Share This Article:

Explosive is the only way to describe the growth of solution provider CMT. This year, the company grew more than 3,000 percent and will close 2011 with more than $75 million in gross revenue. The success is fueled, in large part, by Symantec-based services, which provide access to more opportunities for customer engagement and product sales.

“Symantec is bringing us into deals for services and that leads to product sales, and that leads to solutions we design, deploy and manage,” says Victor Villegas, vice president of business development and supplier alliances at CMT.

Professional services as a catalyst for growth is a recurring theme at the Symantec Engage partner event this week. In 2010, Symantec withdrew almost entirely from professional services, turning over opportunities to partners that either had or would develop the capacity to deliver services. At the launch, partners were intrigued by the potential, but worried about the cost of training, certification and staffing. The prevailing attitude was cautiously optimistic.

The experiment is more than paying off, and CMT isn’t the only company experiencing significant growth driven by professional services.

Creative Breakthroughs Inc. (CBI) was an early participant in the Symantec partner-led professional services. CEO Steve Barone committed to making heavy investments in training, staffing and specialization that would enable CBI to take on Symantec’s professional services business. The result, so far, has been a near doubling of the business.

Part of CBI’s expansion was the hiring of Mike Betts as vice president of professional services. Betts’ job is nothing short of growing the company. He tells Channelnomics the focus today isn’t on hiring engineers or consultants, but rather salespeople to uncover services opportunities. The CBI strategy is to add consultative resources as the need arises.

Symantec partners say the professional services is profit engine, as the consulting talent engaged by customers comes with relatively little cost compared to product sales. While people on payroll can be expensive, solution providers do not have to share the revenue with their vendors.

Conventional wisdom says professional services are always more profitable than product sales. For most Symantec partners, professional services is a byproduct of their product specializations. For one Symantec partner, the opposite is true.

Conventus, a Symantec partner founded almost entirely on professional services, was dragged into product sales by its customers. As it increased professional services engagements, its customers started asking for product sales and support. Managing partner Sarah Merrion says customers wanted their security engagements from a single source, so Conventus added software and products to its portfolio.

Product sales are a departure from Conventus’ business model, but Merrion says the combination of products and professional services has proven more sustainable and profitable.

Patrick Hart, director of software and licensing, says the professional services driven by Symantec through channel partners have become a big factor in driving product sales and profitability. SHI is focusing on driving greater adoption of Symantec data loss prevention technology. While only a handful of customers are adopting DLP, Hart says many are contracting the consulting and security assessment service which leads to product sales.

“Consultants are profitable enough to cover the cost of having them as a resource,” Hart says.

Protracted engagements and expanding conversations is precisely what’s wanted of partners by Randy Cochran, vice president of Americas channels at Symantec. Several times during talks at Symantec Engage, Cochran extoled upon partners the virtue of not trying to sell everything at once and having ongoing conversations with customers to steadily expand engagements over six, 12 and 24 months.

“If you do not begin to have these conversations, even if they are not comfortable or out of your scope, someone else will,” Cochran said.

* * *

Lawrence M. Walsh is CEO and president of The 2112 Group, a technology business advisory service that specializes in optimizing indirect channels and partner relationships. He’s also the executive director of the Channel Vanguard Council. He is the former publisher of Channel Insider and editor of VARBusiness Magazine. You can reach him at lmwalsh@the2112group.com.

On Twitter:
Larry Walsh:@lmwalsh2112 | Channelnomics: @channelnomics