The single most important thing you can do to streamline your network and advance your career is create strong partnerships. 

Preferably, these relationships are with slightly crazy, fun people. 

Life’s better that way. 

Whether it’s industry leaders that have more experience, unique vendors that relieve you of burdens, or the end users that champion you…

the people we surround ourselves with, matter more than any one product.

Having served hundreds of businesses and IT leaders for over 18 years, I’ve learned that building strong partnerships has served me better than any other single strategy. 

The people I surround myself with and the companies I choose to partner with, have helped me go further and faster in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. 

Naturally, as humans, we have blind spots. 

We don’t know what we don’t know. 

And when it comes to seeking new knowledge, if we try to do it all on our own, we end up stuck, frustrated, and exhausted.

Let’s think deeply about the idea of leveraging partnerships and focus specifically on the partnerships with your voice, data, and cloud providers. 

Does such a thing exist in your world, or is it more of a wine you, dine you… happy to sign you? 

Quite often we don’t think of these companies as partners. 

We are constantly getting sold, pitched, and asked for 5-10 minutes so we can, “become more competitive in the marketplace,” or “see the new game changing GUI.” 

You get bombarded by phone calls, emails, and DMs on LinkedIn. 

When it’s the right time, we sit through meetings and presentations to upgrade a phone system, move expensive MPLS T1s to SD WAN, or migrate an internal exchange to Office 365/Google Docs. 

Whatever the scenario may be, this stuff eats up time and comes with consequences.

The partnership approach to upgrades and improvements is different. 

It’s not about taking in everything and then picking what the market has presented to us as a perceived “best product” or “winning company”.  

It’s not about what a beautiful, slick sales rep, presents to us… because beauty can be deceiving.

The partnership approach is not about being blown away by a presentation. 

It’s not about signing on the dotted line, because it’s the end of the 1st quarter. 

It’s also not about getting left with poor project management and tedious support after the sale is made. 

These types of relationships are broken. 

The right vibe is non-existent. 

Where are your morals and your values people? Oh, the humanity!

Learning how to leverage a partnership with your voice and data carriers will get you everything you didn’t know about.

Imagine working with people that care about your career success. 

Imagine that special vibe. 

Imagine making a friend, a trusted advisor, or a group of advisors over a lifetime. 

Doesn’t this sound more like a professional career decision? 

Partnerships make an impact and give us a life worth living, a better life with more time.

But first, what does not having a true partner look like? 

Let’s say you negotiate a great deal with a new provider.

You fight to get the best price.

You demo the providers, do the research, sift through all the product info, and let the reps take you to lunch. 

Finally, you present the numbers to key stakeholders and BOOM you blow it out of the water. 

But at the end of the day, even if you did everything described above, the carrier sells, your rep quits, the prices go up, your provider’s network gets congested, and your end users decide, for whatever reason, to act confused. 

Now your end-users need technical help, detailed explanations and specialized training.

This boils down to more work and less time to do anything of significant value.

So here’s the thing – when it comes to your providers and vendors, you could do all of the right things, but if you haven’t made sure to form a strong partnership, then it’s just a matter of time before you find yourself stuck in a loop of daily tasks and tickets. 

Unique bonds need to be made that are more than just a contract. If the vibe isn’t there, you’ll notice people disappearing after the sale is made. 

Your world won’t get any better.

What can we eliminate from our plates by creating the right partnership bonds?

Let’s take a look at the following: The biggest IT challenges. 

Most of us have enough tasks and projects to overwhelm our systems’ memory. 

We suffer from a severe case of context switching with task interrupts crashing projects, that demand we stay hyper-focused. 

Further, we are limited to the size of our team and budget.

The reality is that IT Managers are spending an overwhelming amount of time in numerous areas. 

The four quadrants in the slide above, represent areas under your influence, and all of them can be positively affected by creating strong partnerships. 

However, if we fail to create the right partnerships, then we can end up with more trouble tickets, end user complaints, and key stakeholders breathing down our necks. 

At that point, all we can do is wait for the contract to runout. 

It’s like being in jail, except it’s not 60 Days In; it’s 1,095 days of federal pain.

The right partner, however, can turn a three-day MAC request into a five-minute task. 

The right partner can turn three months of research into a one hour needs analysis meeting. 

The right partner gathers all your information and delivers the research. 

The right partner can buy out contracts, make early termination fees disappear, and help you deliver an impressive ROI report to the board. 

The right partner can move licenses, lower bills, and provide a team of people to manage your mobile devices, without ever changing your wireless provider. 

The partner approach is holistic and ongoing, versus a one-time transaction. 

If we are trying to architect a winning network, free up our time to lead, and effect positive business growth, then we must manage all of these quadrants successfully with limited resources. 

Is any of this ringing true? 

You’re not alone.

How do we do it?

Clearly, we need to start by creating the right relationships. 

Relationships cannot be one-sided, contractual agreements. 

Even when provider contracts are involved, a relationship needs to exist. 

That relationship needs to exist in the form of a partnership with measurable and reciprocal love.

• Where to get started?
• How do you find that Legendary Partnership that is knowledgeable and cares? 
• Where are those vendors that match your company’s culture and compliment the network you are architecting? 
• How can we Quickly Eliminate Providers that Do Not Meet our Exact Requirements Without Wasting Days or Months Researching (Custom APIS and Dev Teams included)? 
• How can we know for sure, see, touch, and feel before the purchase? 
• How do we do all of this without talking to Endless Sales Reps who waste our time trying to Sell us? 

More importantly…

• How can we engage our End Users, love them, listen to them, and become their Hero?

This may seem like an overwhelming list and imaginary place, but it doesn’t have to be.

Remember, you are not alone, and If any of this is making sense then you are in the right place.

After serving IT leaders for over 18 years, I’ve come to learn a few things… 

I wasn’t made to forever climb the internal sales rankings of corporate America. 

I fight for my customers, I don’t believe in getting paid first, I have a big conscious, and I like winning too much to be left with a product that doesn’t fit all use-cases.  

I’m a #1 on the Enneagram test, which can mean a depressing existence in the carrier/provider space, where mediocrity is the norm in a bureaucratic meritocracy. 

The carriers have a popular saying,

We’re better because we suck less.

This is a real saying I hear all too often.

For that reason, I quit and started an agency that takes a holistic approach to provider services in the mid-market space. 

I’m not alone. 

All of my colleagues feel the same way as I do.

We focus on difference niches and have different partners that fit us well. 

There is more than one of me, THIS IS NOT A “PITCH” … I hate that word with a deep passion. 

My point is… your solution is to find a seasoned veteran (or group of seasoned veterans), a partner that can help you make choices, because they have deep resources. 

It’s about doing more with less. 

These services are free, because master agents get paid by the providers. 

The providers actually prefer delivering their products this way and it doesn’t affect your ability to get a good deal or receive better service. 

In fact, it increases your chances of engineering, negotiating, and finding that long term partner who will support you for years to come. 

My technology firm, for example, has direct agreements with over 300 providers and we bill in excess of 28,000,000 per month. My team is comprised of ex-telecom C-Level Executives and seasoned Network Engineers. 

Our combined knowledge, and ability to engineer solutions that work, means service providers prefer to deliver their services through an effective and knowledgeable partnership. With us, carriers need not hire, train, or pay additional staff.

Providers pay us from small residual components of your bill, allowing us to provide you additional service and deeper discounts. Thus, it is in our best interest (and yours) that you receive outstanding service.

Everyone wins and the providers save from having to hire, train, and pay benefits to sales reps. Those same sales reps that jump from company to company. Those sales reps that hit 50% to quota and can’t waste any precious time supporting their customers. 

This is the reality. 

Telecom carriers and technology vendors are constantly changing within a volatile marketplace. 

We all know this to be true. 

My marketplace is characterized by an unstable mix of mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcies. 

Voice and data providers fall short in providing technical support.

Direct sales reps typically occupy positions for less than two years, which means your contract will outlive any personalized support.

Carriers focus their effort on selling you and getting you into billing status. Their goals are to show growth, appease investors, and sell their company for a profit.

Further, the average carrier contract lacks flexibility or bottom line accountability.

The result is that many unfortunate companies are stuck paying high prices for old products, receive unexpected bill increases, and the physical bodies supporting them, lack response time, professional training, or an ability to complete a simple change requests. 

These are the facts.

A partner, on the other hand, cares about your bottom line accountability, and they are held accountable to your success. 

They only get paid if you are happy and you pay your bill. 

They know relationships matter and it’s those relationships that deliver long term results. 

Further, they are careful who they choose to do business with. They don’t pretend to be everything to everyone. They pick and choose where to invest their time, and care deeply about those they choose to work with.

About two years ago, I made it my goal to fire all of my customers that I didn’t like. 

I decided to focus only on IT directors within the mid-market space. 

I don’t like banking, so I don’t take on partnerships with banks. 

I also didn’t want to support 150 cell phone stores with a single comcast connection and one phone line, so I ceased that partnership as well. 

What’s the point?

Find someone that loves you and is driven to work with you. 

You should like working with them, and they should like working with you. 

In other words,

you shouldn’t be just another number to help someone reach their monthly sales quota.

To be crystal clear, your solution to eliminate a lot of your to-do list, is to find a master agent. 

Preferably this master agent, or group of agents, should have extensive experience in what you are trying to accomplish. 

They should have free network engineering resources, access to security experts, and a deep product portfolio. 

Further, their knowledge base and access to behind the scenes executives, should provide you with creative solutions to problems. 

You should be able to leverage your agent’s research team, in order to find products and access benchmark-level pricing lows. 

Your partner should help you survey your end users and compile the data so you can echo back what your people are saying, wanting, and needing. 

They should be a partner in a financial sense, because they only get paid when you pay your bill. 

Finally, they should also be a friend, because their success is connected to your success.

Now go create good partnerships and win!