Balancing Service Delivery & Delivering Sales

Resellers are constantly trying to find the right balance of driving higher quality delivery of services and increasing sales. It's a slippery slope and it’s hard to justify investing more time in the selling effort perhaps at the expense of customer service. It’s not that Solution Providers don’t value the role of sales in the overall business process, it’s just not the average resellers sweet spot. Rather, resellers are more typically aligned with the product and technology function and see it being way more constructive to invest their time in development and integration – plus, its just more fun. So, in effect, key partners are looking to reduce the amount to time spent selling and need more time in the day for service delivery.

In the area of Security Services, the challenge facing solution providers is knowing which type of security services to provide and the level of expertise required for them, according to an assessment written by the 2112 Group for AVG. They added, on the high end, security services entail security information management, firewall monitoring and management, incident response, intrusion detection and prevention, vulnerability scanning and remediation, and malware protection. Each has a high level of investment to develop the service delivery capabilities, inclusive of software, training, certifications and staffing.