Qwest Outlines Its 2002 Strategy: Solution Selling

Qwest Communications International

Qwest wants to evolve into a solutions company, and partners are expected to play a key role in this evolution, said Qwest executives.

"Just because we are in bad times doesn't mean there isn't a tremendous opportunity to make money," said Joe Nacchio, CEO of Qwest. "You just have to do it differently."

The shift in strategy focuses on moving away from individual product sales to solution sales that combine Qwest products and services with those of its partners and other vendors.

An example is a recent win with GE Medical that combined the products and services of Qwest, MSP Loudcloud and EMC, the company said.

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"We are putting together the building blocks for solutions to build, run and manage customer environments," said Jarrett Appleby, director of global business accounts and sales with Qwest. "We see partners playing a critical role in the design and build stages."

Pat Lewis, senior vice president of Qwest Indirect Channel, sees partners playing a critical role in Qwest's overall strategy as well. "This [partner program isn't something that is just interesting to us--it's critical to us," said Lewis.

Qwest recorded about $1 billion in solutions business last year largely via partnerships with systems integrators, application partners and others, said Appleby.

Qwest is expanding its partner base to include such companies as application developers and MSPs. Qwest itself has branched out into the ASP space with Cyber.Solutions, which has been folded back into the company.

Qwest expects to unveil new security services in the second quarter as well as convergence services and offerings tailored to the SMB market later this year.

The company also intends to make federal government business available to partners, said Appleby.

Driving this evolution is a change in customer buying habits in light of the economic downturn, executives said. Qwest plans to play up its services such as hosting and other managed services that can potentially reduce equipment capital costs, facilities costs and support staffs.

Moving into 2002, partners are being encouraged to push emerging technologies such as VPN and IP telephony.

"It's time to create a foothold," said Martin Capuro, director of Qwest product marketing. "You should be talking to customers about more than their bandwidth needs. You need to lead with cutting-edge technologies and sell deeper with complementary services."

Partners are welcoming Qwest's solutions message, but caution that it won't happen overnight, or easily.

"It will be very challenging for Qwest to convince customers to give them a bigger share of their services and infrastructure," said Jeff Kaufman, CEO of service provider Linwood Communications, Newton, Mass. "They need to really prove that they are providing a lot of value by bundling and prove that they have the expertise."

For many partners, the shift to solution selling is inevitable. Many are already moving to a services model. Rod Francis, co-founder of International Business Exchange, Bronx, N.Y., said his company has been developing a solution for the health-care industry for the past three years and is now attempting to engage Qwest as part of the solution.

Emmet Tydings, vice president of master agent AB&T Telecom, Gaithersburg, Md., said he is pushing his sub-agents toward services.

"We want them to have residual sales, to build an incremental stream of revenue with services," said Tydings, who said he is firmly behind Qwest's solutions strategy.