Intelisys Taps AppSmart, Telesystem Alum for Key Marketing Role

Intelisys has hired Mayka Rosales-Peterson to evangelize the company’s revamped education and marketing platform.

Rosales-Peterson recently joined the tech services distributor as senior manager of partner marketing. The newly created position gives her oversight of Intelisys’ partner engagement, education and marketing programs. Moreover, she’ll promote Intelisys’ various marketing tools, including market development funds (MDF), to its sales partners.

Intelisys’ Mayka Rosales-Peterson

“My end goal with this position is to make sure that all of our partners feel like they have all the necessary tools within marketing to help their business grow, help it scale and help them feel comfortable selling solutions that they might not have been comfortable with and having marketing to be able to support that,” Rosales-Peterson told Channel Futures.

Rosales-Peterson will specifically work to increase partner usage of Intelisys University. Intelisys launched Intelisys iU, formerly Intelisys Cloud Services University, about a year ago. The previous iteration focused exclusively on education. The platform has expanded to include a marketing module designed to help partners apply the education to their own customer base and prospects.

“Bringing Mayka on board is really going to give us the muscle to drive adoption of the platform to help partners take full advantage of it, and then help them generate leads for their businesses,” said Jamaal Savwoir, vice president of partner experience and marketing at Intelisys.

Intelisys’ Jamaal Savwoir

Career Background

She comes to Intelisys after a one-year stint at AppSmart, where she also worked as a senior marketing manager. She handled marketing for AppSmart’s managing partner program. Prior to AppSmart, she worked three-and-a-half years at Telesystem. She started as a digital marketing specialist and ultimately moved up to manager of channel strategy. At Telesystem she began to engage with Intelisys, one of Telesystem’s distribution partners.

Her career also included tenures at AT&T and T-Mobile.

Rosales-Peterson said her experiences gave her insights from different sides of the channel.

“I led marketing for both a supplier and a distributor, so I understand the pain points on both ends. And I can bring that knowledge to help solve problems from both ends,” she said.” … I have a real opportunity to make sure that there’s a good balance, that both are feeding each other. The suppliers are feeding partners, and partners are feeding suppliers in a very healthy way.”

She praised the culture she has experienced thus far at Intelisys.

“They care so much about their people. It is a people-first culture. And you can see that trickling [down to] partners. Partners really love working with us, because they know that the people are happy and are going to go the extra mile. I’ve only been here three weeks, and I’m noticing that already. And I’m like, ‘This is the best decision that I’ve ever made, and I want to be here forever,’” Rosales-Peterson said.

She said Savwoir insisted to her that she shouldn’t feel pressure to execute instantly. But rather, he told her to focus on absorbing the culture and learning.

“I think that we don’t see that in too many organizations or in leadership — people saying, ‘Hey, you don’t have to prove yourself yet. Learn all you can, and then really knock it out the park when you feel good,'” she told Channel Futures. “Having that top-down strong, empathetic leadership is what I think makes us different.”

Diversity and Inclusion Efforts

Rosales-Peterson had already been working with Savwoir as board members on the Xposure Inclusion & Diversity Council. She said they can do even more to promote D&I together at Intelisys.

For example, she said Intelisys is working on a program to help sales partners develop D&I.

“We’re building it now. But no other distributors are doing this. We’re the first in our space doing this. And it just shows the deep-level commitment we have to people of all backgrounds and their successes,” she said.

The TSD Market

Intelisys has enjoyed somewhat of a calm 2022 amid a flurry of M&A activity from its rivals in the tech services distributor market. Avant’s acquisition of PlanetOne in May reinforced the combined company as a challenger to Intelisys’ throne. Telarus’ subsequent purchase of TCG established another player that claims to be …… the largest TSD in the channel.

Moreover, many Intelisys sales partners have agreed to acquisitions, including platinum partner Subsidium Technologies.

“It continues to be something we were keeping our eyes on,” Savwoir told Channel Futures. “But our position in this whole landscape is to keep doing what we do to keep partners’ commission safe, first of all, but secondly, to help them take advantage of the investments we can make to help them grow.”

Savwoir said Intelisys’ status as a division of publicly traded ScanSource should serve as insurance for partners who are worried about the future of their TSD partners. Considering that ScanSource executives continually praise Intelisys’ performance in their quarterly earnings, there does not appear to be any indication they are looking for an exit.

“We have to be very transparent about how we’re handling our finances and how we’re investing our dollars, and we’re beholden to our shareholders to continue to grow. So we’re not going anywhere,” Savwoir said.

Moreover, Savwoir said Intelisys has found a sweet spot with its hybrid distribution message. Intelisys executives have encouraged their agent partners to lean on ScanSource/Intelisys for the hardware their customers need, in addition to the cloud communications offerings they are already sourcing.

“You need to be in the conversation with regard to everything that your customer needs,” Intelisys president John DeLozier said at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo earlier this year. “Why in the world would you want your customer asking another partner about connectivity when you can provide that? Why would you want them to ask about a headset when you can provide it?”

Savwoir said previous efforts in the channel to encourage convergence lacked nuance.

“There used to be a lot of messaging about, ‘Hey, VAR, stop doing VAR stuff and come over here and be an agent,’ or ‘Hey, agent, why are you waiting all day for your money with this recurring commission stuff?'” he said. “But I think we’ve done a great job of identifying where the crossover is and finding those partners that see the value of both models.”