Training
It is vital that our partners get the proper sales and technical training, and we dedicate a lot of our time to ensure that partners are well trained and armed with the skills needed to sell and support our products. We consider training as a continuous event that we ourselves are always undertaking to keep up with the latest technology and product releases, and we expect our partners to do the same. Training takes place in many ways, as shown hereafter.

Formal Technical Training – Most of the products we represent are highly technical and sit in the heart of customers' networks. Therefore, it is imperative that our own and the partner's engineers and technical staff are fully trained and certified to undergo customer demos, implementations and provide post-sales support. For almost all the products we represent, we ask our partners to send one or more engineers to technical training classes.

For the most part, these are paid classes that end up with an exam and certification. Training will generally take place in Dubai, but can also- from time to time- be held in other countries around the Middle East. It is also possible to have classes held out of region, i.e., Europe, USA or Asia, where partners would send their engineers for the period of the class.

Training will always be done by fully qualified instructors from the vendor or- for some products- by UST engineers that have been certified by the vendors to conduct such training. For training schedules and details please contact training@us-telecoms.com

Sales & Pre-Sales Training – Other than the required technical certification, UST and/or vendor representatives will conduct one-on-one partner training sessions. These will be of a technical pre-sales and pure sales nature. The objective of these training sessions is to pass as much information to the partner's sales and technical staff about the product and its company, industry trends, competitive analysis and positioning.

Hand-On Training with Customers – There is no better training than seeing a product demo or a sales presentation done for a customer. As part of training our partners, UST and/or the vendor will go with the partner to sales and technical calls in order to give product presentations and conduct on-site demos. By getting involved early on, the partner's sales & presales engineers will get first hand training and will gain the necessary confidence to go and repeat the same sales cycle with other customers.

Web-Based Training – Most of the vendors we represent regularly hold web-based training sessions. These can be of a technical and/or sales nature. We encourage partners to attend as many of these as possible, as they constitute a quick and inexpensive way to stay up to date with the latest developments.

Support

Providing our partners with the right support is probably the most critical function that we do as a value-added-distributor. In a way, we are an extension of the vendors themselves in this region, and we work hard to provide our partners with the best support possible.

Our product and channel managers, technical consultants and presales engineers are all available to support you in any way possible. Technical and sales support is provided by phone, e-mail and in person. Our partners are given the full contact details of each product team and they are welcome to contact them whenever needed. It is common for our product managers and support engineers to go with a partner on customer visits, even ones outside the UAE. We just ask the partner to detail the opportunity at hand and try and bundle several visits during a single trip. US Telecom (on behalf of the partner) will request vendor support whenever is needed.

In addition to sales and pre-sales support, we can also provide our partners with implementation support. Depending on the project, this can be provided free of charge or for a competitive daily fee. Post sales support is also provided depending on the service contract purchased by the client. The partner normally provides 1st level support, US Telecom will provide 2nd level, and the vendor will supply 3rd level support.