Crafting the Future with onesource: Jared Parker on Technology Expense Management, Mobility, and Trust.

Mastering Technology and Mobility Expense Management with Jared Parker

In this engaging episode of 'The Wireless Way,' host Chris Whitaker welcomes Jared Parker from One Source. They delve into Technology Expense Management (TEM) and Managed Mobility solutions, detailing how these services can streamline operations and optimize costs. Jared highlights the importance of visibility into expenses, the integration of wireless management, and shares insightful strategies for partners to add value and trust in client relationships. Tune in for actionable advice on leveraging TEM and mobility to enhance business efficiency.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
02:13 Jared Parker's Career Journey
03:32 The Science and Art of Marketing
10:33 Mentorship and Patience in Career Growth
18:52 The Evolution of the Channel
21:54 Embracing Change in Business Relationships
22:49 Challenges in Scaling Family-Owned Businesses
24:07 The Importance of Trust in the Industry
25:09 Shifting from Direct to Channel Sales
26:01 The Role of General Practitioners and Specialists
26:50 Encouraging Partners to Expand Their Offerings
29:41 Technology Expense Management (TEM) Trends
34:52 The Complexity of Mobility Management
42:26 BYOD and Corporate Device Management
45:05 Final Thoughts and Parting Words

More about Jared

More on Onesource

Transcript

Chris: 0:00

Hey, welcome to another episode of The Wireless Way. I'm your host, Chris Whitaker, and I'm grateful that you're here. As always, I know you're busy. There's a lot going on in everyone's lives, so I'm grateful for you. And I'm also super grateful for Jared Parker. He is my guest today from One Source. A little bit about him as always before we bring him on. He is a marketing revenue strategist. Gotta have those. An organization who believes the most effective work happens. Love this where data meets empathy. He uses insights to guide stra guide strategy, tell stories that resonate and drive measurable growth, not just on spreadsheets, but across the customer journey. And and we've all seen companies that make decisions on spreadsheets only. Although that can work at times, I find it usually does not. You have to, there's a lot more to factor than just the spreadsheet. as a leader, he takes pride in building high performing teams and mentoring individuals in creating cultures where people feel empowered to do their best work. And that's critical where leading a strategic initiative or coaching someone through a challenge, he believes good leadership is rooted in clarity. Trust genuine interest in people. that's the difference between a leader and a manager. Folks manager manages spreadsheets and processes. A leader does those things. Glad to see that. Jared. So outside of work, which is great to hear this include in the bio, he is usually traveling with his family, fly fishing. Maybe on the golf course. May I gotta clarify, does that fly fishing on the golf course or things,

Jared: 1:31

Could do.

Chris: 1:31

Yeah, it could do both, right? Yeah. I see people fishing on golf courses all the time are chasing fresh powder. He says that he has found the best ideas often come when you are away from the desk. And I do agree with that too. Jared, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I.

Jared: 1:48

Doing fantastic, Chris. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Chris: 1:52

glad. My favorite word as you, you may know. Fantastic. Powerful. Word. You say it enough, it does change the chemicals in your brain, I feel like. So yeah, keep using the word. Fantastic. I'm glad you're doing fantastic. And as always, I love to, I love tha thanks for, for the bio. Thanks for being here. But most importantly, what's not in the bio, how did you get to where you are today?

Jared: 2:13

Yeah, it's an interesting comment'cause you mentioned I'm a marketer. Marketer and a revenue strategist, and that is 100% true. I might be a reluctant marketer. Whole career started off on the sales side, and even that was probably reluctant as well. Background always had me envisioning something on the, in the sciences, probably following the family footsteps down the medical route. Life happens, you end up down a completely different path. I found myself doing, majoring in computer science in college, never programmed outside of college. First job was in sales at BellSouth late, a long time ago. And that kind of led this journey. That had me questioning more and more, like the scientist in me really wanted to understand how companies generate revenue and align their strategies. And I knew pretty quickly early on that I wanted to be involved in revenue generating activities. I just didn't wanna necessarily always be on the sales. And as things happened and I evolved. Direct sales into channel sales, into a combination of both leadership and then ended up on the marketing side. And it's always fascinating when you find a passion you didn't know that you had. And the rest is kind of history from there.

Chris: 3:32

Yeah. What's interesting about your story? It took me back as you're, it. A couple of things I feel like are almost, I. in a sense that, the scientific approach and. Having a genuine interest in people and

Jared: 3:47

yeah,

Chris: 3:47

they're almost opposite in a way, right? Because science is really about the process. You always hear follow the

Jared: 3:51

correct.

Chris: 3:52

sometimes science doesn't make sense, whatever, but it's a it's whatever the science says. But then dealing with people, the human touch you gotta be open-minded, you have to really, everybody's different. You know what, just'cause someone follows a process, two people can follow the same process, what I'm getting at, and maybe have different outcomes, right?

Jared: 4:08

Correct.

Chris: 4:09

science would say, Hey, if you follow this process, you get this outcome. So that's interesting. And also the other one that I find interesting and I share with you'cause I like to think of myself as an organic marketer. Taken marketing classes and courses in, in school, whatnot, but do not have a marketing degree. But I know a lot of people that do, and oftentimes I find like marketing and sales, sometimes they butt heads,'cause you have someone with a marketing degree that stays in the office. And if you're a marketer, you don't have many friends listening that are, take offense to this.'cause it's true. You stay in the office. You look at all your case studies and all your, different, campaigns and initiatives. Never talk to a customer, never been in the field, never stood at the booth and talked to people. But yet you tell salespeople how to do the job that are actually out there doing. And I've always

Jared: 4:53

Right.

Chris: 4:53

that. But I do appreciate, and it's a good friend, Amy Bailey. I dunno if Amy, she,

Jared: 4:59

Don't.

Chris: 5:00

now she has her own company, unusual, unusually. Marketing. I always get that messed up. Unusually unusual marketing. Yeah. She's also helps run the channel marketing association. I had a boss say what used the phrase to describe marketing is the arts and craft department, because, that's another thing again, forgive me marketing friends, but it's true marketing. They'll come to me going, I need the content. I need all the stuff in the PowerPoint. all they end up doing is go behind me and check the fonts, check the colors, and make sure the graphics are good. I'm like, oh, that's arts and

Jared: 5:30

Yeah.

Chris: 5:31

my old boss, Kevin Ney at Comcast, he always used to irritate the marketing department by calling them arts and crafts because that's what he felt like. That's all they did.

Jared: 5:38

Right.

Chris: 5:39

there's so much if, when you truly get into the science of marketing. Looking at what's working. There's definitely an element there that is needed. So as much as I love to give my marketing friends a hard time it is a necessary part of any organization,

Jared: 5:52

yeah, I think it's an interest. It's an interesting comment too, because the process is important, right? How we do it, how we structure it, why we're doing it the way we're doing it. I think the key thing that everyone, regardless of I. If you're in the medical profession, if you're in, manufacturing, if you're in marketing, whatever it might be, is at the end of everything you're doing is a person, right? And every person has a different way of interpreting value, has a different way of processing data, has a different way of feeling, a different view on the world. That's where that, that understanding of the human component I think really comes in. And what I'm really passionate about is that you have to blend the two. Like data is important because we have to be able to make big picture decisions, but then at the same time, we have to be cognizant that the execution is impacting a diverse set of people. And, you do things like segmentation to break it down so that you're looking at a similar set of people. That's similar based off a set of, criteria. But the still, the individual person that you're speaking to has a very, their background has shaped them. The decisions have shaped them, the things that have happened in life, their religious beliefs, their cultural beliefs.

Chris: 7:12

Yeah.

Jared: 7:13

That's the fun part is how do you communicate that message, and you have to understand your audience and you have to, and be genuine. This is my phrase I always use with my teams regardless, is be genuinely curious.

Chris: 7:27

yep. me of that episode of Ted Lasso. Be curious, if you

Jared: 7:31

Yeah.

Chris: 7:32

if you just would've asked me, have you ever played darts, Ted?

Jared: 7:35

Yeah. Yeah,

Chris: 7:36

scene.

Jared: 7:37

I about that scene. That is a great scene. Yeah.

Chris: 7:39

agree with you. I think that's something my whole life I. That I've even before I knew, even long before Ted Lasso. Yeah. It, like you said, it's, I'm just curious and that's what makes me a tech enthusiast. I used come myself a technologist, and today I met some true tech technologists are actually computer scientist and, have doctor's degrees, doctorate, degrees in different studies. I'm like, eh, maybe I'm not a technologist. I'm a tech enthusiast. But I'm always curious just Hey, how does that work? Why would you use that instead of using this, that's fantastic. And yeah, and you nailed it. Everyone looks at life through a different lens. Let's go back to marketing sometimes, now that I'm on several years in the TSD world, the, technologies solution distributor world, and I've seen a lot of different presentations, from my time in a supplier to working with other suppliers in my current role. sometimes, it's hey, you know you if you have a 15 minute slot, but yeah, you spend five minutes going over the history of the company. and I can see why that's important. From a marketing standpoint, it's about the messaging and the branding. But if you only have 15 minutes and you're talking to an audience of people that make money off of residual commission, it's like, Hey, let's talk about how we make money first. And if you wanna know more about the company, I'll tell you that in the follow up. That's what I always advise Hey, because don't, most, I think most, trust advisors, they they expect the TSD to vet out the supplier. So if you're in event. already, the assumption is you've already been vetted out. I don't need to know what colleges CEO went to and I don't, don't need to see the brag slide yet. Have it in there as the appendix, or we could send that out in the follow up. But let's get straight to the win cases, the use cases. Let's talk about how we make money here.'cause ultimately that's what, we're all got bills to pay, right? It's I jokingly, not actually jokingly, I sincerely say. We make a living, helping others make a living. It almost sounds noble, right? And But it's, we're fortunate to be able to do that.

Jared: 9:23

I think that very point goes back to the know your audience as well. Is making sure that if you take one source for instance, we have a distinct value proposition of what we offer and why we exist and what we do. And that doesn't change. But what does change is the interpretation of that value at each level. So it means something different to a customer. It means something different to. It means something different to the TSD even. It also means something different to a one source seller or one of our other partners. So it's just under taking the time to step back again, be genuinely curious, understand what is important to the audience that you're talking to, and take, under and really hit that value interpretation.

Chris: 10:10

Yeah.

Jared: 10:11

And that's where you, I see a lot of presentations from other suppliers, other partners that are trying to sell one source products and services, and that is the common miss, right? Is understanding who you're talking to and how they're going to interpret value.

Chris: 10:29

You mentioned in the bio too about mentoring others and coaching others.

Jared: 10:33

Yeah.

Chris: 10:33

a common thread of, what's the most common area you feel like you mentor that next generation of channel salespeople? Is there a trend or is it kinda like all over the place and in terms of different skillsets, in different components of business life?

Jared: 10:48

Outside of the personal things I think I'd say the biggest piece that comes into play is patience, is what I end up, everyone wants the, whether it's I want the quick buck or I can think of someone internally that I'm mentoring right now. He's 23. He is right outta college, very ambitious. He feels like he is running out of time. He's 23.

Chris: 11:11

Oh man.

Jared: 11:12

I'm like, you have so much time. I was like, what you're doing right now, he wants to keep moving up and so what you're doing right now. Take the time. Enjoy it, learn new things. It's not a matter of the actual job you're doing. You're learning how to process information, hit deadlines, look at data differently, understand how your leaders think, and it's just take the time, be patient, right? And I get that a lot with advisors that I work with, that I've become, friends with or that they've asked me, how, how business and some these larger partners. Million dollars a year in commission and they think they should be able to get there in one or two years. And it's, that's, it's, it doesn't work that way. And you have to be patient, but it will pay off if if you do the work, you put it in, put in your time, plan it, trust your process. Ask for help. Those are the things. That's the other one I'd say is pretty common is people thinking they have it figured out on their own. I know people are like, oh, you've got, they come to me for mentoring.'cause they're like, oh you figure it out. And I'm, no, I have a great, I have a great team of mentors just as just as well. And when I have questions, I go to them.

Chris: 12:26

And back to your early points. It's not like you, yeah. You're, this ain't your first rodeo either. You've learned over time, it took time to develop the experience, base you have versus, yeah. Being 23, it's just starting off your career. I. That's interesting. I, I've seen that and I've heard that as well. That's great that you, that's a great, that's actually a pretty good darn answer, man, being patient trust, going back. Yeah. In this case you do need to trust the process, which is, just takes time. That's fantastic.

Jared: 12:51

So fun fact that's not listed in the bio is I coach high school lacrosse and I get the same thing from good freshmen players that have come into our program. And we're a good team. We have a good program, and some of these guys come in and go, I want I, they feel like they're not succeeding because they're not starting as a freshman. On a top tier team that has juniors and seniors, and it's be patient like your times. You're not gonna get a scholarship offer in year one, even if that's what you want, and take time to learn from these guys. Ask them what made them successful in that jump from year one to year four, year one to year three, year one to year two.

Chris: 13:32

in high school or in the past?

Jared: 13:34

I played in high school.

Chris: 13:35

So lemme ask you this. When you started in high school, did you have the same mindset or was it a different thought process?

Jared: 13:41

No, I would say a totally different thought process. It was now granted, being in the north, in North Carolina and playing lacrosse in the, early, mid nineties getting started out. I. It was a fairly new sport down here. It was not you didn't have travel teams, you didn't have social media. Actually, I think there was one travel team for the entire state pretty much. And so only, you got, you didn't try out for that, you got picked for that. And everybody else just played and we just worked hard and we got better. And, we went outside and threw off the wall. We went outside and threw with our friends. That was just a different, I think just cultures changed in general. But yeah, I didn't struggle with that same mentality. And the idea of playing in college at any level, division one, two, or three that didn't exist. That wasn't a thing. Yeah.

Chris: 14:29

happened between then and now that, that you're seeing, that this, current generation coming getting into adulthood, whether it be in, high school or collegiate sports or new to their career, that there's this expectation of immediate success. What where do you think it. Trigger what

Jared: 14:44

Success in culture hustle that is so prevalent on social media. And it's not, this is not a bash on social media. I use it, I like it. But at the same time, it is a. Kids at that age, even adults at the younger age are constantly bombarded with success stories. No one posts their fails. No one posts their mistakes. They always talk about how they're doing this and doing that. Most of the people are hacks and liars and everything else, and but it does create this mindset that I'm not doing as much. That I'm not as good. And that puts that pressure on them that they need to be going faster, that they need to be doing. And then what they don't realize is the people who are really successful, they put in a lot of work And that doesn't get posted,

Chris: 15:34

that's true. Yeah. It reminds me of the, I'm sure you've heard the story. A guy was at a a piano recital of this famous pist. And afterwards they go up and meet the young lady and the daughter says, Hey, I wanna play piano like that one day I, that sounds so amazing. And she goes, really? Do you? Are you willing to give up, going out with your friends, missing parties and graduation parties and practicing into your hands are so sore, you gotta soak'em in ice water and it was outlining the whole process of becoming a great panelist. And that's when the the light bulb was like, oh, may, maybe I don't wanna become, maybe I don't, because But, no, I think you're right. That's really interesting to think. When I look at today, I have four adult kids and. So much of it is that filter that you at look at through life. What's really important? Is it important what social media thinks about you? Or is it really important what you think about yourself? Know thy

Jared: 16:23

Yeah.

Chris: 16:24

your own self-worth, know that we all have a different lot in life, in a sense may not, i'd love to be able to sing as good as Tim McGraw and look like Tim McGraw, but I'm not willing. I can't, I, it's just, I don't think that's ever gonna happen and you have to be at peace with that, I dunno, I'm not saying don't chase your dreams. I just think, I think some, to some degree be realistic about it and. Know what you're willing to sacrifice. If you don't wanna sacrifice to that degree, then guess what?

Jared: 16:48

Correct. That's the dream thing is the dream thing is fascinating because I totally believe in chase your dreams, but what I also ask is what really is the dream? People say, oh, my dream is to play in college if it's sports. And I get that with some of these the kids on the team and other kids that I've coached. And the reality is it's like that's an outcome. Like you say, it's a dream, like that's the outcome you want. But what is the dream? Like why are you pursuing playing in college? Is it love of the game? Is it a free education? Is it a hit to your ego to say, I did it. Those are the questions you have to ask because sometimes I, I found myself, like in retrospect, always looking back, going, like when talk about being the doctor, why did I wanna be a doctor? I'm curious and I like people, but then part of it was to tell people I'm a doctor, right? Was I really passionate about it? Was that really the dream? No. The dream was wanting prestige When you really get down to it. So the dream is a bigger picture. It's not just the outcome that you're, you're looking for, it is what's the fulfillment that you're gonna get? What is the, is it passion driving for whatever reasons. And it's fine if that's, if the prestige is the outcome, and that's the goal you're going for. I'm not against that.

Chris: 18:10

Every different strokes for different folks. Man, whatever floats your bow,

Jared: 18:13

yep,

Chris: 18:13

you're not hurting anybody in the process. That's the

Jared: 18:15

exactly right.

Chris: 18:17

do you, I'll do me I'll root for you as long as you're, just. A board and,

Jared: 18:21

yeah. Yeah.

Chris: 18:23

And ethics involved. That's always good. Oh man. This, I tell you, I didn't anticipate us spending nearly 20 minutes on this, but it's'cause I love this. I, we could scrub the rest of our discussion outline, but I do wanna get to it and. Whole another interview around just lessons in life and career and whatnot, because that's a lot to talk about there. Man I'm

Jared: 18:46

It is.

Chris: 18:46

about adding value to every situation, which is a big reason why this podcast even exists, Where do you see the business and have you, your time in the channel, have you seen any, anything change? We hear a lot of people say that, the channel's changing. What say you.

Jared: 19:02

channel's changing, but that's not a bad thing. Evolution is, and this is not political, evolution is just a part of life. Everything evolves as the environment changes. And with that just comes a natural maturity of things. My, my being with, bell South and the Know 2001, 2002 timeframe. Look at the industry now. Look at, I've been working with partners, with advisors since that period, like the beginning of the, almost the beginning of that portion of our industry and the focus was connectivity, voice, and data. And it evolved. Now you moved into, it evolved into, IP services. It evolved into voiceover IP services, sd-wan, SAS E, and then you start throwing on cloud on top of that. Then you start throwing on security on top of that. Now we're throwing in ai, the industry has changed because it's supposed to change. That is the nature of technology. And so I think you end up in this, and because it's not stagnant, you end up with people who were traditional players that started off early on. And then you've got new players that are coming into the market. And so you've got individuals that have built a consistent a consistent business through the channel. They've done it, the tra you know, with traditional products. And they've evolved and they've built an amazing. Some of these people are earning tremendous incomes and it's really exciting to see. And some of those individuals now are looking to get outta it. And that's, some people will say that's part of the problem right now is we've got this, influx of people investing in the industry. It's part of the evolution. They built a business. Plan to get out of it. What's that exit, what does that look like? And then likewise, I know people who are starting out and they say, I don't want to touch voicer data. I only want to touch cloud. I only want to touch ai. I only wanna touch security. And that is, that's part of that evolution as well. Those products market different, those products solve different problems. They talk to different personas. Within the business. And so I think the channel has this balance, especially if you look at suppliers, you look at TSDs is how do we balance that conversation? We still have this core part of our business, which is extremely valuable, maybe less profitable than it used to be, but it's still extremely valuable because it's the core of what we did. But I also want to evolve my business to drive these more profitable. Large, more complex technologies. And so that's a huge transition. So when people say it's changing and people typically say it's changing, oh it's not the way it used to be. That's natural and that's to be expected. And I think the ones that are succeeding are the ones that are embracing the fact that, the channel days of the. Two thousands, early 2000 tens had even pre COVID, yeah. Those days aren't the same as they were, but the business is vastly different now. Now what hasn't changed is the value on relationships, and you mentioned it in my profile, this is the thing I'm probably most passionate about in what all of us sell, is trust those aspects. Trust that is so key. And so those po components of it haven't changed. People work with advisors that they trust, advisors work with suppliers that they trust TSDs, engage with and support and promote suppliers and partners that they trust. So yeah, a lot has changed, but I see we're really setting ourselves up for that next generation. One other thing that I'm seeing changing, and this is something that touches one source, and perhaps that's why I see it as well, is individuals have built, a lot of their advisors have built their businesses themselves. Usually family owned, individual driven, and they can build their business to a certain point. And at that certain point, the ability to scale gets diminished because they spend so much time on the functional components of supporting their customers, which is important for trust for. Just doing the day to day activities and when they got started, they didn't intend to build a business of, having three or four employees. Not everybody wants to do that. Some have built, some of our larger partners that are out there have built great businesses that have employed 10, 2000, 200 employees. Most don't. That's where I'm seeing a shift in the business, and we're seeing this a lot in our conversations is, can you help us offload that type of work so that I can focus on what I do best, which is build relationships, build trust, and sell and that's where they're trying to get more towards. And I think that benefits everybody when we get there. So there are trends, right? That I'm seeing. I think the industry is healthy. I agree with the people who say, this is not a dying industry. I think the advisor is going to increase. When I talk to my peers who are executives at other companies they want advisors. There is so much noise from sellers selling them a product that is the silver bullet. And as they tell me, especially on the security side. I don't have time. If I listened to everybody who reached out to me to sell me their silver bullet product, I wouldn't get any work done. So the natural fit to that is having an advisor I trust with the resources behind them to help me sift through the noise and solve the business challenges that I'm trying to solve. And so that's why I'm so bullish on this channel's not going away because people want that. It's just a matter of us as suppliers, TSDs, to evolve with that mentality.

Chris: 25:07

No, I agree with you there. Again, even in my role talking to several other suppliers, some of'em Fortune 50 they're telling me they're even getting away from direct sales. They're decreasing their direct sales staff, increasing their channel sales team.

Jared: 25:20

Yep.

Chris: 25:20

in, maybe ever, or, in every company

Jared: 25:22

Yep.

Chris: 25:23

phases, right? Depending on who the EVP of sales is, right? There's different seasons for a company, whether they're pro channel or not, but it does seem almost every company I'm talking to is really leaning in'cause they're seeing the value. They're realizing that their direct team has losing to trusted advisors because their advisors been in there for 5, 10, 15 years. And the direct sales team, they're just cold calling. So who think has a better

Jared: 25:43

Correct.

Chris: 25:43

It's like a no brainer there.

Jared: 25:45

Yeah, I can speak for one source. If you look at not just channel, but just our partnership environment, so you call it indirect revenue generation that generates a vast majority of our revenue. I won't share exact numbers, but it's vast.

Chris: 26:01

As you were talking too, going back to your medical, earlier aspirations, as you have your general practitioner, right? And, if that could be what a lot of partners are, if they're expert generalist but then you have the partners like I only want to do cloud, or I only want to do cybersecurity. Those are the specialists, right? But honestly. In the medical world to get to the specialist. Your first stop always is the general practitioner to get a referral

Jared: 26:24

correct.

Chris: 26:25

So Lot of value to be that general practitioner in this telecom IT tech. Channel that we're in. So you need to have, they all have a working knowledge. Those general practitioners have a working knowledge of the whole human body as a whole. And they know when, you know what, I need to refer you to someone that's a specialist in that area, which could be, the one sources of the world, right? Whoever's the, whatever supplier is the specialist is who partnered with work with

Jared: 26:49

correct.

Chris: 26:50

Are you, do you, are you seeing are there still people in your in your world partners that are hardcore, I'm staying in my swim lane or,'cause again, we know they're missing out on revenue opportunities by being that way. What's your thoughts on, seeing partners either willing to pivot and, learn other parts? Like OneSource, you guys do a lot more than just, cloud. You got the cybersecurity and contact center and manage mobility, which we'll get to in. But

Jared: 27:14

Yeah.

Chris: 27:15

I guess, is that a challenge for your channel teams? Like how do you get these partners to expand land and expand?

Jared: 27:21

It is. We don't force them again, everybody, again I'm a very much a, you've built a business that you're comfortable with. We've talked maybe, and you have made a commitment that you still want. This is just what your business is and where you wanna go, and you're careful about who you bring in and what you wanna do. That's fine. We've never come into this with the approach that we are the right fit for everybody. And I think the right fit also goes into the individual advisors business. Are we a good cultural fit for. Are you trying to pivot your business or are you trying to A word, it's not an industry phrase, but we call them back when we still use the words agent, but agents and evolved agents. An agent is, was traditional. They have their swim lane, as you mentioned, that they wanna stay in. The evolved, said, Hey, these swim lanes now are connected. How can I, what are the things I can do to start pulling in those similar sales that pivot off of what I built my business off of? And those are the ones we want to work with. It's not that we don't want to work with the others, it's just it's, they're not there. I'm not gonna force'em. I'll still be friends with them. We'll still have great conversations. My team will have great conversations. So it's.

Chris: 28:40

some advisors, don't really have the ambition to, to have 30 employees and make a million, a year, whatever. They're happy.

Jared: 28:47

Yeah,

Chris: 28:47

call'em lifestyle partners. And again, that's,

Jared: 28:50

sure.

Chris: 28:50

wrong with that. We need those folks too, the channel has been built off that approach.

Jared: 28:54

Hundred percent support. It's.

Chris: 28:56

yeah. And yeah. And who are we to say that's not the right thing to do? That makes a lot of sense. Going back to how much sacrifice you wanna put in. Some people say, Hey look, this is what I know. This is my background. I'm sticking with what I know. Hey, if that's working for you, Bravo.

Jared: 29:10

Yeah.

Chris: 29:11

Another pivot point here, as I mentioned, you even looking at your website, if you haven't been to onesource.net you wanna check it out, from the expense management, you got TEM we can talk about managed mobility later. Cloud optimization, the IT infrastructure part from connectivity, managed networks, data center a lot there. Cybersecurity, another hot topic. SOC as a service incident response and remediation, there, there's a lot there. Then of

Jared: 29:35

Yep.

Chris: 29:35

contact center, AI and business process outsourcing, as BPO there's a lot there. So is there any trends you're seeing where partners are winning the most? I.

Jared: 29:46

Yeah, there are some big trends there. I think one of them is when we look at the TEM aspect of it, and TEM and the OneSource world is technology expense management, not telecom expense management. The reason why they're winning us with us on that is it solves two problems I mentioned earlier, knowing your audience, knowing your customers, all of us. Invoices are everywhere. Chasing down trouble tickets is cumbersome and timely. Even something as easy as a Mac D order can be a pain in the customer's tail, right? Like, how do I understand what so our product there, which is a fully managed Tim offering, so most, most started with software and then now start adding in services are started with people and process, and the technology was built and evolved. Which we built and evolved ourselves. So it's, we have a team of developers that are consistently building on it. We don't just sell the software. There's no offering in our world where we just sell the customer software. We're selling a fully managed offering in, various flavors. Obviously the value though, when you look at the partner, why partners are winning with us, with that goes back to what I said for those partners who want to evolve their business. Take a MACD order, wireless or wireline, you can do a lot of work and spend a lot of hours to make$7 extra commission. If you take a customer from a hundred meg to maybe 500 meg or a gig on a fiber circuit, you're gonna spend. 10 plus hours from order entry through implementation. Oh, I didn't even start on the pricing and getting everything together for the customer and getting bought on, and you're gonna make$7 more in commission. That same amount of time could have been spent growing your business or have it, engaging in learning cloud, learning something else that you could go grow your business. Partners are winning with us because they have to ask themselves the question, do I want to go hire people to do those things for me, which is overhead? Or do I want to take my biggest customers or the ones that are causing me the most most, I won't say headache, but are causing me the most of my time invested and find a way to get them something else so that I now free up that time to go grow my business. The other piece of that is once you have all of the invoices and services for a customer, wireless or wireline or cloud or whatever, it might be all in one place, whether I sold them or not, I now as a partner have visibility into my customer's environment. I can see what they have. I can see when those contracts are expiring, and I can start to build a growth funnel for my own business off this platform. So that's where the partners that are winning with us right now and the conversation that we're having is, I can solve a big problem for my customer, but at the same time I can solve a problem for myself. And the way that we're set up and that we're structured is that partner customer places a macd order through that customer's not involved, but the partner's getting paid. We are profitable, our business is profitable and runs without the commission. I don't need to do any of that to for our product to be beneficial. So the partner is who wins in that process.

Chris: 33:16

And going back to what we said earlier, it's all starts with trust.

Jared: 33:20

Yeah.

Chris: 33:20

identifying, establishing yourself as a trustworthy partner that can handle different parts of the business, I like what you said, technology expense management, obviously mobility is a part of that, right? Do you Yeah. And before we get into that, maybe just what, when you say technology expense management, obviously like cloud optimization is a part of that as well. What other part components would, does your temp solution help manage?

Jared: 33:47

Yeah, so voice data connectivity. I'll be careful on the cloud optimization piece and the TEM platform. That's expenses. Invoice in, invoice out inventory, archival bill pay, things like that. Cloud optimization is an engineering engagement. That's a, that is a, that's a big project right there. And yeah, it's very different. So I think it's important that we separate the two. So you've got the ability to pull that in. You can pull in CX billing, so you have visibility into how many seats that you have. And man, we added, why did our bill go up? Oh, we added 10 seat. Were those approved? Are they actually being used or are we just paying a,$150 a seat per month for no reason? I thought we turned down some of our contact center operations and other places. Why couldn't we just reuse those seats? It just gives customers visibility into all of it, and that's the key is it's hard to manage what you can't see.

Chris: 34:44

That's right.

Jared: 34:45

That's that. That's a cliche, but it's a hundred percent true in this. This case is it's really hard to manage what you can't see. The other piece is if you think of, and this starts to blend into the wireless, especially into the wireless, is if I have a customer who has 50 locations, that is 50 invoices for connectivity, maybe a backup circuit, then their voice services. We could have some cloud in there. They could all be from 60 different providers. And every one of those has a different bill style, different invoicing process, different bill pay system. It's complex and expensive to manage it, not just from the little pieces, but if you look at a customer's business, takes a lot of people to do that, right? So it's an efficiency gain for the customer. Now, take that same customer, 50 locations, but it's. 4,000 employees and they have 3000 mobile devices. What happens, Chris, if you drop your cell phone and it breaks, do you panic? Does your world end? Do you have to go get one immediately? So now I've got those 50 locations that I'm managing. 3000 and 3000 that when it goes down. It's a crisis, right? So mobility management for companies is tough. We call it internally, it's hand-to-hand combat. It's, this person over here. I remember back in my days, as a sales rep, I had a Fortune 100 company and their CEO drops his phone in a creek in Montana while fly fishing, which I. And of course, as a CEO needed a replacement immediately. And so people are panicking over the weekend trying to get this guy, he's in the middle of nowhere, Montana, and had to helicopter into the closest Verizon store to pick up his device. Problem most of us don't have is, access to a helicopter to, go pick up my cell phone. But it's important and it's personal and there's a lot of'em. Pile on top of that, you might have two, three carriers at one place. That's a lot.

Chris: 37:00

Advice do you have for partners that want to, leverage or lean into mobility? Do you see that as a foot, the door to the greater TEM conversation, or is it separate or, any thoughts there on how to pivot into that?

Jared: 37:12

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's definitely a good foot in the door, right? It can pivot into the greater TEM conversation, but why it's such a good foot in the door is every customer struggles with this. And to be honest, I think it's an area that the channel has danced around for a long time. Partners know it's there, but they also know, to my earlier comment, it's hand to hand combat. It's personal, it's engaged. There's a lot of work that goes onto it and traditionally has not been a commission boom for them.

Chris: 37:45

Yep.

Jared: 37:46

And so this is a way leveraging. Wireless expense management. Mobility expense management is a wonderful way to get involved in and protect that entry point that a competitor could have in their account and expand their own, value and trust without having to take on the brunt of actually managing it. And also solving a drama a, a huge challenge for. Which is, how do I control expenses? I use this example a lot when I'm talking to people about it, but I worked for Blackberry and we moved to where we live now. In 2016, I found a box of technology stuff that I was cleaning out and just had like old phones, old things in there, and I. I hadn't worked at Blackberry since 2014 and I powered it up. I was just curious. I was seeing if the devices worked so I could sell'em or whatever. And not only did it power up, it connected to the network. Blackberry had been paying for a line for three years that had been sitting in a box unplugged. That is not uncommon. We call those phantom devices. Zombie devices is another name. Very common, and if someone can go in and say, Hey, it. Yes, you are gonna save money as a byproduct of this, but I'm, what I'm really helping you do is optimize your IT spend because go to a senior level person and tell them that you're going to save them 30%. That's great. He's not thinking about 30% off the budget, and I'm gonna go back to the business. He's thinking, I've got 30% of that budget that I can do now support this project. They're not looking at the savings of, I need to get rid of it. Some of them are what they're usually doing is I can reduce my budget, but I can also invest in the other things I need to do. So maybe they've got a mandate from finance or from their other executives to say, Hey, you need to cut 20% of your budget this year. Sometimes that happens, right? Maybe you save him 30, so he saves 20 on that, but now he's got 10 to reinvest somewhere else.

Chris: 39:53

right.

Jared: 39:54

So that's why wireless opens up a really good door to, to really expand your business, in my opinion.

Chris: 39:59

How do you recommend partners can start that conversation their clients? Is there any easy button kind of questions or how do you seen the best way to get that conversation started?

Jared: 40:12

Yeah, it's a good question. It's actually a really easy answer. Because if you find the person who's responsible for managing it, and you just ask them, Hey, how's the process going for managing your mobility services today? And then my favorite part of question asking that I was, I taught years ago, the awkward pause. Just shut up. Just let'em sit there and they're gonna stew on it. And I would guarantee that more times than not, they're just gonna unload about how difficult it's. And even if they're using, even if they're using software or they've built a wonderful Smartsheet to manage it or something like that, it's still not easy because the operational components of managing. Not just even domestic carriers like you see, you take Verizon, T-Mobile at and t you take those, they all have different processes. They all have different procedures. Their contracts are worded different, all of that. Now, throw in Rogers Bell, and you go into the Canadian carriers or Telefonica or some of the others. The problem is just continues to grow. And we're not even talking IOT and OT yet. We're just talking about cell phones and tablets, so now you start talking about, okay, yeah, we have an initiative now to roll out tablets for all of our locations and I need to roll out backup for my ATM machines and I need it on a private network. The complexity that the carrier saw for those technologies are great. Those are great conversations for partners to get into. The big challenge though is how do I manage it all? That's what they're thinking about. So when you start talking about the prevalence, it's I dunno how to manage all of this. That's where the conversation comes in. At the business level perspective, the, if you've got a leader, how much of your team's time do you think, and this goes for All town, is tied to managing invoices, change orders, like how much do you, is that where you want them spending their time? That's the conversation to have That opens up the technology expense management question or conversation.

Chris: 42:23

be remiss if I didn't at least ask you about this too. BYOD does that, how does that

Jared: 42:28

Yeah.

Chris: 42:29

And do you have anything there for this BYOD conversations when you see customers on that

Jared: 42:36

Yeah. BYO D's. Interesting. Because the challenge that companies have is they went that way because it was cheaper to just give them a. To give them a stipend and it wasn't necessarily, it was cheaper, it was just consistent. I know if I give everyone a$50 stipend, I'm not worrying about overages, I'm not worrying about international fees. I'm not worrying about anything like that. I'm, I have a consistent cost still hard for us to manage'cause I, it's not like I'm pulling in consumer invoices from everywhere. If it's have my, my we're source. Certain roles. We have our own corporate devices, and we do manage those in our own system, by the way. But I have my whole family on this. I've got eight, eight people's worth of phones on my, on my phone. I'm not gonna send them my invoice with everybody else's stuff on there. And so that's a challenge. But what we can help with is policy creation, MDM management. The extra components that go on top of that. And so I think that's where we have the conversation. We've even had some customers where we've been able to go in and show them that if they were to bring these in back in-house and allow us to manage it, that's the reason they didn't want to do it in-house before, that it actually is better for the company to bring it back in. And that's we.

Chris: 44:01

Yes.

Jared: 44:02

Not going the other direction. They can think about$50 stipend per month that they're paying out the customer. The employee's not really getting 50, right? They're it's not always in the best interest of the customer, but if you provide them a line with a corporate line, and I can get the total cost of ownership for that line down to say,$47 a month, the company's actually saving money at that point. When I say total cost of ownership, align our support fee, the md, MDM, if they need it, whatever it might be. It's cheaper than paying A-B-Y-O-D offload.

Chris: 44:42

That's right. an end point. It's, think about how much work is done on your mobile device. It's especially if you're in the field a lot, yeah, if you're an office worker and you're at a desk eight hours a day. Eh, you probably don't use it that much, but if you're a

Jared: 44:56

Right.

Chris: 44:56

field services, traveling or your critical leadership role, then you need to be somebody who's getting hold of, you're out to lunch or, even after

Jared: 45:04

Yeah.

Chris: 45:05

Very interesting. We've talked, we've touched on a lot from, life lessons and mentoring and lacrosse and fly fishing and a little bit of golf.

Jared: 45:12

Yeah.

Chris: 45:13

Yeah. Great. We've we've covered a lot, so anything hot we didn't hit on and any last words you wanna leave us with?

Jared: 45:22

Yeah, I, when I look at last words, I always think about that. It's always kinda fun. It's Hey, what's the parting shot? What's the gotcha from this? And I'll just go, yeah. It's what? I'm gonna go be curious, and I say, go be genuinely curious. When to clarify that. That's my last, my, my parting word there is, genuinely curious means asking questions for the sake of asking the question, not asking a question, and being curious because you're trying to drive towards an outcome. So if they say, great salespeople ask great questions. That's where I think that it's really, what's the question, right? If you're asking questions that gets you to, what's your buying cycle? What's your budget? Yeah, those are good questions You need to ask them. If you ask them, why are you doing this project? That's the big question. And then the real parting word here, and this is what I always tell people, this is something I learned from a leadership mentor of mine, which is we all make assumptions based off of the data that we have and the experiences that we've had, knowing that it's a person on the other side, the person that you're selling to also is making decisions based off the information that they have. That you've given them and the experiences that they've had. And so when you're being genuinely curious in the sales cycle, the question I always ask, and this also goes internal leadership, you're trying to get an initiative across with your bosses, et cetera, is what don't I know? What information don't I have? Because the way I see it is, and you can lay out your point of view that says,'cause everyone's it makes no it's a slam dunk deal. I don't understand everything makes sense? I guarantee you there's information you don't have.

Chris: 47:06

Correct.

Jared: 47:06

Ask them what, if this is the assumptions I'm making, this seems like it's a slam dunk. What don't I know?

Chris: 47:13

Spot on. And I love that. That's great parting words, be genuinely curious, which leads into asking better questions. And I have to give my friend, bill Stinnett, shout out at Sales Excellence, a former guest he actually teaches a whole class on asking

Jared: 47:26

Big fan of Bill.

Chris: 47:27

are you a big friend, a fan?

Jared: 47:28

Big fan of Bill. Yeah, I've known. Known Bill long time.

Chris: 47:32

I love he, he talks about diagnostic questions and interestingly enough, uses the medical analogy that, when you go to the doctor they gotta take tests. They ask a lot of questions. They take blood samples. They need a lot of information. They just don't go how do you feel today? Here's a pill. Have a nice, take it easy. So it's very interesting that we ended on that. That's, that's really good advice for all things in life, not only in business, but even your personal life and your, our relationships with our friends and families and our neighbors. You being curious, even to the point of being concerned and, caring for a fellow human being. Man, what Jared, thanks so much for all of that. Great conversation. Definitely check the show notes. There'll be some information and links on one source and how to contact Jared and the team. Thanks a lot Jared. I'm grateful that we had this time together today.

Jared: 48:15

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Appreciate it Chris.

Chris: 48:18

You bet. And there you go folks. Another episode of The Wireless Way. As always, if you heard anything, they hit home, made you think about a client, made you think about a colleague or a friend, please share this episode with them. And as always, you can go to the wireless way.net. Hit the contact this button if you have any feedback or input or suggestions. Love to hear from you. And yeah, there you go. Another episode, and we'll see you next time on the Wireless Way.