From channel consolidation and partner feedback to growth and profitability, meet Verizon’s new channel chief John Constantino. In his first interview, Constantino shares his priorities and vision for the telecom giant’s partner business.
John Constantino, Verizon’s new channel chief and vice president of indirect and partner sales, isn’t wasting any time in putting his unique stamp on the telecom giant’s partner strategy.
Constantino moved into the channel chief seat in August following the departure of Verizon’s channel leader of three years, Mark Tina. In his first few weeks at the helm, Constantino has spent time meeting with partners, gathering feedback and identifying opportunities to expand Verizon’s reach through the channel.
The longtime Verizon executive began his career as a public sector business sales manager with Verizon Wireless and has worked his way up over the last 16 years. Most recently, he served as Verizon’s vice president of business sales before taking over the channel organization. Now, he’s focused on growing partner relationships, finding new routes to market, and ensuring Verizon is investing in partners that can help the company drive growth in both its wireline and wireless businesses.
In an interview with CRN, Constantino discussed his first weeks on the job, the evolution of Verizon’s channel strategy over the last few years as the company worked to consolidate all channel resources under a single leader, his priorities for the first year on the job and how he plans to measure success.
Here are excerpts from the conversation.
You’ve been in the role for about three weeks. How are you spending your time, and what are you hearing from partners?
I spent a lot of time in direct [sales] and time in channel in the past, and to me it’s really simple. I want to get to know my partners, understand their business, understand what they’re really good at, what reach they have, and then really come together and strategize with them about how we go after the addressable market together. For me, partner feedback is unbelievably critical in how we design and go to market. That’s where I’ve spent the first three weeks, getting in front of key partners and having conversations and learning about their business as a starting point, so that I can then kind of piece together what that looks like for us to be able to go to channel with them.
Your predecessor was focused on centralization of channel resources and convergence. Are those still priorities for you?
One hundred percent. I’ve been really encouraged with the work that was done to bring the channel together, and that actually remains. In fact, we’ve brought channel even more together with our indirect business program. That’s primarily retail, distribution [and] the authorized agents for Verizon. We’ve also, which I’ve worked on in the past, built pretty robust business programs, and they’re really starting to drive a lot of small-business traffic. So, bringing that organization, which is really large, into the channel organization to have channel sit in one place is actually just continuing the work that Kyle [Malady, Verizon Business CEO] and Mark [Tina, former channel chief] had done to really bring all of the channel resources under one roof.
Your career has spanned both direct and channel leadership roles. How does that help you align Verizon’s internal teams and partner ecosystem?
I think that’s actually the biggest advantage for me. I’ve done both channel and direct, and where I’m harnessing that is I know where we have distribution gaps. I know where we have solution-selling capability gaps. I understand our financials inside and out, and I think that’s a unique perspective.
Having done both roles, it allows me to really be concrete about where channel fits and places where channel may not fit. Instead of going with concrete strategies on what is going to work, it actually allows me to have pretty transparent and open conversations with key partners around what I believe the opportunity is, not just from a customer [perspective], but from what’s happening within Verizon. It also gives me a good perspective of our financials and where we can play in channel, where it makes sense for both us and our partners, and then other areas where maybe we can’t and the math just doesn’t work for us. I think having both lenses and experiences has really helped. I also think coming from direct has only strengthened the partnership that we have with our direct executive team and our business leaders on where channel can help them and where channel can play in their distribution and in their P&L. I think those have been the most exciting conversations, both the external ones with our partners, but also the excitement internally around what we think we can accomplish together.
What are your first set of priorities for your first year in this role?
To me, it’s very simple. I am looking for partners that want to invest with us that have the distribution reach that we don’t currently have, and that goes back to my understanding of our direct distribution, our digital distribution, and where I think we have the biggest opportunity. So, finding really invested partners that have a really expanded distribution reach that helps me get after the customers we’re not touching today. I think the second is finding world-class partners that have solutions and capabilities that we don’t possess and that can augment our existing sales force. With that, my goal is to really find partners that want to invest with us and then go get to work on their behalf. For me, channel, as much as it is external with partners and customers, it’s hard work internally to go and enable and build around our partners. So, for me, success would be finding what I believe are those world-class partners, getting their feedback as to what it would take for us to go win, but then putting in the work internally within Verizon to go enable that, so that they can be profitable and successful as we are in any venture that we do together.
What specific goals will help you determine whether your first year as channel chief has been successful?
I think first of all, feedback from the partner community. Are they profitable? Do they feel better about Verizon as a place to invest than when I started? That is big for me. I think doing profitable channel revenue—are we able to set up things with partners that are a win-win for both of us, where my partners are profitable and Verizon feels really good, from a financial perspective, about what we’re contributing? And then growth. We want to be in attack mode as a company. We want to be able to go out, win share and really compete, both in wireline and wireless, from a solution capability [perspective.]
I’ll also take a lot of my feedback from the direct leaders. We’re part of their distribution. Do they feel like channel is a force multiplier for them? To me, that’s what one-year success looks like.
