Westcon/Extreme Edge Talks: How to protect your margins and win in a volatile market
Your margins are under pressure, delivery times are stretching, and the competition isn't slowing down. So, what are the best partners doing differently?
In this episode, Gos Hein van de Wouw, SVP of EMEA Sales at Extreme Networks, shares how partners can protect margins, build higher-margin services revenue, and win more net-new business despite market uncertainty. Gos Hein was joined in conversation by Dave Garwood, Senior Business Lead at Westcon, and Viktoria Szindekovics, EMEA Vendor Marketing Manager at Westcon-Comstor.
Key takeaways
Protect your margins with price predictability
One of the most pressing pain points Gos Hein and Dave discussed: partners absorbing margin losses mid-deal because vendor prices changed after bids were already in. One partner took a $200,000 loss on a single deal because their vendor increased the price twice, once after the purchase order was sent and again when the goods were delivered months later.
Extreme's Deal-Reg Price Guarantee was launched to address exactly this. It gives partners stability on pricing and supply during lengthy tender processes, so they can commit to deals with confidence and not lose margin they'd already planned on.
Specialise in a vertical, and go deep on services
The data on partner profitability is consistent. The partners with the strongest margins tend to focus on specific industries, like healthcare or education, and master the full technology stack for those sectors. They speak the language of their customers.
And for every pound of product, the profitable ones attach meaningful services. Basic installation alone keeps margins thin. Consulting, migration, and managed services are where profitability becomes "exponential," as Gos Hein described it. There's a real market pull for this too: staffing shortages mean CIOs in sectors like healthcare and education are actively looking to partners to fill the gap.
Moving to a managed service model isn't a quick switch, though. Gos Hein was direct: it changes your company structure, your skills mix, and your business model. It's a gradual transition, but one worth making.
Win new logos with a growth mindset and a dedicated team
Here's the practical reality: if an account manager already has 20 existing customers, adding "grow net new" to their job description usually doesn't work. The new business doesn't get the focus it needs.
The partners who consistently open new doors tend to do two things. First, they set genuinely ambitious growth targets. If you plan for 5%, you might hit 5%, but you won't hit 20%. Second, they build dedicated hunting teams, separate from the account managers looking after existing customers. As Gos Hein noted, that's metrics driving behaviour, which is "sales 101."
Build trust with radical candour and a long-term plan
The final theme was about what makes strategic partnerships actually work. Gos Hein referenced Radical Candor by Kim Scott:
"Only when you dare to speak out to each other and have radical candour, that's when you become successful together."
Alongside that honesty, he pointed to the importance of multi-year planning. Quarterly plans alone aren't enough. Extreme and Westcon are actively building a three-year plan together, and that kind of long-term alignment is what makes partnerships resilient when markets get tough.
Key actions to take this quarter (a checklist)
- Review your pricing protection strategy to minimise margin erosion on long sales cycles
- Identify a vertical market where you can deepen expertise and differentiate your offering
- Increase your services attach rate and assess opportunities for recurring revenue through managed services
- Build dedicated net-new business coverage with clear growth targets and metrics
- Strengthen vendor partnerships through transparent communication and long-term planning
The conversation with Gos Hein van de Wouw
Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited.
Viktoria Szindekovics: You stepped into the EMEA leadership role at a time of significant market change. What's the biggest opportunity you see that others might be missing?
Gos Hein van de Wouw: It's a good question, and it keeps all of us busy every day. The world is changing so fast. Ever since COVID, it feels like it's going faster and faster. cloud is eating the world. Cybercrime, we're fighting it. We're losing the battle. 5G brought even more proliferation of new applications, mobile applications, internet of things. The internet traffic every year still grows 30%, if not more. And unfortunately, IT budgets are not growing 30% a year. AI is a big promise, but it has a big downside as well, because there are some ten companies that are spending $850 billion this year on building out AI infrastructure environments and cloud environments. And that's putting a big strain on supply chain and on pricing. So the opportunity is navigating that turmoil in a very agile way. And I think we are doing that quite well together with Westcon. One example is this Deal-Reg Price Guarantee that we launched at our Connect event in Orlando. That's making a difference to a lot of partners. It means we give them stability. We promised supply, and we promised a price where, due to tender processes, it might take months to get a decision. So we're taking away that uncertainty.
Dave Garwood: I think the Deal-Reg Price Guarantee is a really good example of where Extreme have been a bit of a game changer. We're seeing other vendors with very volatile pricing, and it becomes difficult for channel partners to be confident in what they're quoting and what they're delivering. What Extreme have done there gives the partner community some confidence in working with them and delivering on what they see in their pipeline.
Gos Hein van de Wouw: And I've seen some partners that have had a real strain on profitability. Some of it comes from vendor pricing policy. We started hearing from partners that they'd had to absorb margin losses on deals where pricing was going up while they already had their bids in for tenders or the contract was already signed. That's when we realised we needed to stand with our partners and give them predictability. We picked it up from a partner who had a $200,000 loss on a single deal because their vendor increased the price twice. Once after they sent the purchase order, and again when the goods were delivered two or three months later. And within two weeks, we had a programme together that we launched in the market.
Viktoria Szindekovics: If you were a partner looking to grow over the next two years, where would you be placing your bets?
Gos Hein van de Wouw: There's been interesting research that looks at partner profitability, and three things really predict margin profile. First is focus. Some partners keep broadening their portfolio, but from a profitability point of view, that's the opposite of focus. Second is deciding what you're good at. That could be an industry. I know one partner in the UK that's very focused on education; another only does healthcare, but they do the full stack. They speak the language of their customers. Third is looking at how much services you attach for every dollar of product. If it's only installation, that can bring some profitability, but you need volume. But if you do consulting, migration services, and then managed services, that's where profitability goes exponential. And a lot of this is driven by a genuine customer need. Staffing is one of the top issues of every CIO in sectors like healthcare or education. More and more, they're relying on partners who can help with consulting, migration, getting to a new digital environment, and then managing it.
Dave Garwood: I'd add that the MSP opportunity is perhaps a bit of a missed opportunity for some channel partners. We see it growing quite quickly. The opportunity to build that recurring revenue stream and then wrap your own services and support around it is something partners should really be looking at.
Gos Hein van de Wouw: MSP is still a smaller part of the market, but it is outgrowing the overall market. There's also pressure on maintenance contracts because CFOs are saying AI should make things easier to manage, so those contracts should get cheaper. Everything else is growing, and MSP specifically is outgrowing the average. But it's not easy. It's not like you make a decision and tomorrow you have a new business model. Everything in your company structure, your skills, changes because of it. So it's a gradual transition.
Viktoria Szindekovics: What's the mindset that separates partners who consistently open new doors from those who rely on the same customer base?
Gos Hein van de Wouw: If you bring it down to a very simple level and look at an account manager who has 20 existing customers, and you go to them and say, "You need to grow net new as a bigger part of your business," but they're so busy with the 20 they already have, that won't change behaviour. So it comes down to two things. First is growth mindset. If a company plans to grow 5%, they might actually grow 5%, but they'll never grow 15 or 20%. If you plan for 20%, you might not quite get there, but you'll definitely beat 5%. The second is focus. You need a specific team or unit that is fully a hunting team. Not a team that also has to manage everything from last year on top. That typically fails. So it's focus and it's growth mindset.
Dave Garwood: And I'd add that partners who are willing to use data as a source for finding where to focus are the ones that tend to grow quicker. We worked with one partner in the UK and helped them support their prospect list with propensity-to-buy information. What technology do they have installed? What are they searching for? Who are they talking to? It helped them take a list of 100 opportunities and identify the 20 that actually made sense to approach.
Gos Hein van de Wouw: Dave, and that's a really good point. Metrics drive behaviour. We all learn that in sales 101. It's true for our own salespeople and it's true for partners. You need the right plan, the right metrics, and the right dedicated resource.
Viktoria Szindekovics: What makes a strategic partnership work when the market gets tough?
Gos Hein van de Wouw: A partnership between a vendor and a distributor only works if it works at the local level. If the local people don't talk and don't trust each other, it doesn't work. But it needs to be at all levels. And there needs to be what I call radical candour. It's from a book by Kim Scott. Only when you dare to speak out to each other and have radical candour, and don't waste energy going around the bush, that's when you become successful together. I think we have all of that in place with Westcon. We have multi-level relationships, trust at the local level, and we dare to speak up to each other. And we also realise you can't just do quarterly plans. You need a long-term three-year plan between the companies as well. All of that together builds success.
Dave Garwood: I've been looking after vendors for many years, and Extreme Networks has been one of the most engaging vendors to work with. You can see it from the senior level all the way down. At the local level, we've got some really good relationships. They're very amenable to new ideas. I've really enjoyed my last ten years working with Extreme.
