Omar Madaeen, Territory Sales Manager at Technology Strategies Middle East (TSME), elaborates to Channel Post MEA on his career journey and his growth to being a channel influencer.
What is your career history to date and key career achievements?
I have the primary responsibilities of strategy and planning to maximize the marketing and sales efforts of the company within stipulated time and budget along with my extended team. The experience of the last two decades has given me an understanding of working closely across teams to drive success for projects. It is satisfying to witness campaign fruition in line with business objectives.
Having said that, one of my key achievement is when I had the opportunity to introduce digital transformation initiatives as one of the few members in Jordan. This was in addition to signing with the “Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship MoDEE in Jordan” an MOU that Aim’s to educate & enable the Youth of Jordan to be prepared for the Digital Transformation era.
Formal goal setting or setting SMART goals is a major part of my career pathway that has enabled me to reach where I am today.
What are your roles and responsibilities in the company as a channel influencer?
I maintain and expand vendor, partner and business relationships and work closely towards achieving company sales, profitability and vendor customer objectives.
Some of my additional responsibilities include driving a strategic role in the organization’s growth and coping with the rapidly changing business environment as technology continues to open a world of opportunities. Formulating a path towards victory in the transformation journey of companies and ensuring company, partners and client strategic goals and objectives are achieved are something that I work passionately on. I also work seamlessly with factors that are heavily impacted via technology, such as – new business models, revenue streams, markets, and customers.
What qualities should a channel influencer possess to lead the channel?
As a key member in the channel segment, the role requires managing the vendor and the customer – a balancing act that requires finesse and additional skills. They should pose the skills of:
- Channel knowledge: understanding the nuances of the segment
- Business acumen: imperative to be more business savvy than an average sales manager
- Interpersonal skills: higher than average EQ, good communication skills, empathy, and the ability to build and maintain successful relationships.
- Marketing expertise: to keep products and solutions top of mind to generate business
- Analytical skills: to dig into business effectiveness to course correct and improve business performance
What is your advice on finding success in the channel?
The key parameters of success would be to be seen as the value-added partner of choice and creating robust relationships with key vendors across the region. It is also important to rapidly adapt to altering industry demands and provide strong services to ensure success.
How would you assess the current state of the channel?
The current state of the tech industry is disrupted by Covid-19 and the work from home environment. Demand and support for cloud technology and collaboration tools are increasing across the globe. The market is rapidly and constantly evolving and go-to-market approaches are altering. The crisis has represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive change across organizations. This has resulted in positively growing our market share over the past two years. This growth is attributed to the quality, speed, our range of solutions, the agile TSME team, our vendor associations, and overarching strategies.
The channel ecosystem is far more robust than ever before. The channel business is being realigned with a different focus on field sales. Having said that, at TSME, we have several exciting plans in the funnel and we look forward to more collaborations with our vendors in the coming years.
What is the biggest challenge facing the IT channel in the region?
Economy stability is the single most challenge faced by all industries including the channel or tech players. While digital transformation continues to be the most imperative driver and hope of reviving the economy, it is a catch 22 situation for most companies who have limited funds due to business and economic slowdown led by the pandemic.
Channel players and vendors have adapted to this market shift with a paradigm change of offering subscription models that enable customers to maintain lower costs for the same level of transformation to aid business upgrading.
If you could improve one thing about the channel business, what would it be?
If there is one thing that I have learnt in the last two decades of my career graph, it is the fact that businesses are an aggregation of professional delivery coupled with sound relationships. Therefore, all professionals should cultivate a habit of improving their customer relationships with a humane side to their delivery. This will enable upselling with longer relationships with customers and a better understanding of their requirements and efficient delivery. The key is to “Think Quality over Quantity”
How can partners work effectively to generate growth in the channel?
Working smart, being agile with a tailored approach for each customer is vital for success in the present times as well normal times.
Moreover, extensive training and development programs play a vital role in the growth of the channel and TSME. Partners invest extensively in such initiatives to ensure the team is well versed with the products and solutions and can efficiently deliver optimum customer results and drive increased growth revenues.
What are your interests outside of work?
Despite being in a very technical field in my work avatar, I do wear a creative hat off work through my passion for art, sparked at the age of 10. Mine is an impressionism style of art with the use of acrylic colours in my paintings. Over time, I have also pursued 2D & 3D digital art as an extension of my creative side. Here’s a sneak preview: https://www.artstation.com/omar-madaeen.
