Next Level CEO Sees Strong Growth In Wake Of Everything Channel Deal

Blanco said that the Next Level business has doubled every year for the the last three years and he is optimistic about continued strong sales growth with Everything Channel's marketing muscle and channel footprint. "With the Everything Channel relationship we now have access to key decision makers and events," said Blanco. "We now have access to more people to tell our story to. With that access we should be able to continue to grow the business at the current level for the next couple of years, especially with the demand we are seeing in the marketplace."

Blanco's comments came after Everything Channel, the parent of ChannelWeb, acquired Next Level, an eight-year-old Miami, Fla. company with 80 employees that manages as many as 30,000 reseller accounts for key vendors, including Microsoft, Intel, Symantec, SAP, Nortel, Seagate, Motorola, and Autodesk.

Under the terms of the deal, Everything Channel, a division of multibillion global business media giant United Business Media, will pay an initial $5 million cash for Next Level with a performance payout of as much as $6.5 million over the next three years. Next Level will continue to operate as a standalone business unit with Blanco reporting to Dan Dignam, senior vice president of sales and marketing services for Everything Channel.

Everything Channel CEO Robert Faletra said the Next Level deal is a "highly strategic acquisition" that assures that the division can provide everything clients need to accelerate their sales from market intelligence and sales tools to Next Level's hands-on reseller management aimed at helping vendor increase their product sales in the critical small medium business (SMB) market.

Blanco said often the channel partners that Next Level is managing are often overlooked by both vendors and distributors because of their smaller size compared to major reseller accounts. "We are taking the large number of great unwashed partners that don't have a voice with the brand and basically we become the voice," he said.

Blanco said there has been an astronomical growth in the last three years of solution provider influencers who are recommending products but not recognized by vendors because the product sales transaction is being conducted through etail or direct marketer behemoths like CDW. That was recently the case with Next Level itself upgrading its IT infrastructure using a solution provider to recommend product from the likes of Cisco, Hewlett Packard, and APC, but with the transaction going through Softmart.

Blanco said Next Level provides clients with sales recruitment, engagement and ongoing management of reseller accounts with a less than two percent cost of sales. He said Next Level has taken reseller accounts that had next to no relationship with the vendor and transformed into fast growth market share gainers for the client by providing sales services and reseller account management. "We're not only giving the vendor revenue, but we're hitting their competition right in the gut," said Blanco.

For example, Blanco said Next Level has helped Seagate grow its system builder business exponentially over the last four years with sharply focused services. "Before we got engaged these channel partners did not have a home," he said. "Their only interaction with the brand was with distributors. Now they have a relationship with the brand and are actually transacting business with distribution. The reason it works is we have a very low cost of sales model. This is the holy grail between marketing dollars spent and return on investment."

In one case, Next Level took a partner that had next to no sales for a vendor and transformed them into a $4 million a quarter sales leader. When the vendor went to move that solution provider to a field relationship, the VAR balked for fear that it would no longer get the high touch one point of contact services it was getting from Next Level, he said. "That's the power of the model," said Blanco.

Among the reseller account management services Next Level provides for resellers is everything from special bid pricing support, to help in locating product inventory, technical support assistance, and product road map details.