ChannelWaves by Structured

So welcome everybody

to ChannelWaves, Structured's view

into everything Channel.

Thanks everybody for joining us.

And very excited today, have

Leslie Chiorazzi, who is the managing

partner of CMIT Solutions

in Manhattan, joining us today.

So this is the second time Leslie's

done a podcast with us, so

obviously we must have done

something right the first time.

Welcome, Leslie.

Thank you so much, Steven.

And, yeah, I'm excited

to be talking to you again.

It's always fun.

Yeah.

You were at our event in New York.

Just a little history for folks.

Leslie and I have known

each other for a while.

We met at Channel Focus

about two years ago, didn't we?

Yeah, yeah.

And Leslie was on a panel and I love

vendor events like Channel Focus,

which is really, really important,

I think, for people to attend.

So, Rod, we're dropping a plug

for Channel Focus for here.

Right?

But I think my favorite part

is when they bring partners in.

And I know three of you sat up

on stage and talked about the real world.

And having been an MSP 10 or 15

years ago, it's been a while.

Very relatable to me,

but I don't think we do enough of it.

And we, were going through AI

and all the conversations that.

By the way, folks, we're

going to talk about AI.

Surprise, surprise.

Leslie and I are going to talk

about AI today, if you're wondering

what we're going to talk about.

But so many of the conversations

Leslie, I have had lately are

with vendors and other

alliance partners that we work with.

And we keep talking about, okay, how are

partners going to react and what do

partners need, especially, in the tech

stack for how they run their business.

In sales and marketing, we have

these conversations all the time.

I'm thinking maybe it's a good

idea to actually talk to.

We do talk to partners, but do

a podcast with a partner and get

a little real world view from you

on how you see AI today.

The goods for you, the challenges

that you might have.

Once again, we live in the sales

and marketing world, but open to any

of the ideas that you have,

and then we can talk a little bit

about what's available today.

And I think what's going to happen

very, very rapidly, maybe even

in the next 6 to 12 months.

So anyways, so folks, that's the agenda

and, hey, I'll just turn it over

to you and get your take on AI.

I would probably leverage AI

and I have leveraged AI to get a better

understanding around my best client,

who we serve best, and how to meet more

of that specific client.

At this point in my career, 10

years in, and one of my partners

being 30 years in, you can guess

that most of our clients come from

referral, which is a high, high

compliment, the business that

we're doing.

So I think leveraging it as a research

tool is probably the best

thing I've done with AI versus

you know, like co-market strategy.

Most of what I do is not high cost and

part of that is because I rely

partially on our franchise

headquarters to do it, along with some

branding I've done locally at Yankees

Stadium, and some other stuff and I

think also just visibility.

There are more and more

owners every year.

You know, we're currently like

I said, up to 300 territories.

I think when I joined

the franchise it was under 200.

So it's been, you know, it's,

it's a pretty, you know,

quick growing market because

everybody needs what we do.

It's just a matter of who

they choose to do it with.

So if, so if you have a, if you had a

product, an AI product that basically

knew everything about the vendor that

you're working with and it was like a

ChatGPT but it was grounded in

information verified by that vendor and

you could ask it anything, including

who you could alliance with and who you

could partner with.

I feel like a sales guy.

I'm not trying to sell you anything.

Would that have value?

What am I buying?

I don't think you need to buy it.

I want to actually give it to you.

I think that kind of exists.

But I think, yeah, of course

I want to know.

Instead of having to wait

on an associate or an account manager,

the ability to dig in and get

the information I need to deliver

to clients who are relying on us.

Yeah, the faster I could get

that and the better I could

utilize that vendor 100%.

Especially the larger vendors that have

so, so many product lines where like,

you know, and I don't want to mention

any one in particular, but sometimes I

feel like you need a master's degree

in such and such company to understand

the strategy, why you use a particular

license, even with their comparisons.

One of the things that I thought was

so smart about Channel Focus as an

event plug out to Rod again, besides the

fact that they always pick a

beautiful venue, cater it, you know,

fantastically and pick a great group

of sessions and content to, to

showcase is the idea that they talk

to people like me.

Because one of the things I noticed

that the last event that I went that I

was asked to speak at was marketers

that are like in a very high position

at a Fortune 500 do not talk to

customers.

I say this to my franchise too.

When they tell me how easy it is

to sell something, I go, when was

the last time you talked to a client?

So I think at a high level marketers

are thinking about the company brand,

not how someone like

me engages the client around it.

So the more interest they take

in that, the more ability they will

actually really sell to us.

Because I know at your last event,

which also, by the way,

beautifully done, I thought the content

was great, I thought

the strategy around it was lovely.

I think I got to speak

to a high level, representative

of a company I do business with.

I lost, an interesting piece

of business because of something

I wasn't educated around.

And I found it very interesting that

they have this great program

to offer managed service providers

that I purchased from a distributor,

not directly from this vendor.

And the distributor had to end

up walking me through it.

But never educated me around.

It didn't bring it to me.

I found out about it and asked them

if they were more engaged with partners

like me, they would know what we need.

They would understand how to be

proactive for me, just as I am trying

to be proactive around my clients.

So I'm going to draw an analogy

to what you said and how you started

this whole thing about what you use

AI for, for your clients, right.

And how you want to interact and could

interact, with a big vendor like that

and how they could interact better.

If you had a tool like we were

talking about that could,

it was verified by the vendor.

You could ask it any question.

You could get anything you needed

from an information perspective

that would allow you then

to engage more at a more strategic

level on a conversation with you.

And then so many of those challenges

could be handled by you remotely.

Here's the interesting thing I'm

trying to, trying to get at on this.

Those distributors and those large

vendors have X amount of resources to

spend time talking to partners, right?

So if more of the problems can be

handled just like you're talking

about the problems that could be

handled remotely at night or you

could handle more of that, then

they could scale it and they could

have more strategic, they'd have

time for more strategic

conversations about how you sell,

what the customer is looking for.

I'm making it more and on the human

to human level would be there

and then they could use the AI

to give you all the resources.

But Like, I even talked

to some large partners like SI's.

You can look at a big vendor

or you can look at SI.

They have so many offerings, they

can't even remember what they sell.

By the way, I need to interject

here because I really think

that there are two things.

So I just like put out an article

about I'm not solving for this, right?

So I get accosted all the time

by salespeople for different things.

And if it's something I'm solving for

and they have the answer, fantastic.

If it's not something I'm solving for,

or I like blown away that,

oh my God, I didn't even know

I needed to solve this, great.

But what I think there are two to me,

giant things that AI, could help us

solve for is managed service providers.

And again, not to take anybody's job.

Good sales engineering, right?

Imagine I could plug in, hey, AI, I have

an employer of 20 people in this field.

I want to secure them,

I want to update them.

What hardware should they use,

what products, what services?

Write this out for me in,

a quick quote proposal format.

And then I go, okay, I love these items.

Can you put this in a ticket

and order it for me and make sure

the margin is at such and such.

Like there are pieces of my business.

I am always looking at efficiencies.

I am always down for improvement, right?

Because I don't know what I don't

know, but I know when something's

kludgy or messy or like if I'm in the

middle of this call with you and

somebody needs four laptops from me

now I'm like, I gotta look for them,

I gotta purchase them, I gotta send

out a quote.

I got to put a bit

of ticket, I got to ship it.

All of those things I imagine will

shortly be taken over like this.

That was a problem MSPs are solving for.

It's really interesting, right, because

we started out with

conversational AI, which is like you're

talking back and forth,

and then it went to generative AI.

I sort of lived in that world.

We're in channel marketing, right?

You have to create content.

You're talking about your home

office creating content,

co-branding, all that sort of stuff.

And now you're in the agentic side

and the world that we're

living in is people saying,

okay, I need to run a campaign.

Now they're saying, build that campaign.

What?

There's no difference.

You're saying I need to produce

a quote, produce that quote.

And this is, this is where agentic is

going to do and it's getting so good

that we're going to be able to build

whatever agents we want behind it and

literally the agent, what do you need

done?

And it's going to take care

of all that execution stuff

and then that's going to leave time.

I don't think it's going

to take people's jobs.

What do they say?

AI is not going to take your job.

Someone who knows AI is

going to take your job.

Right, right.

And you have to elevate it and then

there's a conversation and I

think that allows them to have

conversations with you about okay, we

can solve all those executions.

Why are they buying?

How could they buy more?

Why could what, how

else can we pull this?

What sort of challenges do you have

with reaching that customer

and solving their solutions?

All very strategic versus education.

The execution side I think that's where.

Well actually I know that's

where everything's heading.

Yeah, I mean and it's moving quickly.

I think again it's back to how do I

leverage this in a way that makes sense

for me and that takes away some part of

my everyday job responsibilities that

because I know exactly where my

strengths are.

I want to be able to spend time there

and in order to spend time there I

have to get rid of this other, these

other functions that I may not want to

give away specifically to an employee

who I want to be doing a technical job

but I also may not want to hire an

admin.

I mean I would say the offshore

employment market is you know, a

little bit pained by this along with

like my last kind of level one hire I

would say is also you know this is

going to be a difficult time as I

know I have a college age, two

college age daughters who you know

will have a more of a struggle

entering the market of a hands off

kind of business because of what's

going to be able to be taken over.

Yeah, I think that's a great

place to wrap it up and I

think it's in terms of.

Yeah, yeah.

Where that next generation or

where everything is heading.

Right.

And understanding that.

I think it starts with understanding

what AI is going to do

because I don't think we're going

to walk backwards from this.

Right.

We're going to, you're not going to all

of a sudden go, you know, I don't want

to have that problem solved overnight

by AI agent or or what we're talking

about or have a place you can go to

that can create either campaigns for

you or create printout, orders for you

on that.

I think it's going to be

how do we keep staying strategic

and have those conversations?

And I think people are going

to have to stay really good at

people, to people skills.

I think that's what we're going

to have to talk about.

And you live in a world

where AI can solve these problems.

But I don't think any of your

customers are buying from AI.

They're buying from you

from a relationship.

Right.

From a strategic level.

Right.

I don't think that's

going to change. 100%.

That's why we have the conversation

around how is AI helping me in sales?

It might define who my right

customer is and like I would love

to have, you know, say have at it,

go through my the applications that

we utilize and say who is the least

noisy, who is the most profitable,

who is.

But they're not going

to choose who trusts you the most.

Who do you have the longest standing

personal relationship with,

who likes the same teams you like.

Right.

Those are part

of the conversation in sales.

Right.

It's like people buy from people

still and you may have the greatest

thing ever, but if the salesperson

doesn't relate or doesn't make a

good case for the product or

service, there's still going to be

you know, the default is going to

be I like you and I buy from you

because of that.

Unless AI starts buying

from AI and vice versa.

Yeah, no, I agree.

I think the AI is going to help you

from a marketing perspective to figure

out who to connect with the right buyer

and what makes sense on that.

So I think it'll help you get connected

and then from a sales, it'll help you

understand what makes sense for them,

how to position your product.

And then after that it really

is still going to have to be.

It's the people to people skills that

are going to actually close the deal.

And it remains to be seen.

I mean I think it's moving so

much quicker than so many other

recent technologies and yet

it's been there all the time.

I mean predictive typing and spelling,

machine learning.

Machine learning's been around

for been a while but it's

the agentic side and that's my.

It is the fact that, you know, it's gone

conversational now we can create stuff.

It's now the fact that we're going

to be able to do what you were

talking about and you're just

going to be able to type in, hey,

show me the benefits of this

product.

And then it shows up.

But then you say, hey, that's great.

Can you print out an order

for me or can you send this?

I mean, to the point, hey, now

If I have to ask it to print out.

I'm going to be mad.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, I was.

Sorry.

I was going to redact that.

Redact.

So can you send that, can you

send that to the customer?

So sorry.

We're kind of halfway there, I

would say, like with the organization

of setting up workflows.

But if I could not have to set up the

workflow and talk the work float

through, that will be on the agentic

side, you know, being able to really

answer something that is part of how

I'd like to be more efficient as an

MSP and I think how a lot of other

managed service providers see this as

a tool.

And then I don't like again,

I don't want to be so excitable about

stuff we're, we're doing internally

and sending it out to clients.

Because clients right now, I think

the best use of AI that I've seen

for me has been meeting recording,

getting a transcript, understanding

how the conversation went so I can

stay in the conversation instead of

writing notes or having to rely on

my memory.

The ability to go back to meeting notes

that are not only taken in

a context, but also, kind of, you know,

itemized, in the way of, analyze.

The value of this conversation, what

did the client really lean into?

Understanding the feelings of the, of

the meeting is so much more impactful

to how we deliver as salespeople

and much more efficient.

I mean, there's always been things out

there like Gong and things like that.

You can record it, but you have

to sludge through all that.

Right.

I think it's the analytics and what's

leaning into and very, very

quickly be able to determine what's

the value proposition out of that,

of that meaning or that call.

Right, Yep.

So much so.

And, and again, when you're talking

to a buyer, I'm not trying

to sell them something that

they don't think they need.

And if I need to push that, then

I'm in the wrong business, you

know, so it really, it's so

helpful around that, that I think

that was my favorite first use

was really, utilizing for meeting

recording.

Cause I'm certainly on a lot

of meetings with clients

and customers, and that matters.

Understanding where they're coming

from and being able to still

engage in the conversation.

Without getting lost in.

Oh, my God, I got to remember this.

All right, Leslie, thank

you so much for joining us.

Hey, if anybody out there would like

to reach you, like to talk to you,

I know you're very good at sharing

information and you're willing

to take time and to talk to folks.

So what's the best way

for people to reach you?

100%.

So, so I am, CMIT Solutions

of Manhattan, Murray Hill specifically.

And they can always leverage.

I'm on LinkedIn all over the place.

Whether or not people like that

or hate it, I hope they get

a real feel for who I am there.

So connecting with me on LinkedIn is

probably the best way and having

a conversation around all of this

stuff because I love it and I love

to talk sales and clients, for sure.

All.

Right.

Thanks, Leslie.

Thanks, everybody for tuning in.

Have a great day.