In two years of covering the annual Telarus Agent Expo I've learned that Telarus fosters an environment that causes their top agents to share some of their best secrets with other Telarus agents. This is obviously one of the big draws that cause such a good turnout at Telarus' annual Agent Expo. It also tends to get a higher than average attendance rate to Telarus' weekly agent training calls.
This year Telarus had Tim O'Rourke of TelePointe Communications, Gala Gorman of Go To Telecom, Steve Roy of TelecomBuyer.us and Jeff Ott of Total Carrier Solutions all take the stage to share with their peers.
Click the video below to hear what they talked about. (It may take up to a minute to start since it's a large video. The wait is worth it though)
Following are some notes from the video.
0:00 - Telarus President Adam Edwards' introduction. He mentions that Tim is an expert in renewals, that Gala and her partner Charlie Frangos recently closed a $30,000 and a $60,000 deal, that Steve Roy is called on by Goldman Sachs to educate their private equity teams about the telecom industry and that Jeff Ott had recently closed a $80,000 RespOrg deal, a $100,000 tyco deal and a third text messaging deal almost as large.
2:00 - Jeff Ott shares how he targets $30,000 plus accounts by writing R.F.P.s or "requests for proposals" for prospects at about $200 per hour. the other panelists also offer their ideas on this topic.
27:00 - Tim shares how he is able to generate most of his new business from his existing customers.
30:00 - All discuss successful tactics for how telecom agents and channel partners can generate more business working with referral partner like IT VARs and others.
41:00 - All discuss tactics for renewing expiring contracts in a challenged pricing environment.
45:00 - Comments about successfully asking for referrals. Jeff gives a "thank you" shout out to successful tactic he learned from Tony Robbins.
47:30 - Additional comments about tactics successfully employed by telecom agents and channel partners to recruit and maintain lead partners.
58:30 - Jeff Ott comments on the importance of continuing to train yourself to be the expert your customer needs and expects you to be especially "during the cut".
The audio on the video is not the best but the content is priceless. I strongly urge you to assign yourself to watch the whole video over a working lunch. Nothing will keep you more energized and more productive than hearing from successful agents that "it's not impossible" to succeed, "this is how I've done it" and these are the "lessons learned".
Posted 3/14/2010 by:
Dan Baldwin
TA Executive Director
Dan@TelecomAssociation.com
I think it is great that these agents are willing to share with others. As an agent at the lower scale we need the further education these guys can give.
Posted by: Les | 04/03/2010 at 07:42 AM