Pax8’s Walsh: ‘Let’s Educate And Keep Going’

‘This is not about your ability to understand and take on new learning and knowledge. We feel very confident about teaching around the cloud in general. This is if you don’t have the bandwidth and you want somebody else to take it on, that’s what [our] Pro Services is for,’ says Pax8 COO Ryan Walsh.

Ryan Walsh, COO of Greenwood Village, Colo.-based distributor Pax8, and Nikki Meyer, vice president of global vendor alliances, spoke at CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange 2022 event about how partners can capture more of the SMB market.

“It’s about value, and that’s becoming emphasized more and more. We have to really own that,” Meyer said.

The consumerization of the workforce is really at play, added Walsh, and it’s affecting both employees and customers.

“The expectation on easy and convenient has elevated,” he said.

Eighty-four percent of SMB customers said they’re going to purchase more around digital transformation in 2022, according to a Channelnomics study.

When customers perceived some products to be less complex, they would go online to buy, according to the study. Whereas if the solution was complex, they were seeking IT solution provider help, he said.

“That’s where the channel really elevated and dominated some of that feedback,” Walsh said. “They were very comfortable going with an IT [solution] provider, especially the more complex the solution was. But it’s not about a product sale. What’s incumbent upon us is to change that motion so that what we’re doing is providing a full set of services to these customers.”

[Related: OpenText: ‘We Want To Help You Plan Out Your Transition To Microsoft’s New Commerce’]

Walsh also discussed a Forrester study that surveyed Pax8 partners.

“They talk to them about what it’s like working with us,” Walsh said. “They do that to calculate an economic impact and they put together the benefit of that work, the cost of it and then, ultimately, what’s the ROI.”

The study showed that partners see 249 percent ROI over three years and $832,082 in profits.

“One of the top percentages of that benefit pool was selling assistance,” Walsh said. “Our sales reps are out there selling on your behalf and with you and teaching you, and the result of that was a 29 percent increase in revenue.”

Pax8 is emphasizing the importance of professional services.

“This is not about your ability to understand and take on new learning and knowledge,” Walsh said. “We feel very confident about teaching around the cloud in general. This is if you don‘t have the bandwidth and you want somebody else to take it on, that’s what [Pax8’s] Professional Services is for. Let’s elevate our game. Let’s educate and keep going.

Melvin Williams, owner of Philadelphia-based MSP M N Communications, likes how Pax8 is positioning itself to educate partners that the driving force of purchasing technology is going to be education.

“Pax8 is going to give us the ability to better serve our customers by helping us with upcoming products and better educating us,” he said.