Top Gun 51 Profile: IBM’s John Teltsch on Overcoming Channel Challenges

As a 30-year-plus IBM veteran, outgoing global channel chief John Teltsch brought everything he had to the general manager, IBM Partner Ecosystem position, and then some. In fact, not only did he tell us that being the global channel lead is the best job that he’s had with IBM, because it took all of the skills he’s learned in previous channel roles, and jobs across all of the brands – hardware, software, and even in services – but he also said that there was more to learn. 

[After two years as the global channel chief, Teltsch was recently appointed general manager, IBM systems sales, leading worldwide sales for the IBM Storage, IBM Cognitive Systems, IBM Z, Lab Services and Technical Sales teams. IBM’s David La Rose is the new channel lead.] 

IBM’s John Teltsch

If ever there were a company to work for where change, or transformation, was a constant — it’s IBM. While Ginni Rometty is the latest IBM CEO tasked with turning around the tanker of an organization, Teltsch had a bird’s-eye seat to learn from two additional exemplary leaders — Samuel Palmisano and Louis Gerstner. 

We sat down with Teltsch, a Channel Partners/Channel Futures Top Gun 51 award winner, to find out what more a three-decade veteran at IBM could learn, and what makes a next-gen channel leader. 

Channel Futures: Why do you think you were picked to lead the channel organization? 

John Teltsch: The last four or five jobs I had at IBM have been in roles where we had challenged businesses that we had to transform and modernize, and I built a reputation that that’s what I do — in a manner that’s externally focused. Quite frankly, I think I knew enough about the channel and I knew enough partners – some that I knew for 15-20 years – that were changing their business models and they were frustrated with us because we weren’t changing. 

I had a sense of what we needed to do but, in all honesty, until I got into this job, I didn’t realize how complex we really were and how challenging we were to do business with. That confirmed, within the first 90 days, that I had the right ideas, but I surely didn’t understand how large of a transformational project and journey that is underway here. 

CF: While future next-gen channel leaders may not be stepping into your exact scenario, you have a lot of insight that can be extremely educational. Please share some of the challenges you encountered in your role. 

JT: The first one was that our global channel had a significant impact on country performance – on our 30,000 partners – and the dependency of those partners on IBM was much greater than I ever thought. Maybe it was naïve on my part, but I didn’t understand how dependent the IBM company was on the channel and the channel is on IBM — from a hardware point of view, a software point of view. 

Another challenge is around simplifying and removing barriers, or how we simplify, eliminate, and consolidate everything about our channel — the contracts, the pricing, the tooling. That was an eye opener for me as a long time IBMer. We have an incredible number of tools and capabilities, but they’re really not connected. I had disparate tools and systems and capabilities – all very positive – but difficult if you’re a global partner, for example. 

Part of us going after that next generation of partners – the new partners that don’t want to do business with IBM, which was one of my big missions – is that I needed to simplify and consolidate and eliminate a lot of the internal tools and systems and pricing and algorithms that we had. This is an internal challenge, but it deeply affected and still impacts – and we’re not done – the financial viability of my partners. 

So I’m very cognizant of the channel’s dependency on my simplification work.

CF: What were some lessons that you learned as channel chief? 

JT: The first thing I’m very proud of, and affected my leadership roots, is that for the first 90 days on the job I …

… went external. I was in all seven of our geographies, I spent time with our largest distributors and a variety of ecosystem partners. I listened to their point of view. This is a listening culture. Now that sounds basic or elementary, but we as a company listened and didn’t always act. What I brought back from listening to our largest partners that drive billions of dollars for us across our portfolio was that if you really care, you’ll act on what I’m telling you. They didn’t tell me to fix these 40 things — it was three things that affected their business the most, and if we were able to do it, it would be a great win. 

So the first lesson learned is about a listening culture. The second piece was the listening culture made me refocus on learning. I thought I understood the external channel. I thought I understood how that set of independent business people had to transform their business as the market has shifted – and not just IBM – and it’s not just to the cloud and as a service; it’s the whole selling motion has changed. So the listening culture that I brought back has driven me to put in place a very deep set of learning initiatives or learning culture.  

The learning culture that I had to rebuild helped me focus on IBM skills that needed to be improved, and once we started doing that, we found out that every one of my channel partners jumped onto this skills enablement and certification.  

The third one, which is again a bit elementary, is that you have to be willing to put yourself out there, get out of your comfort zone, and be willing to be uncomfortable and say that you don’t know. As a GM at IBM, saying I don’t know the answer — well, we’re supposed to have all the answers. There are a lot of brilliant people running huge companies outside of IBM that have great ideas. We’re in 175 countries — we can test, pilot and try things in those countries and try to come up with new ways of doing business and new ways of engaging in new markets.