Top Gun 51 Profile: Cytracom’s Meredith Caram on Developing Impactful Relationships

Meredith Caram, vice president of sales for Cytracom, is an industry vet who has been described as a “visionary leader with a track record of hypergrowth in the channel.”

The 20-year information technology and communications pioneer is a Top Gun 51 award winner because of her extraordinary approach to leadership. Thus, Caram firmly believes that leaders need to understand flexibility, and in times of enormous change, perspective is vital. It is also critical to remember what needs to remain constant. 

Cytracom’s Meredith Caram

Furthermore, her passion in developing impactful relationships speaks through her work. This is a challenging time for leaders across all industries, and Caram is most certainly one who inspires greatness.

Those are the things distributors, master agents and industry analysts are saying about her. We solicited input from these industry players to compile our Top Gun 51 for 2020. That’s because they know channel executives best.

Introduced last year, the Top Gun 51 recognizes premier leaders in the indirect IT and telecom channel. The criteria includes advocacy for the channel and commitment to partners’ business success. There’s also dedication to earning the channel’s trust.

Channel Futures: What attributes do you think next-gen channel leaders must have?

Meredith Caram: A leader can be amazing at overseeing one phase of a company — the startup phase, the cleanup phase, the first-burst-of-growth phase. They fashion themselves as the right leader for the moment, and they serve it perfectly. But, when the company enters a new phase and needs the leader to be a new kind of leader, it can sometimes be difficult to adapt. Great and enduring leaders, therefore, are the ones that can change along with their company. Next-gen channel leaders need to be the new kind of leader at every stage.  

CF: You obviously focus on developing impactful relationships and delivering significant results. So can you speak to that?  

MC: Being over nine months into this pandemic, there is certainly not an immediate end in sight. This is a challenging time for all leaders across all industries. None of us was taught in business school how to lead our teams through a pandemic; no one was given a playbook. Leaders have to apply a lot of good common sense principles and basically ask “what do people need?” 

First comes safety. A company cannot function if everyone is ill. So of course, a leader needs to be able to rapidly enable everyone who could work from home to do so. For people who couldn’t work from home, a leader must apply strict protective measures to make workplaces as safe as they could be. We must be conscious that people have needs in terms of communication, connection and support. With my team, we check in with one another much more frequently than we might have normally because it’s a different challenging situation for everyone. It is important to acknowledge the differences and be supportive. 

Since we weren’t going to bump into each other at the espresso machine, we incorporated intentional huddles — coming together to share and to be open and honest about their feelings with what is going on. The opportunity for …

… a simple connection and offering moral support to each other matters. Having this space to share is about maintaining connection and realizing we are not in this situation alone. 

CF: With a nod to the current landscape and where the industry is headed, can you expand upon that?

MC: Leaders need to understand flexibility. If you are in a difficult situation where you are juggling homeschooling, a career and/or caring for a vulnerable relative, you cannot necessarily make a meeting at a specific time. As the leader, you must be understanding and flexible with regard to people’s needs. This is massively appreciated and removes a lot of stress. We are all in this together. Understanding that people’s challenges are different, yet significant, is really important. 

In times of enormous change, perspective is also really important. It is critical to remember what needs to remain constant. Things like our company purpose, our values and why we do what we do — these things shouldn’t change. Reminding ourselves of this really keeps everyone focused on what matters. My philosophy leading through a crisis is to anchor to these things. With these team huddles and the beauty of technology, we are much more purposeful about communication. It’s great seeing leaders being more thoughtful around who they need to be collaborating with. It doesn’t just happen because we are around someone in an office. Combining all of this is where you see great relationships form, and impactful results follow all across the business. 

CF: If you had to sum up the current channel ecosystem in a few sentences, what would you say? 

MC: While the channel ecosystem isn’t new, it is currently being challenged with best practices, business models, mindsets, past rules. Everything is evolving – in the information technology and communications space – everywhere. The channel ecosystem is a dynamic inclusive of co-evolving communities which captures new value through collaboration and competition.