It's important to a telecom company that its channel partners know how to use their products. After all, how can a channel partner sell a customer on the usefulness of a product, if he does not know how to use it. It's much easier to sell a customer on a product/service if the salesperson shows a facility to use the product/service.
Keeping abreast of the technical training involved in the telecom business is a double-edged sword, too - but in a good way. Technical training helps salespeople sell the product/service but it also helps keep salespeople motivated to sell that product/service. That's because learning new things takes the boredom out of any job and because technical training makes their job easier.
When people say that a product/service sells itself, they really mean they heard the sales pitch from a person who already knows and understands the technology. They were impressed by how the salesperson not only knew the client/customer's problem but knew exactly how the product/service would solve the client/customer's problems. Keeping up with technical training plus understanding how telecom's technology works to solve customer problems comprise more than half the battle to knowing how to sell the product/service to a potential telecom customer.
Channel partners need something just as important as technical training if they are going to get in the door to meet a telecom's customers. They need to distinguish themselves from the competition. Channel partners need to know more about the telecom industry, more about the current trends for telecoms, and what's on the leading edge of technology for telecoms. Channel partners can teach themselves some of this by keeping abreast of the news but the telecom itself is a marvelous repository of much insider information.
Facilitating communications between the telecom and the channel partner sales force is critical to success. Telecoms have the inside track. They know what you don't know you don't know.
Understand the demands digital transformation makes on telecom customers and focus on the unique needs of the industry. Understand the data threats, data protection, and cybersecurity issues telecom customers face. Know the value that you, as a channel partner to the telecom industry, bring to the table as a liaison for telecom companies and their customers.
Understanding the particular issues raised by this era of cloud, big data, storage management, and edge computing requires channel partners to be a few steps ahead of telecom customers so they can help them face the future. Channel partners that can provide added value by becoming a trusted advisor to both the customer and to the telecom will reap rewards in increased profit which is a primary motivator for businesses.