot of time to understand where their motions are taking them as we begin to be able to fill that. Our goal doesn’t have to be, “Do everything that we do.” What do you want to do best?
Seegers: I would agree. It’s a partner journey by partner. Not all partners want to host the same conversations. We can go to the partners that are simply adding crypto and Bitcoin, where another partner might simply be security. When we talked about … next-gen partners that we’re also talking to, they’re looking at virtual reality, augmented reality. That’s the exciting part, because we’re seeing the community of interest really evolve and need the customized approach that Dave just spoke of. It’s not a one-size-fits-all by any means.
CF: I would love for you to weigh in more on the TSB market. Private equity flowing in at such a high clip, and the number of TSBs that you’re partnering with is consolidating. How does this consolidation impact Lumen?
Young: It’s exciting for us. Because it’s really cool to see these business models getting the attention and backing that they’re getting. It really reinforces that this is a very healthy avenue for us to relate with customers. It’s very, very powerful. So we’re very interested in what is happening. So far, I think the brands that have connected together have been very powerful. They’ve augmented. It hasn’t just been replicating what somebody was good at. They’re really rounding themselves out as companies and how they service customers. We’re pretty excited by the potential to work with these new companies, and how they’re thinking about the future.
Seegers: I would say the same. One plus one has to equal three if you’re bringing things together for the purpose of organically or inorganically growing. Everything we do has a program and a return on investment around it. And driving value takes some risks, obviously. But what we’re seeing is that [M&A] is changing the conversation on those value statements, in the openness of how we continue to get the synergy targets they have by coming together and others investing. When you see PE putting something into channel, I think that resonates internal to Lumen. “All right, we need to be making investments in there to support that as well.” It validates what we’re asking internally at Lumen to go support the growth in the partner space.
Young: And they’re getting support in a different way. We’re able to think about things differently. APIs for the last couple of months have been really, really hot with us in our conversations and how we can digitally interconnect. All that takes resources; it’s not a universal jack, where you plug in an API. You really have to understand what pieces of information are going to flow across it and how you’re going to digest it. This power of what’s occurring in the marketplace with the VCs brings resources to the table for these companies to interact with us differently. We’re really excited by the ability to automate some of this and share information through these APIs to operate at higher levels with our humans.
CF: What is your take on the rebranding away the term “master agent“? Are you going with “technology services brokers?”
Seegers: Today we are. Our language is changing, as we need to be great studies of the industry. And I think all of our partners are evolving, and we need to continue to evolve with them. There is no room for complacency, to be honest. It has been studied. As you think of how people get educated, it’s, who are the podcasts they’re listening [to]? What are the events they’re attending? What are the communities they’re getting involved in? And that doesn’t always become what would have been a past tradition. And that’s where we really have to get further engaged so that we’re knowing the audiences they’re targeting.
CF: We’ve been talking about the diversity of partners and how one size doesn’t fit all. How does Lumen’s recent direct partnership with Upstack reflect that thinking?
Seegers: Frankly, it is that customized journey realized. If someone has new PE, their priority might have shifted, versus another partner that isn’t shifting. So our national channel managers are really keeping a pulse on that. Where do we want to invest additional resource platform adoption? Is it on security? Is it on edge? It’s really understanding the population that they’re serving. We are going to continue to be very strong at our existing run-rate of business. It might mean a pivot to next-gen platforms from legacy platforms. And we have to balance that with what other advanced solution conversations they want, or quite frankly, their agent community isn’t aligned to.
Young: It has been pretty interesting to go out and travel. Because the TSBs are also trying to figure out different marketplaces other than the classic subagent environment. We’re seeing them explore security. We’re seeing them explore cloud. We’re seeing them explore VAR. As they do that, we were trying to understand and explore these markets as well. So it’s a really healthy conversation. Sometimes I think it’s going to be very logical for us to be together. And sometimes you’re going see other sides of the equation. But for some of our largest TSB relationships, we’re in these conversations. When we see the venture capitalists pulling companies together, sometimes there are companies that don’t fit the exact model that we’ve had in the past that come together. It’s a pretty exciting marketplace right now as we’re all trying to think inside our own companies and then have those conversations to build bigger and broader value equations across the growing asset that we all address.
Seegers: I think the word “agile” is sometimes overused, but they’re having to be agile as they’re recruiting new agents. And we have to be sensitive and agile to help them bring those agents along and educate them.
CF: How is Lumen differentiating itself from the competition?
Seegers: It is the history of the companies that have made now Lumen and the platform we are. Black Lotus Labs is not a recognized name in itself, but when you talk about security and threat intelligence, it becomes a very known name. So in that regard, our differentiation is really educating. You can talk about the internet, but when you talk about secure internet, which would should really be the solution you’re now desiring, that changes the conversation. Instead of a commodity conversation, it becomes a value conversation. Equally, and it should go without stating, it is the life cycle of a partner that has not just the solutions we’re selling, but the investment in digital tools we’re offering for near real-time interactions. That goes not only into the buying motion, but the support and delivery motion as well.
Things have been commoditized in our industry. As a telco you could say that if you’re looking at voice and internet. But then you start putting those technologies together to drive the outcomes that clients need. Edge doesn’t happen, and five milliseconds of latency doesn’t happen unless you put all of these solutions together. And I think that’s the power Lumen is seeing that you won’t hear from other providers in the industry.
CF: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Seegers: … It’s called commitment. It’s called trust, and it’s called accountability. And with that comes execution. That’s just foundational to everything else we talked about, because then I think that drives the incentives and motivation for them to endorse us, and it’s about earning that endorsement every day.
Young: Lumen has a multidecade legacy of working in the channel. That’s awesome in a lot of ways. But we’re also evolving as a company in how we go forward in the tools and systems that we use. Taking all of that history and getting it down into a digital marketplace is going to be a bit of a lift. My commitment to the community is to remove as much friction from that experience as we begin to move as a corporation into this new world for us.
Sara and I are working really hard to represent the channel inside the company, make the right decisions and head in the right trajectory. We’re going to do our best as we encounter the challenges to navigate them. But our commitment is to deliver this new age marketplace and products and services that allow the partners to get access through them however they want. Whether that’s digitally or through humans, they get to pick the business model and that’s what Sara and I are creating.
CF: Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Seegers: … It’s called commitment. It’s called trust, and it’s called accountability. And with that comes execution. That’s just foundational to everything else we talked about, because then I think that drives the incentives and motivation for them to endorse us, and it’s about earning that endorsement every day.
Young: Lumen has a multidecade legacy of working in the channel. That’s awesome in a lot of ways. But we’re also evolving as a company in how we go forward in the tools and systems that we use. Taking all of that history and getting it down into a digital marketplace is going to be a bit of a lift. My commitment to the community is to remove as much friction from that experience as we begin to move as a corporation into this new world for us.
Sara and I are working really hard to represent the channel inside the company, make the right decisions and head in the right trajectory. We’re going to do our best as we encounter the challenges to navigate them. But our commitment is to deliver this new age marketplace and products and services that allow the partners to get access through them however they want. Whether that’s digitally or through humans, they get to pick the business model and that’s what Sara and I are creating.
Lumen Technologies channel leadership is emphasizing a customized approach to the vendor’s partner program.
Lumen’s Dave Young
Dave Young, who last summer assumed responsibility for the Lumen partner program, says Lumen shouldn’t engage uniformly with partners. He says the Louisiana-based service provider is evaluating its partners’ strengths, weaknesses and goals as its distribution partners consolidate and private equity overtakes the channel.
“They’re all embracing technology at different rates and different types of technologies,” said Young, Lumen’s senior vice president, enterprise East, financials and indirect channel. “And it’s up to us to understand where they’re navigating in their futures as well, that we can bring something that’s just not one-size-fits-all.”
Lumen’s Sara Seegers
Young last month started a new position, which decreases his focus on the system integrator, hyperscaler and digital ventures groups. The change, he said, will allow him to focus more on building bridges between direct and indirect sellers.
Lumen also earlier this year appointed Sara Seegers as regional vice president of indirect channel sales and opportunity management. She previously was vice president and general manager for Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Young and Seegers shared how the company’s partner program is getting more attention and expectations from the Lumen C-suite. Young also updated Channel Futures on the digitization plans he mentioned a year ago. Furthermore, he and Seegers touched on the company’s relationship with technology service distributors and its recently inked partnership with Upstack.
Scroll through the 11 images above to the read the conversation.
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