By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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As Washington wrangles over the details of avoiding a national "fiscal cliff", business owners and managers should take a day or two to find the fiscal cliffs buried in their current telecom agreements.
Just as the nation's taxpayers want their Washington political representatives to eliminate spending on overpriced or underutilized services, so too should every business be scrutinizing the details of every contract for voice and data services that generates a monthly invoice.
Auto-Renewal = Going Over the Telecom Cliff
I've been in the telecom business since 1990 and the only rates that I've ever seen go up year after year are copper phone line rates from AT&T and Verizon. All other rates on all other services have gone down every year for over 20 years.
The reason telecom carriers write their contracts so they auto-renew at the end of a term is to prevent their customers from asking for lower rates. If you do not notify your telecom carriers that it is your intention to review and renegotiate each and every agreement prior to the expiration of the term you are locking in lower business profits for yourself and giving your telecom vendor higher profits without your vendor giving you more value in return.
How to Renegotiate Your Telecom Contracts Without Switching Voice & Data Carriers
The main reason most business customers let their contracts auto-renew is because they simply don't have the time, energy or resources to conduct a thorough market analysis of their current vendor's competition and they really don't want to change providers anyway.
While an aversion to switching carriers is understandable since that's when major outages can occur, an aversion to saving 10% on a voice or data phone bill is hard to understand, especially since it can be accomplished without switching service providers if a professional network services "independent partner" is engaged for a contract renewal consulting agreement.
The trick to successfully negotiating a lower contract rate from your existing provider is in being able to convince your current provider that you can easily access the same or better service at a lower rate from one of their competitors. Unfortunately, getting competitive contract pricing information from your current carrier's competitors (that you have no real intention of switching to) can be tough. This is where an independent sales consultant is invaluable.
Independent telecom agents or "channel partners" work with all the different voice and data competitors and are very familiar with the most aggressive pricing that all the vendors provide to retail customers in any given competitive scenario. More often than not, an independent sales consultant can provide the exact documentation you need to get your current provider to lower your current rates IF and ONLY IF you've not let your agreement auto-renew.
How Can You Get Contract Renegotiation Help? Call Us!
Click here to find a recommended telecom agent or independent network services sales partner in your area. All agents and partners help customers in different ways and at different price points. Some charge a straight hourly rate, some charge a "shared savings" percentage and others simply charge a "management over-ride" percentage of all the monthly invoices they help you manage.
To find the right partner for your renegotiation needs you'll want to work with someone that understands your specific network voice and data design so that competitive comparisons are done in an "apples for apples" manner.
Keywords: independent telecom agent, sales partner, network services, contract, service agreement, renegotiation, shared savings, auto-renewal, at&t, verizon, cliff, telecom fiscal, Image: iStock
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