"What, Who & How to Sell" information for Telecom Association's 3,800 independent members -- independent telecom agents, technology sales partners and non-commissioned consultants -- who are the "trusted advisers" for multi-location business buyers of phone systems, Internet access, wide area data network services and cloud based software applications.
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.
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!
Posted 8/23/11 By Dan Baldwin TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155
I spent my second day of "Channel Partners Expo Week" getting my brain filled up with Alteva's "Sandler Sales Secrets" which is about half of the "Level 1" of their three part certification program.
Four Reasons Alteva's Certification Will find Agent & Partner Favor
1. Alteva Certifies YOU to Sell Like their Top Three Sales Stars
Front and center at the 2-day training session are Guy Yasika, Pete Caperonis & Louis Hayner, Alteva's top three salesmen. Louis Hayner is actually the "UC sales champion" as Guy & Pete both credit their success to "doing what Lou does".
Lou was not shy about sharing his sales success secrets for selling just one solution - Alteva - head to head against every other "unified communications" solution (modern business phone system) on the marketplace that agents and partners are trying to figure out how to sell.
"Use this systematic sales approach and engage in relentless activity with properly screened prospects" was the clear message that he shared with the attendees of the 2-day training session. This 2-day "Level 1" session will be followed up by four seperate one-hour online webinar sessions for the whole group before being followed by, Level 2 and Level 3 within the next six months.
2. Alteva's Targeting Brick & Mortar Distributors that Value Certifications
Classic telecom agents - those working out of home offices - have long ignored or given "lip-service-only" to multiple past attempts by industry groups to create an "agent certification program". The classic agents were just not convinced that any "agent certification" would give them a serious marketplace advantage that would balance out the time and trouble to "get certified".
This lack of percieved agent certification value coupled with the fact that vendors would not commit to compensating "certified partners" higher than non-certified partners and that "expert salespeople" were not writing the certification material giveing out REAL sales secrets meant that most past agent certification programs we're not seriously endorsed by the most productive agents in the industry.
Brick and mortar agents and partners however (interconnects that sell business phone systems and IT vendors that sell LAN equipment out of a real building with their logo on it and their installation trucks in front of it) have had "vendor certification" requirements as part of their business forever. They couldn't sell Cisco boxes or NEC phone systems until they were certified.
As these new brick and mortar (B&M) distributors become the "new master agents" in the voice and data network services industry, they will easily see the value of a "vendor focused" sales certification program for their sales staff. B&M agents are not really all that interested in having their W2 employee salespeople be able to sell anything and everything to customers like classic telecom agents like to do.
B&M agents tell their sales staff, "This is what we sell and this is how we sell it. Follow our sales formula and earn $200,000 a year - or get fired!"
While some independent telecom agents are fine with earning $70,000 a year as non-aggressive "farmers", other channel partners are ready bump up their sales game, become hunters, and start earning closer to the $200k that top direct sales people earn. Stepping up to these sales figures however requires a disciplined and focused approach to unified communications sales.
By stepping up and showing strong industry sales leadership with their UC Certification program, Alteva's Louis Hayner is basically reading the minds of the owners of B&M agencies. He's saying, "Do you want to confuse your customers with a hundred UC vendor options? No. Do you want to offer a best-of-breed UC solution? Yes. Do you want a proven UC sales process taught to your salespeople? We got it. When do you want to get started?"
Beautiful!
3. Alteva's Pulling Broadsoft, Microsoft and Possibly Others Into Their Certification
While UC/hosted VoIP vendors with their own Asterisk-based, proprietary solutions can certainly find success with a decent certification program of their own, because their core solution is based on Broadsoft, considered by most as the "enterprise, carrier class" level solution of choice for customers that want bullet-proof reliability in their communication solution over one that provides unique, boutique-like, one-off feature sets, Alteva's head start over other Broadsoft UC/hosted VoIP solution providers with their "certification program" may establish Alteva's Broadsoft solution as the standard against which other vendor's Broadsoft solutions will be compared.
In addition to saying to B&M agents, "This is how a Broadsoft communications solution is sold", Alteva is also saying, "This is how you add Microsoft's software solutions like Exchange and SharePoint to the Broadsoft solution. This is exactly the sort of synergistic sales expertise that B&M distributors are looking for.
During the sales certification class, Hayner indicated that the "Alteva Solution" is not restricted to just a Broadsoft play in that USA Datanet, another hosted VoIP solution provider acquired by WVT and being integrated into the Alteva sales process used a Mitel/Metaswitch hosted VoIP solution that was similar to the design used by Broadview Networks, a very large UC/hosted VoIP competitor in their space.
Hayner indicated, "35 seats and below? We've got the low cost Broadview-like Mitel solution. 35 seats and above? We've got the Broadsoft solution overlayed with Microsoft for the 70% of the marketplace invested in Microsoft Office licenses." Hayner further indicated that he had his view also set on having a third solution for larger customers that wanted a carrier grade UC solution to match their adoption of Google's suite of office solutions.
4. Alteva is Using a Professional "Sales Process" Training System
In conversations with UC/hosted VoIP company owners I'm always looking for the "whatever-it-is" that separates them from their competition. To hopefully discover these "sales differentiators" I ask, "What's your sales process?" I figure, if their solution is really "flying off the shelf" then their "sales process" must have identified and amplified all their sales differentiators.
To my dismay, many (maybe most) smaller telecom and network service solutions vendors don't have a documented sales process. It seems that all the sales success they've experienced to date has come from a "build it and they will come" approach. While I'm sure this works well for "lucky" entrepreneurs, "We're not really sure" does not strike me as a good long term answer to the question asked by prospective investors, "So how do you sell all your widgets?"
Putting together "Agent Advisory Boards" and then simply doing what your top agents tell you to do does not really seem like a "sales process strategy" that will ensure future sales success.
While many vendors take great pride in the fact that they have no direct salespeople in the market competing against their agents and partners, what "we've go no direct salespeople" has always told me is, "We're not experts at selling our own stuff".
By showcasing their top three sales "closers" and saying, "We crush our sales quotas following a specific and proprietary sales process adapted from specific Sandler sales processes", Alteva is saying to potential B&M distributors, "We know how to beat the competitors and our documented sales process ensures your sales staff will hit a 50% and above close ratio".
While there are other "sales process systems" that compete against Sandler's sales process system, the fact that Alteva has adopted and perfected a specific professional sales system that they teach to their agents and partners shows that they're deadly serious about having their partners achieve their unified communications sales goals.
I must say that I've sat through many "professional sales training" sessions led by sales trainers that have next to no clue about anything in the voice and data sales world we live in. I actually challenged David's telecom sales credentials at the beginning 0f the day-long sales training to see if I could trip him up like so many larger end-user prospects try to trip me up at the beginning of a sales call.
To David's credit, he very plesantly turned my challenge around with his words to the point where instead of thinking the rest of the day would be "more of the same" I suddenly found myself looking forward to learning the techniques that he professionally used on me just moments before. It was like wanting to learn the "word trick" just used on you by a master sales magician. Seriously, I was impressed.
A couple minutes later Louis Hayner assured the group that, "David's the guy!" and "This isn't a case of 'we've hired David for the day like some sales clown to entertain you'. We've contracted with Dave to help Alteva produce the industries best in class unified communications sales certification program. We selected Dave to do it because he's been 'sales mentoring' with our best sales people including myself for over a year. He's intimately aware of our sales challenges and he knows exactly what it takes to crush a monster sales quota."
That was the endorsement I needed to hear from the UC salesman I wanted to copy.
What Should Telecom Agents & Channel Partners Do About This?
1. Get "Certified" With One Vendor to Use as a Benchmark
Many telecom agents and voice & data channel partners are a "jack of all trades" but expert at none. While this lack of specific vendor expertise has been fine over the past decade when there were hundreds of providers to choose from, this will not be the case moving forward.
As industry consolidation reduces the number of unified communications vendors the business end users get to choose from, the consultants that end-users work with will be expected to be "certified experts" just as their previous phone vendors were expected to be certified on the NEC or Siemens phone system they were investing in.
Agents that scoff at the notion of getting vendor certifications may well find that they are leading their best customers to one vendor or another only to then loose the sale to a "certified" solution partner of the vendor the non-certified agent introduced the customer to.
2. Promote Your Vendor Certifications to Your Prospects
While most business phone system and IT equipment partners tend to limit their vendor certifications to just one or two vendors, "Unified Communications Solutions Providers" will not find themselves so limited.
While there will not likely be successful UC agents and partners parading their certification badges around like an Eagle Boy Scout shows off his merit badges, it's easy to imaging that the most successful sales agents and channel partners specializing in unified communications will be selecting two or three "best of breed" vendors to get certified with in the major solution categories like, Hosted VoIP , SIP Trunks, Conferencing, Collaboration, etc.
3. Ask All Prospective Vendors, "How are you specifically different from _____ in a way that customers care about and can easily understand"
In the end, the magic of "vendor sales certification training" comes from the fact that the "certification" forces the vendors to organize their thoughts, document their successful sales practices and identify their important sales differentiators.
Vendor certification it seems, will be the only way to get our vendors to answer the very basic questions that our customers are asking us, "How is this one vendor specifically, and measurably different from this other vendor or the one we're already using? Oh, and can you please share your answers using language that will cause me to understand and actually believe what you're saying."
The "Bottom Line"
When telecom or data network services vendors hawking unified communications, hosted VoIP, SIP trunks, audio conferencing, web collaboration or anything else ask you to take a look at distributing their solutions to your customers and prospects, ask them, "How do your existing best sales people sell your stuff? Is the sales process documented in any sort of sales certification course you offer?"
Not having a sales certification course that has been vouched for by other agents that are known and respected gives prospective agents an easy way to pass on a prospective vendor's invitation to "please sell our stuff".
If a vendor has not taken the time to document what's the best way to sell their own stuff, why should an agent go through the time, money and trouble to figure it out for them?
Tell them, "We're pretty happy and successful selling your competitor's solutions. If you can't teach me how you're going to beat me in a competitive sales environment with your UC solution, I don't think I'm going to risk pissing off my current vendors by putting your company logo on my website or marketing materials.
"But I'll be happy to go to your trade show party, can I have an invitation?
What About Mr. Blotto?
After fifteen years of attending telecom agent & channel partners trade shows I must admit to getting a little bored of the "corporate party scene" (the vendors dump their money into agent drinks in an air conditioned room seperate and sterile from the host city.)
WTG is helping to break the boredom with their "Carnival Party" at the Navy Pier, a well known Chicago landmark. I'm looking forward to that affair Thursday night.
But Chicago is well known for their music scene and out of the way night clubs. Having come into Chicago two days early for the Alteva training (and with a rental car at my disposal) I really wanted to see "that" Chicago while I was here.
As I mentioned in my Day 1 blog post yesterday, I happened by a big group of people on an otherwise empty street on my way back to my hotel and found Reggies Music Joint and learned that a well known Chicago jam band "Mr. Blotto" played their every Tuesday night.
So of course I made my way back there last night, caught a "set of jams" and bought a T-shirt. Click the YouTube video below to get a flavor of "real Chicago music" from Mr. Blotto.
Do "Channel Partners" in a New Way
For the last couple years I've kind of gritted my teeth going to the semi-annual Channel Partners trade show because of all the burning projects and deadlines on my desk. Having now engaged this Chicago trade show in a new way - go early for some decent vendor training and get a real flavor of the host city - I must say that I've been "renewed".
Talk to your best vendors and see if they can suitcase in some REAL sales training (as defined as "this is what our best salesman does") that agents even help pay for. Go to the host city early, stay late. Do "Channel Partners" in a new way.
P.S. If you can't get your best vendors to provide REAL sales training, give Alteva a call to see when you can get in on their next certified unified communications training session.
Posted 5/17/11 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email
Telarus is the telecom master agent that invented itself from scratch last decade and quickly became a serous industry player in the voice and data arena based on their expert use of search engine optimization or SEO techniques.
In an effort to introduce their web marketing expertise to telecom agents, IT consultants, business phone system equipment VARs and other managed services distributors, Telarus is "sharing their secrets" this Thursday a 8am Pacific.
If you need to get your agent marketing efforts up to speed be sure and log into this training.
This sort of web marketing training normally costs hundreds of dollars atprofessional web marketing seminars. To get this sort of training for free from a telecom master agency that has perfected it for telecom agents is really priceless.
If you skip this you're seriously missing out. I listen live or to the recording of every session.
Following is their marketing training information for this month and a link to check out the information they put out last month:
Telarus' May Marketing Training Call Information
Patrick Oborn has been working hard on Telarus' SEO and is ready to share his latest secrets.
Please join us Thursday May 19 for this month's marketing training that will focus on the importance of and how to get the "inbound links" you need so that your web sites will achieve the "Google Rank" they deserve.
In his training call this past month, Patrick Oborn, provided an in-depth training on the available marketing tools and social media tricks, including:
TelePacific, billed by some as the "best overall business phone company in California and Nevada", is going out of its way to make sure that all telecom agents, channel sales partners, computer network integrators and equipment resellers have the best voice and data network service training in the business - even if they're not TelePacific representatives.
Recently, TelePacific opened up their recorded agent training webinars to anyone who cared to learn something new about how cutting edge voice and data solutions are being used by business customers in California and Nevada.
By simply registering, any independent telecom distributor can access the following TelePacific recorded webinars. Just click the link, register and view the webinar right now!
Ethernet over Fixed Wireless Join this special brown bag session to see how we got you covered, as we introduce Ethernet over Fixed Wireless technology as an alternative transport option added to the TelePacific arsenal of bandwidth services. We'll teach you about the technology and its advantages! Presented by: Jon Lowry, Senior Product Manager, TelePacific
Join us on Monday, April 4th from 11:30 to 12:30 PST.
TelePacific recently acquired the fixed wireless network of Covad Wireless.
So now, in addition to our Ethernet broadband offerings, we also have high bandwidth wireless options from 1 to 100 Mbps. Which means we can serve small business to enterprise customers who may not be ideally located for wireline Internet service, or who want a redundant backup path for their mission critical applications and communications. It's all part of our expanded umbrella that includes the latest voice and data convergence technologies and mobile services. This means more revenue for you.
Join this special brown bag session to see how we got you covered, as we introduce Ethernet over Fixed Wireless technology as an alternative transport option added to the TelePacific arsenal of bandwidth services. We'll teach you about the technology and its advantages!
Presented by: Jon Lowry, Senior Product Manager - TelePacific Data
The best part of the presentation was the half-dozen case studies that were presented that really showcased where Telesphere had positioned itself as a fierce competitor in the SIP trunk and hosted VoIP space.
If you're a telecom agent, channel partner or IT consultant that specializes in multi-location business customers and their business phone sytems and local phone services you should really watch this video tape presentation of Telesphere's partner program so you can see how it compares to the ones you know or if you find yourself competing against them.
Master Agency Telarus seemed to come out of no where five or six years ago and now they seem to be everywhere on the Internet.
See for yourself. Open your favorite search engine and then start searching for any combination of telecom voice or data keywords you think your best business end-user prospects are searching for these days.
Technology Channel Association ("TCA") rolled out their long awaited certification program for telecom agents and channel partners late last year and I was able to speak on the phone today with Ben Henkels, TCA's Certification Chairperson about what telecom agents need to know about the new program.
While everyone likes to go to the big national tradeshows to get out of town, the serious action for several years has been happening at the local metro lunch & learns where the telecom vendors get personal one-on-one time with an areas biggest voice and data telecom agents, channel partners, applications brokers and IT consultants.
Next Tuesday, February 22nd, all that action's going to be happening at ATEL Communications when they play host to Telesphere.
If you're a voice & data "Big Dog" in San Diego, make sure you RSVP for this event and then go visit with Telesphere next Tuesday in the company of your peers.
Here's some of what you'll learn as submitted by Telesphere's Joe Testa:
Overview of how Telesphere provides unique voice and data services over a private IP network. We are building the nation’s largest hosted PBX business phone service for unified communications. We'll also cover our financial overview as well as how we integrate the office phone, computer and mobile devices utilizing FMC or fixed mobile convergence. Cloud communications enables wireline and wireless convergence. One of the largest providers of voice services over the Broadsoft Platform, in which Broadsoft is the world leader in hosted IP platforms and solutions.
Trends and other industry information, hosted IP services market share, hosted IP revenue. Some key features, Speak to dial, fax to email, dial from webpage, call center solutions, hosted call recording.
Whats in it for you, the telecom agent, channel partner & IT consultant by partnering with ATEL Communications and Telesphere.. Diversification of your financial portfolio, residual income on both the network and phone equipment. Telesphere has less than a 1% churn and an average life of a customer is 8 plus years. Residuals paid for the lifetime of a customer.
Posted 5/17/11 By 
Call Details:
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