Verizon's Famularo: Growth Is A Good Problem To Have

A New Era At Verizon

Adam Famularo, global channel vice president of Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Verizon Enterprise Solutions has been manning the provider's channel business for the past 10 months. Verizon didn't always have a reputation as the most channel-friendly carrier, but last year the provider refocused its efforts to work side by side with solution providers. Famularo, who focused nearly his entire career in channel sales, was hired by Verizon last September to help build on its existing channel efforts.

Famularo recently spoke with CRN about how Verizon's channel strategy has evolved and grown under his leadership so far. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.

What's keeping you up at night?

We have such big growth happening, so it's making sure the structural model within Verizon can keep up with the growth. There's a lot of planning I'm doing right now with the team, and I'll be doing that through August to get ready for the next year to ensure that we have all the support internally to manage this growth. We are tripling the number of quotes we do, and we have a team that is here to help assist the partners ... keep up with the strong demand that's happening in the field.

Outside of that, I'm wondering what new products or solutions I can bring to the mix that will continue to add to the growth going into next year. I'm spending a lot of time with our partners and customers to understand, based upon the portfolio that we have, what can add the most value.

What are the challenges Verizon partners are facing?

Each one is also dealing with growing challenges, too, so it's a good problem to have! They are wondering, 'How should I [work with] my resources, and where should I add them?' The conversations have very much turned into, 'How do we continue to grow at the pace that we've been growing?' and that's really where we are spending our time and energy right now with our partners. No one wants to slow down.

When Verizon hired you, how exactly did it want its existing channel strategy to change?

When they were interviewing for this role, the executive team had already decided that Verizon couldn't continue to go about it with just a pure, direct sales model. They can't expand their business fast enough and hit all the different market segments that they want to hit, and deliver complete customer solutions without working with channel partners. During the interview process, it was really important for me to hear that from the executives, and they all said the same thing: 'We want you to come on board because we want to double down on our channel partner business. We want to be able to build and develop a business that can ultimately help us scale more into new markets, bring more vendor solutions into the marketplace, and complement the sales team that we have today.' That was the objective from the beginning.

Were you able to take advantage of efforts made by the existing channel team?

Yes, the good news was that there was a team already. It was a scattered group -- one team was working on agents, and one was working on systems integrators and alliances. When I came on board, we pulled the groups together under me. There were some good things already going on we were able to build off of, like the team that built and developed our Verizon Partner Program. There was already a solid program in place that the team was just starting to ramp up and was getting some good momentum there. I was able to come on board and, ultimately, add to, and encourage new partners to come on board and get the business growing faster.

As global channel vice president, w hat was the first priority for you?

Going back 10 months ago, it was really first about understanding the 'where are we now,' and I [spent time] interviewing our partners and our employees. After that, I put together an operating plan that the executive team bought in on, and we've pretty much been executing on that operating plan. The plan included everything from ramping up the number of agents that we have that sell to the marketplace, adding more resellers, and really developing a reseller channel to go along with [the] agent reseller business. We also wanted to develop into other new markets like EMEA and APJ, and then building and developing our sell-with and sell-through capabilities with our systems integrators and alliances.

What channel-specific products and programs were launched within the last 10 months under your leadership?

The biggest [program] we launched was Partner Advantage, which was, in essence, the ability for new partners to come on board at existing levels they've already garnered with competing companies. Think of comparing it to programs that exist in the airline industry -- if you make it to platinum status on [one airline] and then you realize you're taking a route that [another airline] flies often, that new airline might allow you to bring over that platinum status ... We took that same model and rolled it out here with Verizon. That's helped us recruit al lot of new partners away from the competitors, and really getting them to see the benefits of working with Verizon.

From a product standpoint, our big focus with our partners is around our networking products and our IT layer. We've seen over 100 percent growth, and our partners are doing fantastic.

Of these services you've been responsible for helping to launch for partners, is there one that you are particularly proud of?

That's like asking, 'Which kid do you like the most!' But, another thing I brought into play is now we do a quarterly business review with our partners. Every six months we get together with all of our partners, and then every three months it's more local one-on-ones. I've got partners that [are saying] in the month of June and July, there has been more business done with Verizon in those two months than in the entire prior year. That's the kind of stuff where you think, 'Wow, it's really working,' and we couldn't be prouder of how these partners were able to grow their businesses.

How instrumental have master agents been in helping to change the minds of channel partners as it relates to working with Verizon?

Absolutely huge. The big thing with working with Verizon, and other telcos for that matter, is getting acclimated to the systems, processes and the operational components to the business. It's not easy to learn and it does take time. The value that the masters bring is they know all of it -- they know the operational business processes, and how Verizon works so [the partner] can go to work and focus on selling and managing customer relationships. Then, they can work with the master when it comes to booking, processing and order entry of deals.

What does the future road map for Verizon's channel strategy look like?

Without giving too much away, I like to give partners a feel for what's coming next. We are going to be coming to market with both our cloud products, as well as security products soon. Stay tuned!