Our new Braintrust includes a roundup of new tools and resources, case studies, updates, and more, including:
- AVANT Updates: Engineers at Special Forces
- Train with your favorite AVANT Engineers at Special Forces Summit
- New Resources: New podcast episodes
- Beyond Meetings: Zoom’s Journey and Innovation, with AVANT President Drew Lydecker and Zoom’s Head of Americas Sales, Colby Nish
- The Maniac Minds of Werpy and Ness, with AVANT CIO Chris Werpy and Founder and CEO of CommandLink, Jason Ness
- Trusted Advisor Testimonials: SE Engage edition! Hear from our attendees on the impact of our recent Sales Engineering training event, hosted in Chicago at AVANT.
- Win Wire: Learn how a Trusted Advisor encouraged their customer to lean on both TA and AVANT guidance, leveraging both parties to be an extension of their IT team and closing a $34.5K MRR deal
- Engineering Spotlight: Meet Dane Menke, Senior Sales Engineer
AVANT Updates: Engineers at Special Forces
- Train with your favorite AVANT Engineers at Special Forces this year by attending their breakout sessions! The full list of 40+ breakouts, from CX AI and security to sales and GTM strategies, can be found on the SFS registration page. Dive into our breakouts and reserve your spot at Special Forces today.
New Resources: New Podcasts
- Beyond Meetings: Zoom’s Journey and Innovation: Learn how Zoom focused on evolving their product to continue leading the wave of digital transformation we’re experiencing right now in the communication landscape
- The Maniac Minds of Werpy and Ness: Listen into a wide-spanning conversation, covering the current state of the channel, the evolution of SASE, the future of AI and machine learning, and more.
Log into Pathfinder now to explore these training resources and customer engagement tool! Go to lookup.gopathfinder.net to access your unique Pathfinder URL.
Trusted Advisor Testimonials: SE Engage Edition
We recently hosted our first Sales Engineering focused event in Chicago, inviting several attendees to take part in advanced technology training. Here’s what they had to say:
“Very strong content and Data. Honestly, while it was billed as an SE event… I took so much from it from a “sales” perspective that I will be updating TMG’s GTM talking points. This SE Event was EXACTLY what I have been looking for from AVANT. It was just deep enough and very well detailed to give me the info that I have been looking for without knowing what to ask! (Mind readers you are!)” – Seth Marsh, VP of Sales & Marketing – The McCracken Group
“I want to grab some of those slides for my sales team to help them navigate who to start a convo with. Also the event was amazing! Look forward to the next one!” – Chris Bomberger, Director of Technology – AVAIL Technology Solutions
“Great overall first event. Worth the investment from my perspective. Thank you for hosting.” Trusted Advisor attendee
Win Wire with Tom Croft
The Breakdown
- Technology Category: CCaaS/UCaaS/EX
- Customer Type: Media and Publication Company
- Industry: Media
- Size and Scope: 2 Sites
- MRR: $34,527
- Winning provider: Zoom
- Competitors: Dialpad, RingCentral, Vonage
The Details
What were the drivers for the client?
The customer was in a technology mess with multiple solutions across their estate, none of which were joined and integrated. The company had grown out of their existing solution and were struggling with the multiple tooling. Furthermore, their business processes were severely impacting the churn rate at the organisation.
How did the Trusted Advisor close the deal?
The Trusted Advisor was pivotal to the success of this opportunity. He quickly established relationships within the business and had already won hearts and minds before the AVANT introduction. We won because of the engagement that the TA and Avant collectively held. We were quickly given the authority to advise on the change and helped with vendor down select. The customer leaned on the TA and AVANT and even referred to us as an “extension of their IT team”.
How did AVANT support the win?
The AVANT role was unique and something we’ve built out in the UK. We held a comprehensive 1-day workshop at the customer site. We interviewed multiple stakeholders in the organisation and gathered their individual requirements – which almost turned into therapy sessions! Post the on-site audit, AVANT wrote a comprehensive 15-page document with recommendations for change that spanned not only technology, but also operation efficiencies, process change, and education and training of the staff. Due to this engagement and intimacy with the customer, we now have 3 more open opportunities with them.
Engineering Spotlight
This month, we’re spotlighting Dane Menke, Senior Sales Engineer.
With six years under his belt working at AVANT, Dane has honed his skills to offer unique and powerful support to our partners. We asked Dane to tell us one way he can level up a Trusted Advisors’ opportunity and customer experience:
“I can build pricing comparisons for cloud (IaaS/BaaS/DRaaS/DaaS/etc.) and MDR. Coming from a role as an SE at a hosting provider, I’ve spent a lot of time building and reviewing proposals. Providers tend to use different terms for the same services and often size and quantify the same request in different ways. The larger the deal, the more pronounced these differences become. Similar to what our Pricing Analysts do for colocation and connectivity, I can help to ensure your clients are getting exactly what they ask for.
Here’s a bit more about Dane that you may not know!
- Where are you located? Chicago suburbs
- What was your dream job as a kid? As a kid I wanted to be a herpetologist (study of reptiles and amphibians). My neighbor was one and had a house full of snakes and turtles that he would let us hold. He also knew Steve Irwin, which was like being friends with Superman for a kid growing up in the 90s.
- What is your go-to karaoke song? When was the last time you sang it? During a much different time in my life, I would sing Barbie Girl. People always assumed it was going to be a duet, but it was not. I officially retired that act 15 years ago.
You can connect with Dane on LinkedIn here!