Selling Telecom Blog

First Friday Conference Call: 9 TA Member Judges Choose Best of 4 BYOB Hosted VoIP Vendors

Posted 11/3/10 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

Last month TA launched our monthly "First Friday Conference Call" series where on the first Friday of every month TA updates and educates TA's members and vendors via an audio and web conference call. First we update members and vendors about what TA's doing for them and how they can take advantage of upgrades benefits. Second we host a vendor "shootout" so members can learn the differences between different vendor solutions.

8:00 - 8:55 am Pacific - TA Member & Vendor Updates:  Call 605-475-6402, PIN 804429  TA's Executive Director Dan Baldwin will discuss upgrades to TA's agent and vendor programs including what has transpired over the last month and what is scheduled for the rest of 2010 and planned for 2011. The call will cover agent specific matters first and then vendor related matters second. Questions will be entertained.

9:00 - 10:55 am Pacific - Shootout Vendor Presentations:  See time & access information below

11:00 - 11:55 am Pacific - Judges Comments & Recommendations:  Call 605-475-6402, PIN 804429

 

BYOB Hosted VoIP Solution Shootout

November's TA vendor "Solution Shootout" on the 5th is going to compare BYOB hosted VoIP vendors (vendors that allow customers to use their existing Internet connection) where BYOB stands for "bring your own broadband". This event will educate TA's members about the pros and cons of one vendor's BYOB solution over another BYOB solution and hopefully answer the following questions:

    A. What sort of business customers (size, verticals, geography, etc.) are most attracted to your solution? How many customers do you have and what has been the "evolution" of the solution?

    B. What specific applications or unique features/benefits does your solution deliver that is most valued by your customers and distinguishes you from your competitors in the space?

    C. How is the solution configured, what phones are used, what sort of platform is it riding on (Broadsoft, Asterisk, other, etc.) and how "big and strong" is your hosted VoIP network?

    D. Anything else that specifically shows how your solution is better or different from your competitors explained in a manner that customers can easily understand and appreciate.

Shoot-Out Participants  The following TA vendors that provide BYOB hosted VoIP solutions have agreed to participate:

Broadview - Based in New York, Broadview has been providing their solution for some time and have recently announced 50,000 hosted VoIP "seats in service". 

Broadview's presentation will be from 9:00 am - 9:25 am Pacific on 11/5/10. The webinar dial-in information will be posted here shortly.

MegaPath/Speakeasy - MegaPath's acquisition of Speakeasy this year evidenced their commitment to the BYOB hosted VoIP space.

MegaPath's presentation will be from 9:30 am - 9:55 am Pacific on 11/5/10. The webinar dial-in information will be posted here shortly.

SimpleSignal - SimpleSignal defines their competitive advantages in their unique unified communications applications like hosted call recording and others.

SimpleSignal's presentation will be from 10:00 am - 10:25 am Pacific on 11/5/10. The webinar dial-in information will be posted here shortly.

Vocal IP - With over 1,500 customized IP installations to date, Vocal IP positions itself as the TA vendor that specializes in VoIP installations that treats every customer opportunity as a unique project.

Vocal IP's presentation will be from 10:30 am - 10:55 am Pacific on 11/5/10. The webinar dial-in information is:

Video: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/join/793316459,
Audio: Call 646-558-2105, Access Code: 793-316-459

(If you're a TA vendor with a BYOB hosted VoIP solution that would like to participate, please contact [email protected] ASAP)

Judges Review - From 11:00 to 11:55 am Pacific, the nine BYOB shootout judges below will discuss what they liked or disliked about the shootout presentations and then give their agent and end-user recommendations about how to best choose hosted VoIP. To listen call 605-475-6402, PIN 804429.

Shoot-Out Judges  The following TA members have sales and marketing experience in the area of BYOB hosted VoIP and have agreed to listen to the shootout participants and then share their opinions about the material the vendors presented and clearly state "who they'd lead with and why" qualified any way that they like. The judges will also be allowed a couple minutes to comment on the subject in areas not related to the vendor's specific presentation.

Andrew Cohen - VP of ATEL Communications, a full service business technology solution provider in San Diego that started 25-years ago as a NEC phone system dealership, Andrew specializes in selling IP-PBX, hosted VoIP or even TDM business phone solutions to ATEL's 3,800 business customers and prospects.  

Ben Hanni - Co-Founder of BP Innovations, a telecom VAR that's an Avaya, Digium, Switchvox and ShoreTel partner that also provides Hosted PBX offerings, Ben's company manages their customer's needs from the dial-tone to the desktop phone and from the data access loop to the router & firewall.

Braun Mincher - President of PCG Telecom, Braun is a VoIP sales pioneer. He literally made a million dollars building and selling a successful Altigen dealership (one of the first business IP-PBXs). Braun is now equally adept at selling IP-PBX or hosted VoIP to his customers. He's even written many vendor neutral "Business VoIP Buying Resources".

Daniel Pentecost  - Founding Director of Anyion Group, over the last 7 years, Daniel has personally trialed, tested and done due diligence on over 54 VoIP Trunking and and Hosted PBX providers for clients of his enterprise services consultancy.  He maintains an active test bed in his office and home office.  Daniel is considered by many to be the first person to call when Google does not turn up needed information.

Jeff Ott - President of Total Carrier Solutions, Jeff is consistently one of the highest producing agents in the telecom network services industry month after month. If Jeff likes it, and he thinks it's right for his customers, he can sell it.

Jeff Uphues - Having held executive level positions for Bandwidth.com and Voila IP, Jeff has seen our industry from all sides. He knows most of the C-level executives at most of the VoIP companies and knows who's got the "DNA to succeed".

Harry Brelsford - After founding SMB Nation to help IT professionals manage Microsoft business servers, Harry founded TelephoneNation to help telecom VoIP professionals and business end-users with their hosted and IP-PBX challenges.

Larry Lisser - Larry's expertise is understanding and evaluating a service provider's "go to market" strategy and message. He can answer, "Will anyone buy what this firm's selling?"

Laura Bernstein - Owner of Cost Recovery Associates or "CRA", Laura has a rich experience with selecting BYOB for her business clients and her own office. CRA brings 35 years experience to their corporate clients.

(If you're a TA member with experience evaluating and choosing BYOP hosted VoIP solutions for your business customers and would like to participate as a judge, please contact [email protected] ASAP)

 

Upcoming Shoot-Out Events  The following shoot-outs are tentatively scheduled for the coming months (dates are subject to change). Email [email protected] if you're a TA member or vendor and you're interested in presenting, being a judge or suggesting a shoot-out title.

Date		Title		Description		Invited Vendors & Judges
12/3/2010		Mid Level Hosted VoIP		Dedicated T1 connection required		Broadview, ColorBroadband, MegaPath, NewEdge, SimpleSignal,
		New York Metro		CLECs & Master Agents, etc.		Broadview, One Communications, OutReach, Transbeam
1/7/2011		High End Hosted VoIP		MPLS required		Alteva, Smoothstone, Telesphere
		LA Metro		CLECs & Master Agents		TelePacific, WTG,
		Energy		Energy savings & resale		AUS, 5 Star, Great American, Outreach, WTG,  R. Stevens
2/4/2011		IP-PBX		Premises based solution		ATEL Communications, PAETEC
		Chicago Metro		CLECs & Master Agents
3/4/2011		SIP Trunks		SIP carrier providers		AireSpring,
		Dallas/FW Metro		CLECs & Master Agents

 

Top 10 Agent Take-a-Ways from MicroCorp's Private One-on-One Event

Posted 11/3/10 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

Going to the big national agents shows are good for master agents and carriers needing to meet with one another but often "run of the mill" sub-agents like myself wander from seminar to seminar feeling "second best". Not so at the private annual events put on by the individual master agents like MicroCorp's "One-on-One".

At these invitation only shows, the agents that help the master agents put up the big numbers with the carriers get their own time to mix with their peers and meet "One-on-One" with the big carriers. As I indicated in my initial review of MicroCorp's "One-on-One" event last month, over 110 agents attended to learn from each other and the 24 vendors that came to help put the party on as well as MicroCorp's two dozen staff members. Following is what I learned, as an agent, talking to MicroCorp's agents at this year's event.

 

Top 10 Agent Take-a-Ways from MicroCorp's One-on-One

1. The carrier path to the VAR volume goes through master agents - Whenever agents feel comfortable among their peers, as they do at these private master agent shows, they naturally seem to start talking about the big deals they've recently won or lost. My constant question in these conversations is, "How'd you get that lead?" (I'm always trying to learn if anyone's actually doing any marketing any more.) Invariably the answer is, "My VAR subs." When I ask what percentage of a productive sub-agent's lead come from VARs, many look at me kind of funny and say, "All of them."

When I asked the carrier reps at the MicroCorp event if they were having any luck signing up computer equipment VAR's ("value added resellers") or network systems integrators as direct agents, many agreed that they were having some luck but that they weren't getting any kind of serious or consistent sales volume out of them. All the "VAR volume" was coming through the relationships the master agent's subs had with their VAR lead partners.

 

2. You don’t need to understand data to sell it but you can’t be scared of it - There were people at the event that insisted agents who did not become much more technically savvy were not going to make it over the next several years. I disagree. Agents who can't learn the tech sales lingo are certainly at a disadvantage against their sales engineering peers but all successful agents really need to learn is a little more than they know now when it comes to selling tech.

Adam Shapiro, the very well received CustomerCentric Selling guru that MicroCorp brought in for a 60-minute session titled, "Cross-Selling Conversations" really brought this home for the attendees. He quickly had all the attendees writing "plausible emergencies" and "conversational success stories" as a quick and easy way to screen almost any business client or prospect for almost any technical solution or service.

I quickly decided that for me to do a better job of selling technical solutions I barely understand, all I really need to do is get together with my vendors and memorize a "plausible emergency" and a "conversational success story" for each of the high-margin solutions they keep wishing I'd sell more of.

(TA is actually going to try and work out a deal to get Adam to work with TA's vendors to do just that.)

 

3. Competition from carrier direct sales people continue to be an agent's worst "sales killer" - As most agents will admit, getting leads from VARs is great but it's not perfect. The biggest obvious problem with VAR leads is the agent doesn't "own the sales relationship" which means the prospect often feels free to shop the agent's price out - even to the direct sales side of a carrier the agent's already proposed. Sure, most good agents can sell through this using "value" and "single point of contact" on bigger deals but this unpleasant customer practice still tends to compress profit margins.

Direct sales people are an even bigger threat when it comes to larger VARs with their own carrier sales divisions. The owner of the VAR can dictate that his or her VAR equipment salespeople screen every equipment deal through the VAR's own carrier sales division but this does not seem to be happening. VAR equipment sales people peddle their network service leads first to anyone that will feed them more equipment leads (like direct carrier sales people) no matter what their bosses say.

 

4. Agents look to focus 2011 sales efforts on conferencing, retention, colocation/hosting & TEM/WEM - The best part of any agent gathering is picking the brains of peers to find out what they're sales focus will be in the next 12 to 18 months. fFor the agents and subs I met at MicroCorp's "One-on-One" that seemed to be:

     a. Conferencing - Screen any and all customer bases for audio and web conferencing opportunities

     b. Retention - Every MicroCorp staffer had a button that said, "Ask me about 'Retention'". Enough said.

     c. Private Colocation/Hosting - As most agents I know shy away from anything close to resale (they mostly want to represent multiple third party vendors) I was somewhat surprised to learn at least one very successful agent was very interested in colocation and hosting in a "private cloud" configuration. If his customers want the the cloud to protect their servers then he was eager to take them there - as long as it was a cloud (colo/hosting facility) that the agent controlled.

     d. Telecom & Wireless Expense Management - While I list this last, TEM/WEM seemed to be the area many "classic agents" were happiest about getting into especially for mid-market accounts in multi-location, multi-carrier environments. Where confusion rules, people who can read a phone bill easily shine.

 

5. Hosted applications vendors and agents are specifically networking with Avaya & Cisco partners - Telecom equipment vendors do not seem too threatened by backup and disaster recovery ("B/DR") solutions in the cloud. Many agents see B/DR as a natural icebreaker to get them in with telecom equipment partners - and it's selling very well.

 

6. The only marketing many agents are doing is to all their local equipment VARs - While many VARs seem to bemoan the constant assault by telecom agents and vendor wanting to partner with them, most seem to be OK partnering with someone. As most telecom agents are fairly poor marketers, it seems to me that it would not take too strong an effort to displace a VAR's current telecom partner by simply being more professional and staying in better touch.

 

7. "Clouds" rule high-end conversations but SMBs are just buying "a phone system" - While the cloud vendors are right that the mid-level & enterprise decision makers all want to talk about their "cloud strategies", many end-users still are not totally sure what they even need to buy to “have the cloud”. Agents calling on larger accounts need to know what products in their bag represent the “cloud” and need to be able to describe affordable strategies their clients can use to "migrate to the cloud" over a reasonable time period.

SMB clients though still just need their office phones to work at the least possible cost. Cloud? Prem? Two cans and a string? They don't really care. SMB agents need to know what products in their bag comprise both inexpensive phone solutions their customers can use now AND migrate them to useful cloud applications now or later.

 

8. Cloud discussions need to be framed around the customer's critical applications and infrastructure - At some point in the airy fairy conversation about "taking your customers to the clouds" your customers they will notice the big price tag. They will immediately sober up and compare that price to whatever it costs them to run their apps and infrastructure now and in the near future without any change. Simply talking about "the cloud" for the sake of the cloud doesn't sell anything to anyone.

Within a minute of anyone saying the word "cloud", agents need to understand what are the mission critical applications (inventory, payroll, CRM, etc.) for the business and on what servers and infrastructure do these applications now depend? How much does it cost to maintain, grow, move all that IT infrastructure? What are all the "non-cloud" options the business is looking at to protect their apps? Knowing the "anti-cloud" options makes selling the cloud a lot easier.

 

9. Selling too much "cloud" puts VAR lead partners out of work - Agents need to understand that most VARs and integrators pay their mortgage by selling servers and software licenses and then maintaining both - on the customer's premises. Pushing the servers and the software into the cloud seems like a great idea to agents and a lousy idea to VARs.

Before trying to get VAR lead partners too excited about joint selling the cloud, agents need to really understand what the VARs are selling their customers and how cloud and SaaS ("software as a service") solutions threaten the way they're currently making money.

(To help agents better understand the VAR and integrator world, TA is attending VAR tradeshows and watching VAR webinars. Through 2011 it's TA's vision to know as much about the VAR world as we know the telecom world - and pass that information on to all of TA's members and vendors.)

 

10. Agents need turn key marketing - It really amazes me how little effective marketing telecom agents do. It's a good thing most agents are naturally fearless sales people. VARs on the other hand do much more marketing than most telecom agents and there's lots of marketing vendors like Robin Robins and Kutenda selling them "MSP marketing" to help them. (Which is a good thing because most VARs are not that great at sales.)

When I go to agent events like MicroCorp's and ask what kind of marketing successful agents are doing, the response is usually, "word of mouth". When I ask them what kind of marketing they want to do, it's everything from email marketing to search engine optimization to social media.

If TA had more time and resources I'd put together a Robin Robins or Kutenda program just for telecom agents. Add good marketing to naturally gifted salespeople? They sky's the limit.

 

MicroCorp Top 10 Conclusion

I'm pretty sure agents go to national shows to be seen but to the private master agent shows to learn. I've been to several of the private master agent shows over the last year and a half and MicroCorp's was one of the best for the quality of the 110 agents in attendance and the amount of new, useful "take-a-ways" I learned that will help me next year in my own agent business.

 

Questions or comments? Contact Dan Baldwin at [email protected] or 951-251-5155.

Want to Share? Please leave a comment below.

 

Send Us Your 2011 Calendar Items (Agent Sales Contests, Promos, Trips, Training, Road Shows, etc.)

Posted 10/29/10 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email

Even though there's two full months left of 2010 it's time to make sure we're all properly planned for 2011. TA does quite a bit of travelling throughout the year making friends, recruiting new TA members and generally reporting on what's going on in the world of telecom agents, channel partners and equipment VARs ("value added resellers").

If there's a calendar event that we need to know about and share with the rest of TA's 3,800 members please send it to [email protected] so we won't miss is and we can make sure everyone knows about it.

Looking for VAR Lead Partners? Join TA's 2011 VAR Tradeshow Co-op

Posted 10/25/10 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

For the past 12 months, TA has been attending various telco & computer equipment VAR ("value added reseller"), network systems integrator and MSP ("managed services provider") trade shows and events in an effort to better understand the fabled "IT Guy" and learn what network service agents need to do in order to earn their trust to the point where they will bring us in on their equipment deals and let us take care of their customer's voice, Internet and data needs.

Well having attended ITEXPO, MSP Alliance, CompTIA, UC Summit and SMB Nation events over the past year, TA's met enough telecom equipment & IT guys and IT vendors on the VAR trade show circuit to have a pretty clear idea how to work these VAR trade shows and events in order to efficiently screen all the "IT guy attendees" to make sure the friendly ones know how to do business with TA's members and vendors.

In 2011, TA's going to take the whole "find friendly VARs & IT guys" to the next level and pull out the TA trade show booth and go to all the VAR trade shows that make sense to build the industries best list of "IT guys" that understand the network service residual revenue opportunity that are ready to say, "yes" the the question, "Can I quote the voice, Internet or data on your next equipment deal?"

At all the VAR trade shows TA attends in 2011, we'll be promoting network service sales in advance, at the shows via speaking opportunities and at all the show networking events. Our prime goal will be to let VARs know that TA's vendor and members are the "screened" network service subject matter experts and vendors they want to profitably work with. TA will distribute a directory at all VAR shows that list TA's premier vendors and agent experts.

After each 2011 VAR trade show, TA will write a detailed report of all the VAR lessons learned for distribution to all TA VAR Tradeshow Co-op members. Additionally, TA will directly introduce all co-op members to the new VARs we met at the VAR tradeshows so that co-op members might engage these VAR "friendlies" directly.

I can tell you from personal experience over the past year that the IT VAR audience is both the best and the toughest audience for network service vendors and partners. They're not motivated by money, they're motivated by trust. Waiving cash at them only annoys them. Before they would consider doing business with you they need to first know you understand and value what they do for their customers. That's why TA believes we are best positioned to open this lead source up to TA's members and vendors.

To get a list of the VAR trade shows that TA is planning to attend in 2011 as well as a detailed list of the TA VAR Tradeshow Co-op Benefits for both vendors and members please send your contact information to [email protected].

Questions? Contact me at 951-251-5155 or [email protected]. 

MicroCorp's 7th Annual One-on-One Conference Delivers Just That (to over 110 Agents)

Looking for VARs & Integrators in Vegas at SMB Nation: "Who are these guys?"

CVx & ITEXPO Review & 10 Quick Take-a-Ways

Will CVx & ITEXPO Get VARs & Integrators to Sell Network Service?

Keep Selling One Communications to Customers or Wait? TA Interviews Agents and Executives

Expert Channel Observations from CLEC Owner Chris Barton of WCS/Wholesale Carrier Services after CP Expo