Climb Channel Solutions Sees Big Distribution Opportunity With Emerging Technologies

Climb Channel Solutions’ Sarah Peters shares how the distributor is distinguishing itself from competitors and giving solution providers a leg up with startups in areas such as security, data management and cloud.

The following is a transcript of the above video.

Jennifer Follett, vice president of U.S. content and executive editor, CRN: This is Jennifer Follett with CRN, and I'm here with Sarah Peters of Climb Channel Solutions. Sarah, thanks so much for being here.

Sarah Peters, director of national alliances, North America, Climb Channel Solutions: Thank you so much for having me.

Follett: We're really interested in hearing a little bit more about Climb Solutions, particularly the focus that you guys have on emerging vendors. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that's playing out for your partners?

Peters: Yeah, absolutely. So it's so exciting. A number of years ago, our leadership decided or realized that there was a need for representation from the Challenger space in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, so we really homed in and focused on those niche players and the emerging technologies.

So what we do is we have built our entire business around supporting those emerging vendor partners. And so that's from our sales teams, our operations teams, our marketing. It is just incredible. And it's so exciting to work with these companies and technologies.

Follett: So for those vendors, they're really getting a much more hands-on experience. How does that translate for the actual solution providers that are then working with those partners through you?

Peters: Yeah, absolutely. What we're able to do is we're enabled to, since our line card is very strategic, we went from having 350 brands to only 100 brands. So that we're able to enable our sales team to better position and better educate and be that trusted advisor for our partners with these emerging technologies, [where] with the broad line distributors, they wouldn't necessarily get that attention. But the technology is so compelling, we want to tell this story, and we want to educate our partner community.

Follett: I'd imagine there's a lot of security players mixed in there. Is that a big area of focus?

Peters: Absolutely, yes. So our main focus is cybersecurity, but we also have a focus in data management, connectivity, virtualization and cloud, as well as software and application life cycles.

Follett: I know your CEO has said publicly that he really wants to grow the company and double by 2026. Can you talk a bit about the strategy that's going get you guys there?

Peters: Yeah, absolutely. So one of our core strategies is organic growth via acquisition. So since 2019, we've acquired five companies. Most recently, we acquired Douglas Stuart Software out of Wisconsin. So they are a small distributor that is focused in the education space. So we're able to grow our footprint within North America and strengthen our partners' technology stacks that have a focus in higher ed. So we're bringing on vendors such as Adobe and Incident IQ, and so we're really excited.

Follett: What about AI? I know that's a hot topic for a lot of solution providers really trying to sort their way through it and figure it out. Is that something your partners are asking you a lot about?

Peters: It absolutely is. We've been hearing AI as a buzzword over and over again, and we're very excited. It's kind of uncharted waters for everybody in the community. So we've really sat down from an executive level down to figure out what makes sense for our partners. And so we're currently vetting different [generative AI] companies.

Follett: What is, would you say, the key differentiator and why would a partner, for example, a solution provider partner, come to Climb instead of maybe one of the more traditional bigger names?

Peters: Absolutely. We pride ourselves on speed to market. So what we do is we really take a handheld approach and with our partners. So we are making sure they're getting quotes, we're responding, we're making sure we're constantly educating them on the newest in the emerging space.

Follett: Are there a few that you could touch on to say, you know, these are really strong growth players for us, for solution providers that are really looking for high-growth technology partners to team up with? Who would be some examples?

Peters: Yeah, absolutely, which is super exciting. We're here at August XChange with two of our very strategic partners, Kiteworks and DNSFilter. We're also here to support some of our other vendors that are sponsoring the event such as Sophos, N-able, OpenText, and Wasabi.

Follett: A lot of security in there.

Peters: Yep, lots of security.

Follett: Very good. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today and for giving us a little insight into what's going on at Climb. Really appreciate it.

Peters: Thank you so much.