When a Modern Customer Meets the Modern Technology Advisor
3DG Partners burst on to the channel scene in 2023 with a massive customer win. Learn how they're building their model.
![Technology advisor advising a client Technology advisor advising a client](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt4edfc2aab211a034/6523e9b799adf686ae7c0957/Technology-Advisor.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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Channel Futures: How did 3DG come to be?
[Partner and Chief Revenue Officer] Doug Cardozo: Guhan and I both recognized a couple gaps in the partner world. I historically came from some larger VARs. Guhan, of course, came from the customer side in a CIO- and CTO-type capacity. And we saw things missing. We saw things that we felt that we could improve upon. Not necessarily trying to be everything to everyone, but definitely specific areas where we could make a real impact.
The business started out doing hardware and software and people placement and recruiting and staff augmentation. Just a little bit of odds and ends until we stumbled upon this [technology services distributor] world. That ultimately changed everything, because the barrier to entry was next to nothing. It gave us an amazing platform to go out and start something from the ground up. It caused us to change how we look at the entire business. So when you ask us about where the business came from, and how it came about, it’s interesting. There’s kind of version 1.0 of the business, which ultimately started out more focused on hardware and people and consulting services.
And when we look at 2.0, it was us catching on to the [technology services distributor] side of things and recognizing, “Hey, this is ultimately where we want to shift our business.”
[Partner and Chief Operations Officer] Guhan Raghu: Honestly, I would almost say this this partnership started 10 years ago. I was running infrastructure and IT for Cash America, and I was really looking for a partner who could help scale that business. We were modifying the way we were doing things. And then I met Doug through Cisco. He was our Cisco account representative. And the way that Doug approaches these types of things is very different. Even though he was at a specific manufacturer, the consultative approach that he gave me was more of a partner saying, “You need someone who’s going to be staff boots on the ground. You need someone who’s going to be doing your network circuit providers.”
At the end of the day, the sales order said, ‘I’m selling you a bunch of Meraki stuff,” but what ended up happening is, I got a much broader view into, “Here are exactly the capabilities you’re going to need in order to expand and scale a business.” So if you take that at its core, that’s honestly where we first were very successful together, even though it was a client-and-manufacturer relationship. That relationship at the end of the day recognizes these gaps, and it’s just evolved into what Doug just described. How do we add more capabilities to what our customers need? In this case, a capability that I’m bringing is, I have actually have sat in that in that seat, and what the modern customer seems to be looking for – and even I would say the the the vintage customer is looking for – is a partner to help ideate and bring a broader set of capabilities.
I think channel allows for the broadest set of capabilities to bring to the market. Someone says, “Hey, I need help.” I’ll help them from my perspective, and Doug will help them from his perspective, which includes going out to the channel to say, “Who are the top players in these particular areas, and now how do I present that to the client rather than the client having to cold call Cisco or Effectual or SADA or whoever it is?”
At the end of the day, we’re able to bring an executable Consumer Reports to people. We can say, “Here are the top providers that we’ve worked with. And then here’s how we pull it all together.”
CF: In those previous jobs, had you ever run across a technology advisor? Whether they were selling to you or you were competing with them?
Raghu: I would say I have encountered pockets of it. I would describe what I’m needing, and I really did not like that it was a “yes man” on the other side of the table saying, “Yeah, we do that too. Yeah, we do that too.” And then ultimately they scramble because they are not the master of that particular area. They weren’t vendor-agnostic solutioneers. That’s one of the challenges that I had. An example is when when I was at Solis Mammography. We were growing women’s health centers like crazy. So I needed someone who could deploy iPads, who could do MDM and secure iPads. I needed boots on the ground during construction to cable and wire the new center. I needed PCs deployed and locked down. I needed a network to light up the location. That’s what we called the “center in a box.” And it’s hard to find one person to say, “I can do all this, but I can’t sell you the iPads because Apple’s a big pain in the butt to work with,” or “I can do this, but let me call Spectrum because at that particular locale Spectrum was really good at lighting up centers.”
So I ended up with a non-vendor agnostic set of partners there. I worked with Doug, and he thought outside the box. Wherever we didn’t have the relationships, he built them and brought that all in and made it turnkey to the point where even the contract that we created was three contracts: small, medium, large. When I hit go on that contract, everything just happened. It was wonderful.
Cardozo: It’s interesting. From Guhan’s lens as a customer, the legacy agents were selling point products. They were selling circuits. And you knew when someone was just selling you circuits, but the idea of what an agent is today is not just someone who could sell you circuits but someone who can provide all these capabilities across the full solution set. The solution set is so broad, and you can be so consultative to your customer that ultimately sometimes the customer doesn’t even understand what the agent model is. They don’t even look at you as a salesperson. They just look at you as a consultant.
So there can be people that Guhan may have worked with in the past or that I even worked with in the past that at the time I didn’t realize was an agent. I just viewed them as consultants, because they’re not representing a specific point product. They didn’t come across like a salesperson. And in my opinion, that’s what the modern agent is, right? It’s someone who’s so consultative across such a broad portfolio of solutions that the customer or even suppliers might not even fully understand that they’re actually representing a product on the back end of it. They’re just being consultative to solve a business need.
CF: There’s this ongoing debate between partners about whether you should charge for consulting, especially as people are going into enterprise accounts with the knowledge that they could be consultative for a year or more with a customer and that the deal might fall through at the end of that period. What do you think about the changes that need to be made to one’s business model in order to be more consultative?
Cardozo: I think some of it’s dependent on what market segment that business structured is toward. If a business is structured toward the midmarket, there are massive, massive changes that you need to make – to your point – in order to be able to weather the storm in the enterprise space and wait for that big opportunity to come by. And sometimes you won’t be able to do that by floating that cost and not charging for some of those consultation resources.
When we first started working with some of our large enterprise customers, because we have very much a hands-on consultative role where we’re ingrained into their teams day in and day out, we weren’t trying to charge for consultation services at first, but our customers pushed us to. The large enterprise company said, “Hey, I understand you recognize this as pre-sales activity which is non-billable. But with the amount of engagement, the amount of investment we’re going to expect from you guys, we need you to be eating in the meantime.” We’ve had large enterprise customers force us to bill them for consultation services, which is interesting, but it’s a sign of partnership.
Our business is very much structured in that way. I think there’s a fine line that needs to be drawn between what’s pre-sales and where begin billing for consultation services. Ultimately with us, I think sometimes we’re looking at, what level of collateral are we going to have to create to support this? Are there a lot of deliverables that need to be created? Is it going to warrant a bunch of work outside of normal business hours and evenings trying to craft documentation? — and things along those lines. Ultimately, that’s where we’ve seen things become billable and where we start billing for engagements.
Raghu: That’s a great point. The line between pre-sales and consulting is the one that you really have to almost define daily, depending on the task and depending on what they’re asking for. The clients that we’re embedded in right now are using us for all kinds of stuff. It’s not just sourcing partners or capabilities. It’s even organizational design and internal initiatives like that. Those are the types of things that is more advisory-practice and services-practice type of billable engagement. Whereas now if something comes up where the customer says, “Hey, we need to solve this particular problem with a technology capability,” that becomes more of a pre-sales activity. So that’s how we’ve really bifurcated the whole services practice versus a pre-sales engagement for something that will turn into potentially an MRR generating partnership.
DC: To Guhan’s point, anyone can just go and sell a box or a point solution (sell technology). But the modern customer is looking for a partner who can advise them not just across the technology, but also across their people and processes. With some of our customers, we’re helping with everything from contract analysis to executive coaching to internal organizational career ladders and employee development plans, and things above and beyond that, and comparing and contrasting that with what we’re seeing from other IT organizations. It’s not just about the technology, but it’s about how you help them navigate their own landscape effectively. How do you help connect the dots across the multiple different parts of their business to drive more uniform solutions for the end customer?
CF: I don’t know how much of a tangent this is, but there are some things you’re saying that remind me a little bit of what [Avant CEO] Ian [Kieninger] was saying around coaching partners on their hires and their general direction. Is there a comparison there to what you’re describing about how you’re engaging with your customers?
Cardozo: You’re spot-on. The modern TSD is different than the legacy TSD, just like the modern agent is different than the legacy agent. What you’re alluding to is, I feel like we’re doing things different from an agent standpoint at 3DG because we’re looking at our customers’ people, process and technology throughout the entire life cycle before they buy, while they’re implementing, after they implement, etc. We’re an extension of their existing team. The TSDs, to truly add value, need to do the same thing.
It’s interesting. I just got back from Chicago at Avant’s partner advisory council. You’ll go to these events, and you’ll learn about how they’re structuring their loyalty programs and the additional value-add and benefits that they bring to bear when you hit certain thresholds of business with them, and now they’re investing in more people and resources. And it’s all true and it’s all great. They might be investing in more resources to help with quoting and things along those lines, and that works great for smaller, more transactional businesses, but that’s not exactly what I need. But what Ian and [Avant president] Drew [Lydecker] and the team at Avant are doing that’s really interesting is, they give us access to them from a development standpoint, so I can have conversations with people that have built companies and people that have brought in outside investments and people that have been in our shoes. That’s no different than how our business model is. We work with customers because we’ve been in their shoes. These are people that have been in our shoes, so we can go to them and turn to them. Being able to have time with Ian and Drew is more valuable than any number of quoting resources that they can give me, and I’m picking their brain on: How do we structure our business best to build up our long-term valuation? And how should we handle growth strategies? How should we hire?
We’re having business conversations. We’re not talking about the technology. We’re not talking about quoting.
CF: I think there is a there’s a generation of advisors that came before you who got that coaching from various TSDs. And I think they somewhat took that for granted over the years, and they’re at some other TSD now. I was trying to ask [Telarus CEO] Adam Edwards, “How does this personal, human, relational component fit into your bottom line and business model?” I guess I’m trying to understand how those coaching/mentoring relationships will be valued in the coming years.
Cardozo: It’s about access. Avant brings me out to the partner advisory council, and now I have access to my peers. I have access to other business owners and other heads of sales and COOs and people whose brains I can pick. The community as a whole really comes together. Everyone views it as, a rising tide raises all boats, right? It’s not like, “You’re the competition. I don’t want to share any of my secret sauce with you, and you don’t need to share any with me.”
Even from leaving that [Avant] event, I’ve had a couple of the business owners from other agencies out there reach out to us and ask, “Hey, you guys are doing some interesting things and have put up some amazing numbers. I’d love you to come out and challenge my team to set aspirational targets and help motivate my team.” And this is someone who’s technically a competitor to us. But they also say, “I recognize that we hit a lot of pitfalls along the way that we would have done differently from the beginning. And I’d be happy to help provide you some guidance on from a business standpoint. Things you need to keep in mind, things you need to consider.” Access is important.
And partners are pouring into you in different ways than they have before. We had one supplier partner provide us MDF funds to completely redo our entire marketing and branding strategy. The website, our logos, our first meeting deck, our solutions brochures, everything. I think suppliers, TSDs, agents – everyone’s trying to get more creative about adding value beyond just the sale. We’re trying to add value beyond the sale. The suppliers are adding value beyond the sale: “Hey, we’ll help you with your marketing. We’ll help you build case studies.” For TSDs, it’s, “We’ll help you build your valuation.” Everyone’s looking at, “How do you add value before, during and after the sales cycle?”
CF: Many partners are trying to figure out what their referral partnerships are going to be. So some are going out and maybe signing a direct agreement with a security provider that might not provide the evergreen commissions they’d like, but they’re doing it for their customer. There are partners starting Microsoft practices, again, because their customers were asking for it. Others are getting asked about (potentially adjacent technologies) like managed print, mobility and hardware. As the technology model moves way from you all being “yes men,” how are you thinking about your referral partnerships and technologies that aren’t your core competencies?
Raghu: We don’t want to be all things to everyone because that ultimately makes us look bad and it damages relationships. So if I’m going to do something, it’s because we’re knowledgeable about it and we have the appropriate tool set. I can’t show up to someone’s home who’s got a bunch of nails, with a screwdriver. I have to have the wherewithal to understand exactly what their needs are and then figure out — am I equipped well enough to have the players in that space? That’s where I lean on Doug heavily. Doug knows the suppliers and the partners who can bring that skill set to the table. So far, we haven’t run across solutions where we’ve had to just say, “Hey, that’s that’s not for us, but here’s potentially someone to refer into,” but the goal here is to not just be all things to everyone.
And I think part of our our philosophy too is embedding ourselves so deeply into the team that we become very well socialized with what their problems and challenges are so we don’t end up even coming off like the “yes man” because we’re part of the team. We can help you find that source, that particular capability through someone else rather than saying, “Yeah, we can do that.” Because when that gets tested, you look foolish in front of the client. I don’t ever want to be in that position. And I would never deliberately put us in that position.
CF: What do you do when customers ask about hardware? How do you strategize around referrals in that area?
Cardozo: As our business has evolved, and as we’ve talked to other leaders in this space and other owners of companies, we’re particularly less interested in hardware. All the discussions we’ve had indicate that hardware potentially reduces your overall valuation when you look at the percentage of your business’ recurring versus what percentage is non-recurring. It just steers us further and further away from from hardware. The thing that is going to build a valuation is going to be recurring revenue. It’s going to be cross-selling products across different products and different solution sets. With hardware, it’s non-recurring, which will impact valuation standpoint a bit. It’s got heavy carrying costs that you have to float. You’re carrying on additional liability in case a customer doesn’t want to pay. And, frankly, I was a vice president of sales at a VAR during COVID-19. And I had customers come to me asking for net 180 terms, net 360 terms. Now you’re asking that hardware provider to be a bank. That’s not a business that we want to be in.
In a nutshell, we don’t want to be everything to everyone. We’ll do hardware for specific clients, but it’s mainly just to solve a need because they want to work with fewer vendors and we’re doing it … as a value-add because they’re asking us to. But it’s not something that we’re proactively trying to go push on all of our customers to increase our revenue. We’re happy letting that revenue go to someone else. There are plenty of other places where we can make an impact. We also feel it’s less strategic.
CF: I hear from telcos that say they want to use digital platforms to do quick and transactional direct business for SMB. But at the same time, I’m hearing that partners are getting more opportunities upmarket. I’m hearing that you’re getting into more accounts than ever with vendors, that channel integration is more possible than ever. It kind of feels like the tale of two cities. You the partners are more invaluable to the vendors than ever with large customers. But maybe things are speeding up on the SMB side with the vendors trying to maybe bridge the gap a little bit more closely to the end customer?
Cardozo: I feel like SMB is more primed for self-service. The tools that are coming out from the different providers and the different suppliers and even the TSDs allow people to do more self-service and streamline things a bit for SMB clients. On the larger enterprise side, we’re seeing people want more white-glove service, and they’re going to be really more focused on, how do I focus on my core business? I want to manage SLAs. So we’re seeing a big uptick in that community saying, “Hey, help us find the right suppliers who can take these things off our plate so we can focus on our core business.” They want the white-glove service.
When you’re talking about the tale of two cities, I do think it’s accurate; it’s just different approaches. I feel like self-service is more applicable to SMB and in the large enterprises, more white-glove service and so they can focus on strategic initiatives to drive additional revenue.
Raghu: Exactly. Bigger problems with proportionately much smaller teams to field those problems. That’s why they need that approach. They need that white-glove service. Whereas in SMB the problems are much smaller. Not that they’re insignificant. From a volume and size perspective, you can do that self-service through a direct supplier and then just go right into it. Problems are everywhere. That’s what keeps us all in this business to help people. But at the end of the day, it’s just different size and scale. And it’s amazing the disproportionate technology team sizes the larger the companies get. They are very lean and mean.
Cardozo: If you’re a small company, how much can you move the needle with something as simple as marketing? You do some marketing, and something takes off, and your business can grow exponentially by word of mouth and basic marketing. When you’re working with $30 billion companies, it’s going to take a whole lot to really make an impact on their bottom line. And there are two ways. You can drive some insane operational efficiencies within the business, and that can help increase profitability and drive growth. Or the other thing that you’re looking at is driving top-line revenue, which is really hard to do when you’re at $30 billion. I need people to just help take care of some of these elements of running technology for me, so I can look at more of the utility of technology, and using this technology to help me grow top-line revenue. It’s just a completely different approach.
Raghu: A lot of their people strategy predicates some of this. It’s hard to hire network engineers. All the good network engineers go to work for the MSPs, so these large companies are not able to keep certain core competencies in-house as well. The people strategy and capability and access to talent oftentimes predicates a bit of that strategy of, “Well, if you can’t staff it, you’ve got to partner.” That’s the build, buy, partner strategy assistance.
CF: When did this trend start of all the talent moving outside of internal IT? And does that show any signs of letting up?
Raghu: In my personal experience, in the past five years, it was getting harder and harder to hire people.
Cardozo: And that’s coming from Guhan’s customer lens, because he was the guy trying to staff as a CIO.
Raghu: There is a war for talent that has been growing. I’ve noticed that personally for the past five years. It could have been going on longer than that, but it has hit home.
Cardozo: From an agent standpoint too, it’s pretty interesting. Our customers are used to refreshing technology at three-, five-, seven-year intervals, right? They’re used to evaluating these things and rolling out new networks and doing some of that. They’re not as used to moving to manage services. How many times have they done some of these activities? When the customers decide to make that transition, there’s a bigger dependency on … TAs like us to help them navigate that landscape. What should they be looking for in those MSPs? What SLA should they be asking for? What contractual terms are normal in this industry? Because they don’t have the historical context from having done a bunch of these engagements before. There’s a bigger demand from the customers to come in to help them navigate that transition.
CF: As you’re looking at your own business, what sort of priorities do you consider in the hiring process?
Raghu: It goes into our overall business strategy. When we talk about enterprise clients and you talk about really embedding within, Doug and I have focused ourselves on these particular clients. This is me not speaking from experience, but maybe there are agents out there who are just focused on those large clients and they find that maybe there’s an inability to hire more because they’re constantly focused on just taking care of their biggest clients. Our goal is to be able to have that diversity of clientele so that if we bring on salespeople, Doug and I continue to focus on enterprise size customers, but then we bring on sales folks. We’ll work on the grand slams; they can hit 100 base hits. It’s Moneyball at the end of the day. And then we have a good, diversified portfolio of customers and a diversified portfolio of services that offers a much better quality of earnings on an enterprise value scale as well. So it makes all the sense in the world to do it that way.
Cardozo: The way that this industry is set up and the way that our business is set up as a trusted advisor, it’s easier than ever to give people a platform to dip their toe in the water before they jump in the pool. We’ve already begun hiring, and we’ve done it in a way to let people to try it out before they go all in. Our CISO is part-time right now, and he’s probably not far off from joining us full-time. But we’ve given him a platform by embedding him as a vCISO into several clients, and he’s able to see the demands of the job. He’s able to see the compensation structure, and he’s able to experience what it would be like working for us before he comes over full-time. The same thing with sales reps, because our whole business is built on referrals. We’re able to show them a way to dip their toe in the water before they fully jump all the way in. The barrier to entry is so minimal.
CF: It seems like it’s addictive to get a taste of the residuals.
Cardozo: It sounds too good to be true until it happens. I worked at Cisco and big suppliers like that for years, and you’re used to getting paid on these one-time deals, weathering the storm and waiting for the next one. Now you have a platform where people can make some residual money before they even fully commit. They’re going to have a paycheck one way or the other. You’re able to help them bridge the gap in career transitions. And furthermore, we provide referrals, regardless where that referrals coming from, even people referring clients to us from outside of the industry – people that aren’t tech people referring us people. It’s been a great platform for some of those people that feel less leveraged by their corporate jobs because they know that they can make a few bucks on the side by referring people over to us.
CF: Is there anything else that you want to talk about?
Cardozo: Challenging the way that the providers construct deals. Seeing what people are doing to get creative and do things different than they have before and challenging even the suppliers to structure their offerings in a different way that’s more palatable to customers, even though it might not necessarily be how everything’s written up in the contracts with the TSDs. Not being hesitant to challenge them to do things outside of the confines of those structures.
CF: Are there any examples that are coming to mind?
Cardozo: We do a lot of work in the retail space. And one thing that’s really commonplace in retail is how break-fix is handled from a maintenance standpoint. Typically, everything’s done on a pay-per-dispatch basis. So if something breaks, you’ve got to go roll a truck to a store, and you’ve got to spend a certain minimum number of hours of technician labor at that store, etc. We’re seeing the customer say, “We want budget predictability. We don’t want to have this variable expense all the time. I need to go to the CFO and give them budget predictability.” And we’ve had some good success in challenging the different suppliers and providers to find ways to change things that have historically been a capex cost into an opex cost and ultimately allow additional flexibility for the customer and budget predictability for their finance teams.
It’s things that some of the suppliers haven’t done before, but you’ve got to be comfortable with challenging them to do something differently. Maybe the right thing comes along, and they go create something specifically for that customer. What’s one of the things that you’ll see in the modern TA? A modern TA doesn’t just take the contract as it’s written from the supplier. A modern TA challenges the supplier to look at things differently and structure things in a way that’s more easily consumable and beneficial for the client.
CF: Is there anything else that you want to talk about?
Cardozo: Challenging the way that the providers construct deals. Seeing what people are doing to get creative and do things different than they have before and challenging even the suppliers to structure their offerings in a different way that’s more palatable to customers, even though it might not necessarily be how everything’s written up in the contracts with the TSDs. Not being hesitant to challenge them to do things outside of the confines of those structures.
CF: Are there any examples that are coming to mind?
Cardozo: We do a lot of work in the retail space. And one thing that’s really commonplace in retail is how break-fix is handled from a maintenance standpoint. Typically, everything’s done on a pay-per-dispatch basis. So if something breaks, you’ve got to go roll a truck to a store, and you’ve got to spend a certain minimum number of hours of technician labor at that store, etc. We’re seeing the customer say, “We want budget predictability. We don’t want to have this variable expense all the time. I need to go to the CFO and give them budget predictability.” And we’ve had some good success in challenging the different suppliers and providers to find ways to change things that have historically been a capex cost into an opex cost and ultimately allow additional flexibility for the customer and budget predictability for their finance teams.
It’s things that some of the suppliers haven’t done before, but you’ve got to be comfortable with challenging them to do something differently. Maybe the right thing comes along, and they go create something specifically for that customer. What’s one of the things that you’ll see in the modern TA? A modern TA doesn’t just take the contract as it’s written from the supplier. A modern TA challenges the supplier to look at things differently and structure things in a way that’s more easily consumable and beneficial for the client.
For Guhan Raghu and Doug Cardozo, running a technology advisor practice should go far beyond technology.
Raghu and Cardozo co-own 3DG Partners, an Allen, Texas-based technology advisor that has existed since 2018 but has hit the channel scene in a big way in 2023. 3DG recently landed what its vendor and distributor partners called the largest deal in the history of the agent channel, helping a nationwide retail chain establish managed broadband services.
3DG Partners’ Doug Cardozo
In addition to their business success, Cardozo and Raghu represent an interesting case study for the agent channel. Their business on paper falls into the category of an agent (now more commonly referred to as a technology advisor), which sources cloud and carrier services to customers and leverages its vendors for managed services, end-user billings and monthly commissions. However, both entrepreneurs have taken a very different career path than the average agent. Most agents started their careers at telecom carriers before taking an independent path, but Cardozo worked in sales at Cisco, and Raghu worked as a chief information officer on the customer side.
Technology Advisor Approach
3DG Partners’ Guhan Raghu
And like many up-and-coming technology advisors, they say they’re approaching prospective customers as consultants rather than as brokers.
“If you have a customer bringing you a solution and just asking you to go source it, that is not the right place for where we feel we belong. It’s more of, ‘Hey, let’s work together to figure out what are the options out there and what are the alternatives. Then get you ultimately connected with the best solution,'” Raghu told Channel Futures. “So I think the modern customers are looking for more of that. Whether they come to you directly on that in their first call or not is another story, but it seems like they’re looking for more of that advisory practice, whether they know it or not. They are actually looking for someone to be a sounding board and maybe even pressure-test the solution that they bring to you.”
Raghu and Cardozo shared the story of 3DG with Channel Futures. They also offered up perspectives on how IT departments are evolving in their procurement needs and how 3DG’s supplier and distributor partners have gone to market with them.
Read the interview transcript, edited for length and clarity, in the 10 images above.
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