My TA News

Which Telecom Partners & Network Vendors are Successfully Selling IT Services? Let TA Tell Your Story!

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

If you're a telecom agent or network services vendor that is successfully selling IT services like help desk, remote backup, or hosted desktop, etc., I would very much like to interview you and share your story with Telecom Association's 3,800 members.

I'm currently writing an "IT Services Buyers Guide & Toolkit" for small businesses who are trying to solve their IT support problems by investing in "the cloud".

I put "the cloud" in parenthesis because inspite of all the hoolpa about cloud at the recent Channel Partners show in Las Vegas, I'm not completely convinced that "the cloud" is something that most small business owners are really wanting to buy.

Individual IT services though like "IT Help Desk" support paid for by the minute or by the seat is a solution I think most business owners are OK with seeing on a monthly IT services invoice on their phone bill.

But while I've actually purchased a Verizon IT Help Desk subscription service for my own office computers (which I'm reasonably happy with) I've never sold "IT Services".

So who has?

In researching the matter today I spoke with Earthlink about their recent IT Services Advisory Panel where they queried partner distributors regarding the best way to sell IT services through telecom partners, the Earthlink partners I spoke with were still ramping up their sales of IT.

I then tried to call Al Afflitto of BestBuy/GeekSquad who just a year ago was signing up every agent he could find to sell GeekSquad IT Help Desk services.

Unfortunately Al informed me via email that BestBuy eliminated his job just last week.

I tried to find out what the back story was but he didn't seem to be in a very chatty mood so I put in an inquiry to Brian Hutto and AJ McDougall who, according to this article, seemed to work with Al at Best Buy.

When I clicked on the Partner Program link at the GeekSquad site, it too, as the image here suggests, seemed to be at least temporarily eliminated.

 

Let TA Provide You a Free Listing in our "IT Services Buyers Guide"

If you've got happy IT Services business customers (AT&T Tech Support 360, Verizon, Earthlink TechCare, etc) who will give you a TA Review, please contact me at Dan@TelecomAssociation.com so I can learn how you're successfully selling IT Services through the channel so the rest of us can learn from you.

Got eMaaS? Can Verizon Dominate MDM/BYOD Mobility Marketplace with "Enterprise Mobility as a Service"?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

I attended a seminar this week put on by Verizon titled "The State of Mobility" which was promoted as an opportunity to meet Verizon's enterprise mobility experts and hear them speak on the current and future state of mobility strategy as well as an overview of Verizon's "Enterprise Mobility as a Service" ("eMaaS") solution.

Over the past year or so I've had an opportunity to develop an opinion about MDM ("mobile device management") and BYOD ("bring your own device") issues as the solutions have been presented by WCS' embrace of the eMobus solution and Telarus' championing of the Advantix solution.

I have one business customer that happily uses the eMobus solution for their MDM and expense management needs and the $5 per device per month price works just fine for them.

Of the TA partner members that I've talked to about their MDM sales experiences, they're all pretty happy with both the solution and the $1 per month they earn off the $5.

 

What's Verizon Bringing to the Enterprise Mobility Market?

Two things, "dual persona" and per user instead of per device pricing.

Click here to view my full blog post about the Verizon eMaaS presentation.

Bottom Line?  If you're selling managed mobility solutions you're going to need to know how to respond to a client's inquiry about "dual persona" and user versus device pricing.

Done-for-You Marketing: Help Customers Increase Sales & Appointment Setting 400% Without More Phone Equipment

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

(Note: This is posted at BusinessPhoneNews.com and is designed as "done-for-you" marketing that authorized TA members can use on their end-user blogs and email newsletters.)

Any company that frequently contacts large numbers of prospects or customers by phone can achieve four-fold productivity increases with a hosted predictive dialer.

A predictive dialer is an amazing call center "SaaS" or software as a service solution, and can be particularly beneficial to any business that relies on inside sales people, either working on site or from a home office, to identify new sales opportunities; gather information about their marketplace, their customers, or their competitors; generate revenue; schedule large numbers of appointments; and perform other tasks that require extensive outbound outreach via telephone.

 

Phone Activities Improved by Hosted Predictive Dialing Include:

• 
  Appointment setting
• Cold calling
• Qualification and prioritization of campaign responses
• Nurturing of “hot” leads
• Phone-based sales to new prospects
• Up-sell and cross-sell initiatives to existing clients
• Customer loyalty programs
• Satisfaction surveys
• Market research
• Competitive analysis
• And much, much more!

Without a predictive dialing software package in place, agents waste valuable time repeatedly calling number after number – only to receive busy signals, voice mail messages, no answer, fax machines, or disconnected numbers. This reduces the number of “live” conversations they can conduct, and prevents them from spending as much time as possible interacting directly with their target audience. 

Predictive dialing software helps companies overcome these challenges. Predictive dialer systems are proven to dramatically improve the speed and effectiveness of agents and reduce costs, while allowing a much greater volume of calls to be initiated and maximizing talk time. As a result, business can more rapidly achieve their goals by performing faster, more successful outbound outreach. 

Industries that use hosted predictive dialers include:

• Auto Agents and Dealers
• Banks
• Carpet Cleaners
• Caterers
• Charities
• 
  Churches
• City Municipalities
• Credit and Collections
• Dentists
• Fundraising
• Healthcare
• Health/Fitness Organizations
• Home Improvement
• Insurance Agents and Brokers
• Investment Firms
• Janitorial Services
• Mortgage Services
• Physicians of all types
• Political Campaigns and Polling
• Recreational Leagues and Organizations
• Restaurants
• Retail
• Schools
• Unions
• Veteran Organizations

 

How to Choose a Hosted Predictive Dialing Solution Vendor

Multiple vendors are in the hosted call center marketplace all competing for you to conduct a trial with them.  Vendors worth considering include Five9, SafeSoft Solutions, Avaya, TelStar Hosted Services, InsideSales, YTel, StrataSoft, Front Range, Vocalcom, Angel, Telax, Contactual, Kunnect, ConnectFirst, VICIdial's VICIhost and many others.

If you don't have a hosted call center solution in place then any of these vendors will get you on the right path to increasing the productivity as much as 400% over a call center that does not use predictive dialing (or maybe not).

As with any multi-vendor and multi-application solution, the seemless integration of your existing phones, dial-tone and CRM will be critical to ensuring any productivity gains. Choose the wrong hosted call center solution that does not integrate well with your CRM and who knows what will happen?

That's why you need to work with an independent telecom agent or channel sales partner that has experience working with several different hosted predictive dialer solutions. Only working with an experienced professional can you avoid creating problems that you didn't have before you started down a hosted predictive dialer trial.

To find a channel partner or telecom agent with independent experience helping business customers choose a hosted predictive dialer, click here and scroll down to the "Call & Contact Center" category.

If you are an independent agent or channel partner skilled at helping business end-users choose a hosted call center solution please contact us at Dan@BusinessPhoneNews.com so we can provide you with a complimentary listing in our Recommended Member Directory.

Competitive Intelligence: Will Your Customers Choose SafeSoft's Hosted Call Center Solutions Over What You Recommend Now?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

SafeSoft Solutions, a California based company specializing in hosted call center solutions recently joined Telecom Association in an effort to share with TA's 3,800 members and their business customers why SafeSoft's set of hosted call center solutions, showcased by their "Market Dialer" are different or better than the call center and predictive dialer solutions that TA's independent members recommend now.

Since all of our readers are interested in getting new competitive intelligence to learn about a new service or solution that their customers might think is better, step one in introducing any new vendor to TA's members is having them sit for a "Competitive Self-Analysis Interview."

 

Is SafeSoft's Hosted Call Center Solution Better for Your Customers than What You're Recommending To Your Customers Now?

This is what we want to learn so we invited Aaron Kohut, SafeSoft's VP of Sales to answer our standard set of competitive intelligence questions.  

You can listen to the audio interview now with your computer speaker by clicking the audio player below. You can also click here to download the MP3 file.

 

 

The transcript of the interview is published below. Click here to print a transcript.

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Which Hosted Contact Center Predictive Dialing Solution is Right For Your Businesses Call Center Requirements?

A Competitive Self-Assessment of SafeSoft Solutions’ “Market Dialer”

A Business Phone News conversation with Aaron Kohut, the Vice President of SafeSoft Solutions, a hosted contact center solution provider. We've invited Aaron to share with us a competitive self-assessment of their services and solutions including their “Market Dialer” service so our clients know that through the vendors we partner with, our customers are getting the best technology services and solutions available in the marketplace today and tomorrow.

February 2012


DB:  Question #1.  Solution History - Can you give our audience of business end-users and technology consultants a quick history lesson on your services and solutions, how long has this service or solution category been around, and what business solutions or services are they replacing?

 AK:   Back in the early 80’s Predictive Dialers began as an on-premise hardware-based system, so they’ve been around for about 30 years. The hosted platform emerged in the 90s and became more popular as VoIP, (“Voice over IP”), technology was evolving.  Because VoIP offered lower telecom costs which were one of the expensive components, it definitely helped make the cloud-based service affordable and eventually became the preferred solution.

 

 

DB:  Question #2. Primary Customer Markets - Which vertical markets and/or customer types and sizes like your solutions or services best and pay attention to you the most? And, are there any metros where you are especially competitive?

 AK:   One of the great things about the Market Dialer is that it was designed to be universal and fit well into virtually any industry. From banking, to home improvement, to non-profit, and even political campaigning.

Our solutions will improve results in most verticals since we’ve successfully deployed our solution to various industries, and wide range of company sizes from small-to-medium size businesses, all the way to enterprise-level customers with hundreds of employees. The Market Dialer is so easy to use and so customizable that any size company in any industry can realize the benefits of the Market Dialer.

DONE-FOR-YOU-MARKETING: How to help your clients understand and choose you to evaluate "the Cloud"

By Dan Baldwin 
TA Executive Director
951-251-5155 email 

Following is the text to a blog post and email newsletter article that helps your business customers and prospects understand the benefits and decision points surrounding the issues of moving any part of their business into "the Cloud" (and which questions to ask prospective cloud consultants like you).

See all the done for you marketing pieces that you can license for your own customer blog & email newsletter at BusinesPhoneNews.com. 

 

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In the 20+ years I've been helping business customers choose telecom and technology solutions I've never had a customer call and say, "I need some cloud" or "Connect me to the cloud" or simply, "Cloud me, baby!"

When I have suggested to clients that their next technology solution can be provided to them from "the cloud" though some have asked, "What the heck are you talking about!"

Following is the simplest answer that I've ever come up with for the question "what's the cloud?"

"The cloud is actually a windowless building someplace that's built for the comfort of computers instead of people. One of the comfortable computers in the cloud is the computer that makes the 'call waiting' feature on your phone work. The cloud can accommodate almost any business computer that can help your business do almost anything."

 

What Parts of Your Business Benefit from a "Cloud Connection"?

Maybe some, maybe none, maybe all.  The decision really boils down to your your thoughts as a business owner around "convenience, cost and security".

Convenience - Can you conveniently access your business email account from any computer or

Start Your Own Cloud Backup Business for $60/month? Really awesome or really scary!

By Dan Baldwin
TA Executvie Director
951-251-5155 email 

As a telecom agent I really love the Google Ads that show up in my Gmail inbox because I always learn something fascinating.

In emailing a potential TA vendor specializing in web hosting I get a Google text add on my Gmail browser alerting me to "LiveDrive.com for 2TB of web backup storage" for next to nothing.  I wrote the URL down thinking I'd take a look at it later.

I was mostly interested because I recently

Got Customers Wanting to Leave Blackberry for iPad, Android or iPhone? Share this Subject Matter Expert Interview With Them

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

(The following is a blog post from BusinessPhoneNews.com that TA members may use on their own websites, blogs or email newsletters at no charge after securing permission from TA via email.)

Blackberry outages have been well documented over the past several months as has been the outcry of unhappy Blackberry enterprise business customers.  The obvious questions begged by these headlines include:

What's preventing Blackberry customers from moving to the iPhone or the Android platform?

Does Blackberry have a monopoly on enterprise-class mobile security?

What does a migration strategy away from Blackberry look like?

To help answer these questions, and understand the related issues, I recently spoke with Moe Arnaiz, CEO of eMOBUS, a Telecom Association subject matter expert for enterprise mobility solutions.

To learn more about how your business can effectively migrate away from Blackberry to iPhones, iPads or Android devices contact your independent telecom agent or channel sales partner and ask them about the migration strategies suggested in this interview.

Following are the questions I posed:

1.  Please give us a history of Blackberry's perceived monopoly in the mobility space for enterprise businesses.  What is Blackberry layering on top of an AT&T, Verizon or Sprint phone number that makes it "so secure" for enterprise customers?

2.  What are some of the applications being used that requires such a high level of security by enterprise customers?

3.  How is it that Apple's iOS mobile operating system and Google's Android mobile OS are so inferior to the Blackberry BES mobile operating system?

4.  What's at the crux of Blackberry's recent outages?

5.  Can enterprise mobility customers get sufficient security such that a migration away from Blackberry is conceivable?

6.  How would a migration from BES to iOS, or Android, take place?  Is it justifiable?

Chicago Confidential: Last Day - Which "Cloud" Business Phone System Pitch Sells Best & What Happens Next?

Posted 8/26/11 By Dan Baldwin
TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155

The promise of learning the best way to sell Alteva's unified communications business VoIP phone system "in-the-cloud" is what got me out of my office this week and to the semi-annual Channel Partners trade show hosted this Fall in Chicago.

I sat through two days of Alteva's Sales Certification program for one reason, to learn the best "cloud services" business phone system pitch so I could get busy selling more "cloud solutions" to all my customers that are supposedly just waiting to hear the right sales pitch to "buy some cloud" which will no doubt solve all their IT headaches.

While I'm sure we can all agree that the best VoIP/SIP/Cloud business phone system and related applications will be determined by more than just an "elevator pitch" - the biggest customer sale starts with an elevator pitch.

 

Who's Got the Best Business VoIP Phone System "Elevator Pitch"

So to make the best time of the last day of the trade show I went booth to booth recording every VoIP business phone system pitch I could find in order to hear (and them learn) the best one.

The following TA vendor members that provide business VoIP or "cloud" phone services are presented in alphabetic order.

Which one do you think is best?  Please leave a comment below. 

 

AireSpring

Ron McNab of AireSpring

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Alteva

Peter Caperonis of Alteva

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GLOBALINX

Michael Machonkin of GLOBALINX

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MegaPath

Ross Anderson of MegaPath

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Simple Signal

Dave Gilbert of SimpleSignal

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TouchTone

Steve Kaplan of TouchTone

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Vocal IP

Josh Redick of Vocal IP

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Other Services Complimentary to Hosted VoIP 

AireSpring's MPLS Mesh Service

Ron McNab of AireSpring

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Ben Bronston, Telecom Lawyer

Ben Bronston, Telecom Lawyer

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Granite

Charlie Pagliazzo of Granite Telecom

 

What Happens Next? 

As telecom agents and channel partners it's our job to "learn the pitches" and sell the heck out of this stuff.

While certainly most telecom customers are going to want to dig all the way down to the nitty gritty (with your help) to find the best service providers for their unique position in the market, it's our job as professional independent sales advisers to help our customers understand which three vendors they start their conversations with.

That's where a good "elevator pitch" comes in.

So pick your favorite couple hosted VoIP and unified communications providers, learn their pitch, sell their stuff - and then tell me all about it at the next Channel Partners trade show in Vegas!

Vocal IP Networx to Exhibit at Channel Partners Conference & Expo

VOCAL IP NETWORX - nationwide facilities based ISP, IP Telephony and Cloud services provider headquartered in New York City, announced today that it will be exhibiting at the 2011 Fall Channel Partners Conference & Expo. The event will take place August 24-26, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place in Chicago.

The Channel Partners Conference & Expo is the communications industry's only event exclusively for indirect sales partners focused on transforming their businesses to become the next-generation solutions providers. More than 2,000 participants are expected to attend the three-day education and networking event and the exhibit hall will feature more than 120 exhibitors. VOCAL IP NETWORX will be located at 1431.

Vocal IP Networx, a certified Microsoft Partner, announced today August 24^th, that it will be launching Vocal-UC, via Microsoft Lync.

Vocal IP Agents will be able to offer this advanced unified communications platform combined with Vocal’s existing Broadsoft IP Telephony soft-switch platform will provide a complete unified enterprise level communications experience for their end-users. Our customers will be able to connect, collaborate, control costs, improve productivity, support the mobile workforce, gain operational efficiencies, be more responsive, and maintain regulatory compliance.

Vocal UC will provide companies with complete enterprise voice features, powerful deployment & management tools and extensibility.

 Remember, as a Vocal IP Agent, you have access to Microsoft certified Sales Engineers when selling the new Vocal UC product. Our studies have shown, once a Vocal IP Sales Engineer is involved, our close ratios increase dramatically, so utilization these resources.

Vocal IP Networx Marketing Team will launch the new Vocal UC product with an incentive for all Vocal Agents. On top of the already aggressive Vocal IP compensation plan, Vocal IP will be offering “One Month’s MRC” for all new Vocal UC sales during the months August & September.  Please contact your Vocal IP Channel Manager for details  

About Vocal IP Networx –Vocal IP Networx is a nationwide facilities based ISP, IP Telephony and Cloud services provider headquartered in New York City. Vocal IP Networx operates 2 Super POPs, one in Newark NJ and the other residing in Las Vegas NV. Vocal’s network platform is fully redundant and geographically diverse. As well, Vocal’s infrastructure is fully managed 24/7/365.

Vocal has national service presence and is focused on multi-location organizations within the SMB & Enterprise markets. Vocal IP Networx is has a full suite of Cloud based products and services thatreduce IT management efforts and costs for its customers.  The Vocal’s technical teams are considered IT, IP Telephony, and Data networking experts. Vocal‘s Partner Program has been recognized and featured within the Telecommunications industry for over 7+ years now.

About Channel Partners Conference & Expo

The Channel Partners Conference & Expo (www.channelpartnersconference.com) is the communications industry’s only event exclusively for indirect sales organizations – agents, VARs, systems integrators, interconnects and consultants – focused on transforming their businesses to become converged solutions providers.

Produced by Channel Partners (www.channelpartnersonline.com), the event is produced twice annually in the spring and fall and features future-proofing advice from thought-leading speakers and how-to courses on best practices, technology and strategy. Topics range from hot technologies and new opportunities to partnering, diversification, sales tips and skills building.

 

Josh Redick Vocal IP VP/GM of Sales & Marketing 

 

AT&T Declares Independence from VARs and Integrators on July 4, 2011 (Who wants to fire you?)

Posted 5/17/11 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

File this news story under "Why-am-I-not-surprised?"

In getting ready to attend the Managed and Hosted Video Summit in June, I've been researching the electronic security industry to find telecom agents, IT consultants, business phone systems vendors or other equipment VARs who are getting into or are already providing video surveillance or other sorts of loss prevention, security, asset protection solutions.

That's when I ran across this news story published in Security Systems News that discusses how AT&T purchased a security monitoring technology company named Xanboo and then decided to discontinue Xanboo's reseller program. 

Security Systems News quotes a March 31 letter from AT&T general attorney Meredith Mays as follows. (I added the bold red emphasis for dramatic flair).