Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Christopher Jones - Behind the Scenes of GTT’s Channel Reinvention
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Christopher Jones, National Vice President of Partner Channels at GTT, to unpack how he’s leading a bold transformation of the company’s indirect strategy. From restructuring roles to removing internal silos, Chris shares how GTT is redesigning everything around one principle: making it easier and more rewarding, for partners to do business.
We explore how GTT is building a channel model fit for complex, global enterprise customers, including:
- Why they redefined the role of channel sales directors to focus purely on partner relationships
- How a fully integrated customer success model eliminates channel conflict and accelerates deal velocity
- The surprisingly powerful role of compensation accuracy in earning partner trust
- How cross-functional buy-in, from product to finance, is enabling true partner-first execution
- Why being “boring and predictable” is GTT’s secret weapon for long-term partner loyalty
Chris brings deep experience from across the channel to reveal what it takes to build a scalable, sustainable partner motion that actually lives up to the hype.
If you're looking to scale your partner program with clarity, integrity, and speed - this one’s for you.
Connect with Christopher: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-jones-47392b/
_________________________
Learn more about Channext 👇
https://channext.com/
Watch on YouTube ►
https://www.youtube.com/@channext
#channelmarketing #channelpartners
Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest back. For the first time ever, we've got a two-parter, chris. Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Great to be here, alex. I'm happy to be the first two ever. We've got a two-parter, Chris. Welcome back to the podcast. Great to be here, alex.
Speaker 1:I'm happy to be the first two-time participant. Yeah, it's really good. Last time we spoke to you, you were running the global channel at AT&T and now you've landed at a different acronym, at GTT, so maybe you can talk us through what your new role entails.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so back at the end of 2024, I left AT&T and late January I joined GTT and there's a lot of people have taken a lot of enjoyment out of the fact that I couldn't come up with a company that didn't have two TTs in the name. You can see the coloring is a little bit different, but at GTT I am the National Vice President of Partner Channels for North America and we are really building out a partner-focused model at GTT and it's been really exciting. There's a lot of really good things we're doing, and GTT is a company that probably a lot of people haven't heard of, but there's a lot of really good things we're doing. And GTT is a company that probably a lot of people haven't heard of, but there's a lot of really good things that we're doing in the partner space and I'm sure we can talk about that as we get into it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. It's obviously. I find it well, if you like, change. Landing in a new environment and a new strategy and culture is an exciting one. Maybe talk us through some of the demographics in terms of what you landed into and some of the vision in terms of what you're trying to build.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so GTT is probably a really big company that a lot of people don't know who we are. We are made up of roughly 45 acquisitions over the last 15 plus years. We're a global company, so about half of our revenue comes from the rest of the world. The other half of it comes from North America. But we're really a purpose-built entity that our sweet spot customers are enterprise customers and they're really enterprise customers that are geographically diverse whether geographically diverse in North America, geographically diverse around the world that really need access to their data. So it's a networking company, but it's purpose-built. Our sweet spot customer is that multi-location, geographically diverse customers that values secure connectivity around the world.
Speaker 2:I would add to that that a lot of people don't realize this we're the fourth largest IP backbone in the world that we operate and so, from a carrier perspective, we bring a lot of the things that a carrier would bring At the same point. We aggregate the last mile. So we're not really a carrier, we're not really an aggregator, but we're kind of the best of both worlds. We have 2,700-ish employees spread around the world, I think we're in 27 different countries. We have customers on six continents, and so we're a large company but we're very specialized so not everyone is necessarily familiar with us and we're candidly, alex, we're trying to change that right now.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and so you enterprise multinational, diverse locations. So that's a recipe for a complex channel build because that's a complex customer to serve, working backwards from the end customer. I imagine that the channel that you walked into at the beginning of the year isn't the channel that's in situ today. You're going to have made some critical changes of the year, isn't the channel that's in situ today. You're going to have made some critical changes. Talk me through how, from a strategic level, you evaluate the current state of play and the changes that you need to make.
Speaker 2:So GTT has been sort of rebuilding our go-to-market strategy for the last 14, 15 months, as sort of new leadership has come in and indirect has really been the final piece of that puzzle. And GTT added not just me, we also added Sarah Seegers, who was the channel leader at Lumen. She joined just before I did and what we're doing is we're building out a channel, a partner program, that's focused on being partner obsessed. Right, if you read anything about GTT, any things that we're publishing right now, it's partner obsessed. And so back to what's different. The very first thing is our channel managers are actually they carry the title of channel sales director, and if you are a channel sales director at GTT prior to January of 2025, you are responsible for managing partner relationships, finding new partner relationships and oh, by the way, you had to manage the customers of what the partners sold to GTT. So when you really dig into it, they were probably spending 85% of their time managing customer relationships on behalf of GTT and about 15% of their time they were actually managing partner relationships and looking for new opportunities. So, in theory, gtt was in the channel. The team that was here did a really, really good job, but, given that it was a model where you had to sort of farm what you hunted, using the hunter-farmer mentality.
Speaker 2:The channel program wasn't really expanding and part of our 2025 forward strategy is really to become partner obsessed, and so we've rebuilt the rules of engagement. We've rebuilt the job descriptions. A channel sales director at GTT right now is solely responsible for partner relationships, managing the partner relationships that we have, activating new partners that haven't been sold for us, and then we've built a full-on channel integration model where we don't have blocked accounts. There's no GTT-only accounts. We're completely channel integrated so that when a channel sales director finds an opportunity with a partner, they're going to introduce the partner to the enterprise seller at GTT or the wholesale seller at GTT, create a relationship between the channel partner and our sales team and then we're going to go to market to sell and while that's happening, the channel sales director will stay a part of the process to make sure that we don't get a skew of rules of engagement and those kinds of things, but their focus is on now finding the next opportunity with the next partner and doing the next introduction.
Speaker 2:On top of that, we've actually got a customer success team here at GTT so that when you think of day two, the contract sold, the network's installed and you need to do lifecycle management, you need to do MACD work, you need to do contract renewal work. The customer success team at GTT will work with the customer and the partner to do all of that. So, instead of asking a channel sales director to do channel management, pre-sale pricing, contracting, project management, customer success on the backside, we're actually giving the entire organization, as well as the partner, sort of the gift of focus. You do what you're good at, which is managing customer relationships. We'll do what we're good at in the channel which is managing customer relationships. We'll do what we're good at in the channel which is managing partner relationships.
Speaker 2:Then we've created a model where the enterprise sales team and the customer success team can do what they're good at, which is managing customers on behalf of GTT. But everyone's happy because we don't have channel conflict. We're fully channel integrated and what we're finding is especially, as you touched on it, it's a complex sale. When you're selling to large, geographically diverse customers. The speed at which we're identifying opportunities, bringing opportunities together and going through the sales process is moving faster than we've ever seen it before.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, chris, and it sounds like you've really remapped what I suppose, in more agnostic to GTT lingo, would be a channel account manager's function. Now, when you build a difference in approach when it comes to sort of partner strategy, partner feedback and ongoing feedback is sort of critical, right? I imagine that the structure that you built today is a version one, or maybe even a version two, because you've already made a few tweaks, but having that continuous feedback back from partners in terms of what's working, what can be optimized, is sort of critical for long term success. How do you galvanize that behavior within your own teams to ensure they're asking those tough questions to get that feedback back?
Speaker 2:I think, if you think about it, alex, the benefit is obviously I came from somewhere else, sarah came from another very large channel program as well. You take the two of us together and we're working with Janet Shine from JSG Group, who I know is also another Channel Next speaker, right, who also has a lot of experience in the channel. You bring the three of us together. We've had a lot of opportunity. We know what kind of works. We've also had an opportunity to implement things that don't work. We've gathered a lot of feedback from a lot of the partners in North America that live in our space, and we have a lot of I'll call it bruises and scars from those actions. And so what we've tried to build here is a program that is targeted to what the partners have told us over the years they're looking for, and also we have a sense of what's going on in the industry with the people that we compete with, and we know what they're doing. And what I would tell you is we're very purpose-built, for what is a partner looking for, what are the pain points that partners have and how do we build to it right. One thing, and it almost sounds like table stakes, but when I got here and I started introducing myself and meeting with people at GTT. One of the teams we talked to was compensation right, and I went into the compensation team and I said, like talk to me about how do we do things, how was our process, what's the speed, what are the volume of disputes? And you know none of us are ever satisfied with what we're doing. But when we started having the conversation, you know the average dispute at GTT lasted three days before we resolved it and our disputes. You could count probably on one hand or two hands the number of disputes we were dealing with on a monthly basis. And when you really think about where a partner wants to invest, a partner wants to invest in someone who takes their business seriously and you don't want partners spending all their time with you as a supplier, chasing you down trying to make sure that you're paying them correctly. That should be table stakes right. And if you can't manage paying a partner right, what's going to make a partner think that you could be trusted with their most valuable asset, which is their customer, especially when it's a complex customer situation? So it's funny some of the things that when you start working at a new company, you want to check on and most people probably.
Speaker 2:I know, when I go to sort of industry events, compensation, compensation, accuracy and how well you do that people don't pay attention to. But when you talk to partners, none of us do it really well and it's almost disrespectful. Right to the comment that you, where we were talking a few minutes ago, what are partners worrying about? As you're a new supplier trying to gain air in a space, you have to make sure you have the table stakes things, because we all want to say how unique we are, how cool we are, what our solutions are doing, but you have to be trustworthy, right, and and that's what we're trying to do is go out into the marketplace and earn the trust of the indirect community, the partner community Compensation is a piece of it Understanding their feedback of what are they experiencing from others that are competing in the industry for mindshare, and then also what makes us unique and different as a supplier.
Speaker 2:Because, if you really think about it, there are so many suppliers that say, especially in today's day and age, where indirect is really a buzzword and everyone's trying to build an indirect strategy, everyone will say we're focused on indirect, the key that I always challenge partners to do, to dig underneath, underneath it to say, are they really focused on indirect?
Speaker 2:Are they living their words? Paying compensation timely, accurately? That's living the words. Building a rules of engagement, a program that's designed to make a channel partner want to do business with you, instead of sort of having this mentality of you will do business with me. How do you earn the opportunity to do?
Speaker 2:One opportunity, two opportunities, three opportunities and that's what we've been doing, alex and talking to the partner community to say this is what we're building at GTT, this is what we think. The pain points in the industry are when you're selling to enterprise customers like this, and the feedback, I'll tell you, is just unbelievable. The pain points in the industry are when you're selling to enterprise customers like this, and the feedback, I'll tell you, is just unbelievable. I would tell you it's almost like a perfect storm from a timing perspective, because it seems that the partner community here in North America in this space is looking for a supplier that actually delivers on what they're committing to delivering and is committed to building a partner first, partner obsessed mentality. So it's been, really it's been. I've been here just over 90 days and it's been the reaction to what we're doing, the input that we're receiving and the desire to help us be better by sharing is just blowing me away.
Speaker 1:You also talked about getting teams to play in position right, and I think the structure that you've built is obviously optimal. You have partner people doing partner stuff, you have customer people doing customer stuff and you have customer success people making sure customers are successful, which, logically, when you frame it like that, feels like an obviously obvious structure to align. But the coordination between those entities especially when you bring in the fact that that's not only in your own internal organization, there's also partners involved building that trust and alignment between those teams can be challenging, especially if the road behind is somewhat damaged. Talk to me about how you build that belief, build that trust and build that unity cross-functionally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to. You'll have to go back, alex, and just read. Watch the way you asked this question. It's almost funny to think about partner people doing partner stuff, customer people doing customer stuff and how unique that is Customer success. People doing partner stuff. Customer people doing customer stuff and how unique that is Customer success people doing customer success stuff. How unique that sounds to have people doing what they're good at Right and the value that brings Right.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I think we all overcomplicate what it is we do and when we start overcomplicating it, we lose the forest through the trees. But back to your real question what have we done? So? Gtt is fully bought into this, from the board to our CEO, to the senior leadership team. We've actually spent time together with them making sure that our chief technology and product officer understands how we build products and solutions and offers that are partner-friendly, right, because so often. Just I'll use an example.
Speaker 2:When you think about solutions, we tend to talk about solutions from a customer perspective. What is the value to a customer? But if you're really a channel partner-first company, you need to talk about how the solution works for a partner. How does a partner support their customer? How do they talk about your solutions to a customer, what are the things that they're going to be seeing, whether it's in portals or those kinds of things? How do they talk to their partners, to their customers, about it? So if you're going to be partner first, partner obsessed, you need to make sure that from the technology, from your products, from your solutions not just thinking about it from a customer perspective but thinking about it from a partner perspective, and there's sort of two value propositions you need to have why does a partner want to learn about GTT? Why does a partner want to position GTT with their end user customers? And how do you enable a partner to have that conversation, being respectful of how a partner interacts with a customer? And guess what? They sell other things, they might provide other services, they might do other consulting for that customer. And rather than being an arrogant supplier that thinks the world revolves around us, what we're trying to do is do everything. And so that example, from a product perspective, we're doing that from a marketing perspective, we're doing that from a finance perspective, we're doing that from an operations perspective.
Speaker 2:Everyone and at GTT we've decided, from the board to the CEO and his leadership team they're talking about and they want to hear from us in the partner channel. How do we succeed with partners? How do we change the way we operate and how do we tweak the way we operate? You don't have to. It's not like a full bore.
Speaker 2:You know, today we wear black and tomorrow where we wear white, but there's a tweak to everything you do if you want to embrace partners and make a partner feel like you're serious, because so many companies say you know what? We're going to have a partner strategy, and then the process is completely internally oriented towards a direct seller, a bad seller, and there are still things like firewalls and all those sort of things that a partner can't get through. And so if you're going to be a partner-first mentality, you need to build everything and a support structure that acknowledges that. Oh, by the way, customer success, customer service a partner may call in on behalf of the customer and you need to make sure the people that take that call or open that ticket understand that the partner is different than the customer.
Speaker 2:But you need to be respectful of that relationship and we have to have ways that we can work with them. So it's the actions behind the words and the way you build that sort of channel integration model is. If everyone inside the company is thinking that way, there's no other way to do it right. Our model of going forward is we're a partner-centric model and everything we do whether it's operations, marketing, product technology, sales, customer success we're working together so that we can integrate partner into how we do things. So it's not a direct model and an indirect model. It is the GTT model that embraces partner channels and I think that's why the partner community is embracing us the way they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we talk a lot on this podcast about what I've termed the three Ps product program, personnel and, I think, so many businesses. They focus on product, which makes sense. Stuff building, good products is always a fairly good idea, but when it comes to making channels successful, having a good product is table stakes. That is brilliant. You can join the conversation, but then program design and the team that you wrap around your program is everything, because at that point you can have a killer product and someone else can just have a good product.
Speaker 1:But if their program is really good ie they make a lot of money and you're really easy to do business with those are the basic two criteria that you need to hit, and the team that wraps around you're really easy to do business with. Those are the basic two criteria that you need to hit. And the team that wraps around that is a joy to do business with. I sort of like your phrasing around. You know sometimes we overcomplicate it, but does a partner make lots of money, are you easy to do business with and is it a joy to be around you? Hey, get those three things very right.
Speaker 2:And the rest of it, I feel, solves itself pretty quickly. Oh, and I think, alex, I'm sure we would have talked about this last time we spoke, because I always talk about it. But my goal, always from a strategy perspective, is, as a supplier, to be boring and predictable, right? You don't want to be a heart attack chart where your partners are this quarter you're doing this and next quarter you're doing something different. You want partners to look at you and say I trust that this year, this quarter, next year, next quarter, the strategy is the same and they're not changing on us. It's not a bait and switch, right? Because at the end of the day, think about the kinds of customers we're selling to Large, distributed, global customers. They don't want to take their network out every couple of years and switch providers.
Speaker 2:If you think about what are the biggest pain points that a large customer that I've described in our sweet spot have Truck rolls and installations are painful. Maintenance outages are painful. Every supplier, when you install your service, it works. But you need to be understanding what are the pain points of your customers. You need to build solutions to it. But think about, if you're a partner Partners don't get paid on a conversion of a network from one supplier to another. As I try to explain to people, that's sort of pro bono work. Right, they're doing that to earn the residual commission and then that residual commission is going to get paid to them over the life of the contract and beyond and so we all need to think about so.
Speaker 2:Many companies think about the value of a customer in terms of contract length, but if you think about it from a partner perspective, the partner wants to install something and wants to have multiple contract lives. I guess would be the more grammatically correct way to say that before there's a change Because the second there's a change they go back into pro bono work on behalf of a customer and a supplier. And who wants to do pro bono work? So if you can create a situation where the partner is implementing a solution and you're predictable and you're built around the customer and what the customer needs, that partner is happy to put a service in and have that service be in for 10 years. Right, because once you get it in and it starts billing, that's the value of residual compensation, the annuity model. The longer a service is in, the more money the partner makes. That doesn't have sort of cost connected to it. And so that's part of why it's so important as a supplier not to have strategy du jour to create that instability with a partner.
Speaker 2:Because if you're instable, the partner is going to say, all right, they're never going to sell a substandard solution to their end user customer, but they're going to look for suppliers. Once you get through the sort of the table stakes, does your solution work? They're going to look for suppliers that they feel like they can trust for the long haul. And if you're not trustworthy and if they don't have confidence in your program, they're not going to give you the opportunity. And so one of the things that we've been trying to build at GTT is building a level of trust, given who our sweet spot customer is.
Speaker 2:The customer doesn't want to tear out their network every couple of years. We don't want our partners to tear out the customer every couple of years. We don't want that to happen. So if we can do something, that's a win-win-win for everyone. It's a win for the partner, it's a win for us, it's a win for the customer. The upside opportunity there is not the life of a contract, but it could be the life of a customer. It could be three, four, five contract cycles of a relationship, and that's the best thing for everyone involved in the equation 100%.
Speaker 1:I was hoping to put a better tagline on this podcast than Chris Jones boring and predictable but your strategy is down. Awesome, chris. It's been excellent having you on and sharing your wisdom, and I'm hoping we can get you back on in a few months' time to have you as a third iteration of this so we can talk about what the next phase of your channel strategy will be. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Speaker 2:It's been awesome absolutely thanks for having me and I'm glad I could be here a second time cheers, chris.