‘How do we feel about it? We feel good right now,’ one Ericsson partner tells CRN of the recently renovated Ericsson/Cradlepoint partner program changes.
Ericsson Enterprise Wireless recently revamped its partner program with the goal of simplifying operations and helping partners earn more money, the company’s chief sales officer, Matt Cook, told CRN.
“Simplification and being easy to do business with is the name of the game. That is everything. With that pile on profitability for partners. One of the things I realized is [partners] weren’t making enough money. I want them to make a lot more,” Cook said.
The company, a combination of Ericsson’s wireless and cellular portfolio with Cradlepoint, which Ericcson bought in 2020 for $1.1 billion, as well as cloud security specialist Ericom, has replaced its previous tiered resale programs for its Enterprise Wireless Solutions division with a unified partner program in which all partners start with the same base requirements and benefits. Partners can advance in the program through investment in enablement programs, the company said.
“If [partners] are going to sell our products, we’ve got to go after the market [and] make a lot of money doing it. We want to sell with our partners, not just through our partners, and I think there’s a big differentiation between those two. We wanted to sell with them, and we want them to be profitable doing it,” Cook said.
“With the new program, there’s increased ability to compete and maintain profitability, and there’s a huge ability to unlock additional profits from Ericsson Cradlepoint referrals,” said Reed Perryman, vice president of sales and marketing for RCN Technologies, an Ericsson Elite partner since 2017.
Despite an initial 8 percent discount decrease due to the changes in the channel program’s tier structures, Knoxville, Tenn.-based telecom solution provider RCN Technologies is more bullish than ever about the new Ericsson partner program, Perryman said.
“We had an initial knee-jerk reaction, especially pertaining to our elite partner status being stripped away, however, once we took time to really digest and understand and have that conversation with some of their key executives, after the fact, we’re really a big fan,” Perryman said.
That’s because Ericsson is creating ways for partners to be more competitive, while also becoming more profitable, he said.
One way this is being accomplished is through “teaming deal registrations,” Perryman said.
“The [Ericsson Enterprise Wireless] sales force, which we form relationships with, and they understand our capabilities as a solutions provider and as an Ericsson partner, they’ll bring us opportunities as the right partner for the job. Under the old model, we couldn’t get a deal registration on that because it was a known opportunity,” he said. “Now under the new model, we get to register that deal, so there’s this whole host of referral deals from the Ericsson sales team that we now get to get that same differentiation and discount on, which is going to drive our profits North.”
Perhaps serendipitously, increasing demand for edge networking, security and new forms of connectivity, such as private 5G in a world of AI applications and workloads, has made Ericsson’s portfolio very relevant right now, Perryman said.
RCN, for one, is seeing its pipeline increase dramatically, both in dollars and volume, he said.
“100 percent of that [pipeline] has an Ericsson Cradlepoint device tied to it. How do we feel about it? We feel good right now,” he said.
Ericsson, for its part, has tied the original Cradlepoint Mountaineers partner program to the Ericsson Enterprise Wireless partner program, said Cook (pictured above).
“We don’t want to look at those as two separate things. If you become technically competent on our products, then there’s rewards for that and we’re just going to make it that simple,” he said.
Ericsson Enterprise Wireless is also taking an emphasis off partner recruitment, Cook said.
“I don’t think the answer for our growth is: ‘Go find partner number 5,230.’ I think it’s making sure that we have the right partners who are in this market, who do these types of applications with their customers, and we complement them and we work very well with them side by side, as opposed to continually trying to sell people on why to work with us,” he said. “Let’s just get down to the basics of: How do we go sell this market together and grow?”
Cook, for his part, joined Ericsson in September 2024 as channel chief. At the time, he promised to revamp the Ericsson Enterprise Wireless partner program. The telecom executive four months later at the start of this year was named Ericsson Enterprise Wireless’ chief sales officer, a testament to the company’s commitment to doing business alongside channel partners, Cook said.
