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CDI CEO Rich Falcone: ‘There’s Obviously No Supply Chain Dynamics When You’re Selling Software’
C.J. Fairfield
‘We’re very diversified. We don’t have one vendor that’s more than 20 percent of our business. No. 2, we’ve shifted to a lot of software sales in the last two years. A lot of the companies and the solutions we sell, whether they’re security, backup, networking or even storage, are all software-defined,’ CDI CEO Rich Falcone tells CRN.
Rich Falcone has learned that engaging with customers and selling a solution over a computer screen is as easy as a face-to-face interaction.
“The biggest thing [the pandemic] taught me is that you can do anything you want over a monitor, whether it’s buying and integrating six companies or servicing the most complicated customers in the world,” said Falcone, CEO of New York-based solution provider CDI, No. 61 on CRN’s 2021 Solution Provider 500.
CDI has acquired several companies in the last year or so, most recently Candoris and Clearpath Solutions. Falcone said CDI buys companies for either geographical expansion or technical capabilities.
“I think we’ll continue to grow aggressively both inorganically and organically,” Falcone told CRN. “We‘ve made some great organic hires and invested in new markets like Boston and Florida with organic hiring and growth. It’s not about what you want to do or when you want to do it, it’s all about who you’re going to do it with. We’re not going to just look to expand geographically and plant a flag for the sake of it. If we wanted to do that, we can do it quickly. When we find a company that we feel fits our cultural fabric and our go-to-market thesis, we pursue those companies pretty aggressively.”
From supply chain issues to focusing on attracting and retaining talent to what customers are asking for, here is more from CRN’s exclusive interview with Falcone.
