This past week, we got the chance to sit down with SMB Connect’s John Phillips. He shared insights on the SMB Connect program including how it uniquely solves challenges for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and managed service providers (MSPs). We also made sure to sneak in a few personal questions as well. What’s an interview without asking the “tough” questions like what sports teams you root for?
LevelUp: Let’s start by getting to know you a little bit. Where are you located?
John Phillips: I live in Greenville, South Carolina — I was born here.
L: When you're not in the office or working remotely, how do you like to spend a day off?
J: I like to lift weights every day, whether it's a day off or not. I also like to read, and I collect coins. But for more than one day off, I like to travel.
L: Where are you traveling to next?
J: This summer we’re traveling to Switzerland on a Viking River Cruise. We’ll start in Switzerland then spend a week on the riverboat traveling to Germany and France before ending our trip in my favorite city — Paris.
I also frequently travel to Manila. We have over 100 sales reps in the Philippines, so from 2012 to 2020, I went there 16 times and I’m going again this June. Although we don’t always get to explore the area during these trips, I have had the opportunity to visit their very beautiful beaches.
L: Do you have any hidden talents?
J: I’m not sure if this is a hidden talent, but I would consider myself an expert in identifying Lincoln cent error coins. These are coins that have mistakes right from the mint.
L: Do you have a favorite sports team?
J: I have a big passion for Clemson football. It’s about an hour from here, so we have season tickets. I also like the Pittsburgh Steelers. There’s a theme here, right? Football is my sport.
L: Besides going to Clemson games, does your family have any traditions?
J: We watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy every night together.
L: Now, that we know a little more about you, let’s transition to some SMB Connect insights. First, let’s cover the basics, what’s your role?
J: I’m the Senior Vice President of Sales. I have two different sales groups — SMB and MSP. In many cases, MSPs are SMBs as well, just a different type with a different business model.
L: How long have you been with TD SYNNEX?
J: I’ve been with TD SYNNEX for 27 years. I started in June of 1996 as one of the first people in Greenville. When I started, the office didn’t exist, they were only in California. They decided they needed to open one up on the east coast because we had a lot of customers here; it’s hard to work with east coast customers with all your reps on the west coast. So, the Greenville office started out with about 25 people, and I started out as a Junior Sales Rep.
L: What motivates you and your work?
J: Definitely growing the business and hitting a sales goal. It’s rewarding to see so many people reach their goals and make a good living. I think it's something that's always been appealing about the company.
Helping our customers is also what keeps us going — seeing them grow because you were able to give them a lot of personalized attention. We partner with a lot of very small customers, so you can make a big impact on their businesses.
L: If you had to sum up what SMB Connect is and what it offers in a few sentences, what would you say?
J: SMB Connect invites vendor support to provide many different resources to our resellers such as events, end-user leads and enablement tools to help them grow their businesses. These tools help them win more consistent business and increase the amount of product lines they sell — that’s a recipe for success for growing the business.
We also offer exclusive contests just for the resellers in our group. Normally, when competing in company-wide contests, there are larger customers out there so the competition is higher. What we do is level the playing field and give them a greater chance to win.
L: Tell me more about the contests available through SMB Connect – what can customers win?
J: One of our contests is a trip to the Masters Tournament. This is a big one – it’s a bucket list item for a lot of people. The Masters is one of the biggest sporting events out there, and it’s well known around the world. We run this contest from January to February every year and the top 14 resellers that purchase the most during this time win a trip for two to Augusta, Georgia and tickets to the tournament.
The other contest we offer includes a trip to somewhere warm in December like Key West. The top 14 resellers who sell the most from our 45 sponsoring vendors from March to October win. This year, we’re going on a three-night cruise to the Bahamas.
L: How many SMB Connect events do you host a year?
J: This year we have four roadshows and our symposium, so five total. Our roadshows are held throughout the year in different locations. They start at noon and usually go until 5:30 p.m. before an optional after-hours networking event. Our next event on May 16 will be near Chicago in Schaumburg, Illinois, so the after-hours activity will be a cooking competition at the Weber Grill Academy. In the past, we’ve had dinner cruises in Fort Lauderdale or on the Hudson River in New York City.
Our SMB Connect Symposium is also coming up on August 21-24 in Brooklyn. This is our bigger event with around 200 attendees including many of our sponsoring vendors. I’d encourage any SMB or MSP to attend this event, whether or not they’re able to make it to the other roadshows throughout the year. This event is built for them and the resources showcased there are tailored to them, too.
L: How does SMB Connect help solve SMB and MSP challenges in a unique way that others can't?
J: TD SYNNEX and SMB Connect have a lot of offerings that our customers may not know about. That’s one reason why every one of our customers has their own assigned rep. The rep is their quarterback and initial point of contact. If the reseller needs help with a product line or more detailed help with a solution, their rep will direct them to the right TD SYNNEX Solv or one of the hundreds of business development reps who knows more about a specific topic.
Their quarterback also helps them use the free tools we make available. One big one is TD SYNNEX’s Public Sector EDU Navigator tool which helps them maximize bids for any K-12 deal in America. We offer this for free, saving them $3,500 a year. Another big one would be financial solutions from TD SYNNEX Capital which offers them more financial flexibility.
RenewSolv is another free tool. It has over 70 vendors in it, and it helps these resellers automatically. It gets their renewal business from their end users by sending them a notice. It provides the part number, what the cost is and asks if they want to order it now. It helps the resellers by giving them a third arm.
We also offer free technical support no matter how much they’ve purchased from us. Our Cloud Practice Builder and Security Practice Builder programs also help them spin up those businesses, and it’s at no cost as well.
And lastly, we've got a very robust professional team at TD SYNNEX known as ServiceSolv. They make a small reseller appear a lot larger than they really are and give them more nationwide reach than they have currently. The field services team provides them with people to do jobs that are geographically far away, the expertise to do jobs that they don't have enough knowledge in yet and gives them the ability to perform more than one job at one time. It's also a high-margin maker for them using our services. This is something many others can’t do for their resellers.
L: Is there anything else you’d like to share about the SMB Connect team?
J: Yeah, I would like to brag about the SMB group. We started it from scratch back in 2011 when we had about 20 reps in Manila. In a 10-year span, we’ve over doubled in sales. We’ve had some shifts over the last few years, but our 150 sales reps do a great job of growing our resellers’ businesses and growing the breadth of product lines that we sell.
I’m also very proud of our SMB Connect marketing program, especially Julianne Edney and Emily Carter who run it. They do a really good job with it. Our sales and marketing teams are two massive groups, but they were both created from scratch with a lot of hard work and dedication to our customers.
The SMB Connect team is committed to helping SMBs and MSPs reach their goals. To learn more about SMB Connect, contact SMBConnect@tdsynnex.com. To connect with John Phillips directly, email him at John.Phillips@tdsynnex.com. Tune in again next month to meet a new SMB Connect team member!