AT&T Partner Programs Eye Data-Driven Leads, Deal Registration

AT&T and its various channel programs are putting more investments into partner choice and enablement. This comes as the Dallas-based carrier doubles down on core competencies.

That statement comes from Randall Porter, who stepped into the role of  AT&T’s indirect channel lead this past summer. Porter, who oversees sales and partner management for the AT&T Partner Exchange, AT&T Alliance Channel and ACC Business programs, said AT&T will continue “leaning in heavily” into the indirect channel. He said the carrier will make updates to its partner portal and deal registration process in the upcoming quarters. He also said AT&T will give partners more intelligent data about potential customers.

“When we talk about leaning in more heavily to our partners, it really comes down to two things: providing them choice and providing enablement,” Porter told Channel Futures.

AT&T’s Randall Porter

Porter three months ago accepted the role of vice president, AT&T channel chief. That came amid a shift that more closely aligned AT&T Partner Exchange, Alliance Channel and ACC Business under Porter’s leadership. He reports to Sarita Rao, senior vice president, integrated and partner solutions at AT&T. Rao oversees those three AT&T channel programs, in addition to the wholesale and hyperscaler groups.

AT&T’s Sarita Rao

Porter said AT&T forecasts an increasing reliance on partners for applications and managed services that complement AT&T’s investments in fiber and 5G.

“Given that opportunity for growth both in new and existing customers with partners, we felt like it was the right decision to pull the entire indirect ecosystem together under Sarita’s leadership,” he said.

Realignment

AT&T’s different partner programs have historically varied quite significantly. The Alliance Channel carries an association with the agent/advisor channel and teamed selling (although the program recently unveiled a non-teamed track and changed the way it differentiates between subagents and TSDs). ACC Business was historically associated with non-teamed sales and residual commissions. Partner Exchange (APEX) started in 2011 as a resale program for partners providing full management. Moreover, Porter said Alliance and ACC aligned directly with AT&T’s national business markets sales organization, co-selling into a large number of retail customers. Partner Exchange, on the other hand, aligned more closely with wholesale.

However, Porter said AT&T chose to change those alignments as it continued to grow its indirect efforts.

“As we developed a plan for growing indirect overall and ensuring that we had enough leadership and resources behind that to scale with our partners in the market, we chose to combine all of our indirect channels across [Partner Exchange], Alliance, ACC, wholesale and our hyperscalers,” he said.

Ongoing Investments

Poter said new capabilities like deal registration will bolster the partner experience. He said deal registration differs depending on the program.

“The intent of the strategy and capability is to ensure that regardless of your program, you have the ability to register a deal to either work that on your own, down a solo path, or if needed, work it in conjunction with our direct team from a co-sales standpoint. And so the automation and the linkage into your Salesforce systems would all be there to give the capability for that choice for the partner,” he said.

He also said AT&T plans to give partners more granular enablement that involves customer data.

“[We will be] getting a lot more intelligent with our data and our leads – tying that to …