TA Daily News Blog

"Everybody Loves Chris" or "Why Agents Aren't Worried About Qwest"

 Posted 4/23/10
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email

Well this afternoon Qwest had their first conference call with all their telecom agent business channel partners and pretty much said what was expected, "It's too early to know for sure exactly what's going to happen about anything."

I spoke to a couple more TA members that are Qwest master agents and one theme is being repeated quite a bit, "CenturyTel really wanted the Qwest business sales machine and they're putting Chris Ancell in charge of anything that has to do with business sales for the merged company." Chris is mentioned quite positively in...

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Filed in Qwest Blog By TA

Meet the Five Star "Channel Chiefs" Roy Tanner & Matt Miclette

 Posted 4/23/10
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email

With Qwest sucking up all the air with their big merger announcement, now's a good time to find out who the biggest and best Qwest master agents are. Following is a video interview I did with Roy Tanner and Matt Miclette of Five Star Communications last month at the Channel Partners trade show in Las Vegas.

Five Star has been a master agency that's been flying under the radar for most of us but they're pretty well known in Qwest circles. Now they want to be known in your telecom agent and channel partner circles.

Click here to see the rest of the blog post and watch the video interview

Filed under Five Star Blog by TA and Qwest Blog by TA

Five Different TA Vendors Hiring Sales Managers

Posted 4/22/10
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email

Five different TA vendors members have send out blasts in the past several weeks that they are hiring channel managers or direct sales. The vendors hiring are Telecom Brokerage Inc, Ernest Group, TelePacific, InterCall and Telesphere. So much for a recession, right?

Four involve recruiting, training and managing telecom agents and channel partners.

See all the jobs at TA's Telecom Jobs Blog.

Need Some Advice From "Mr. Qwest"? Call Dave...

Posted 4/22/10
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email

You can tell what a man's passions are by checking out what he does in his spare time. Apparently Dave Laskowski, the Managing Partner of CTG3 writes a blog about Qwest. Seriously!

Dave likes Qwest so much that he actually owns two Qwest agencies, CTG3 and Bandwidth Builders.

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Filed under Qwest Blog by TA

TA Launches Independent "Qwest Partner Group" on Facebook

To give telecom agents and channel partners who are interested in the Qwest Business Partner Program an independent to go to communicate with one another TA has created a private "Qwest Partner Group" by TA on Facebook.

via www.qwestblogbyta.com

TBI is hiring East Coast Channel Managers

Want to work for one of the most respected master agencies in the country?

TBI is hiring telecom agent and channel partner managers for the East Coast.

Click here to see the full post

Filed under TA's Telecom Jobs Blog 

Does Your Customer Blog Look This Good...? Take the Challenge!

Posted 3/22/10 
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

People who know me know that I'm a telecom agent (channel partner) that's both "old school" and new age. I started selling telecom when I got out of the Navy in 1990. I like to think I've seen all the "old ways" so I can appreciate all the new ways. Since I also run Telecom Association and know just about every master agency there is, my fellow agents often ask, "Dan why do you sub-agent exclusively sell through ATEL Communications?" to which I reply, "Hey, I think all the master agents are great and if I hadn't started being an agent through Andrew Cohen way back in 1994 then I'd probably rep for lots of different master agents.

The real reason though is ATEL is ...

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Filed under TA Marketing Telecom Blog

You Know it's a Bad Day When: Facebook Wrecks "Fan Pages" & Salesforce Buys JigSaw

Posted 4/21/10   
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

I don't know why I'm surprised. I leaned long ago that anything free or inexpensive that works great will get wrecked by whomever owns that which was "almost perfect".  Anyone remember the "Gillette Good News MicroTrac razor"?  It was the perfect disposable razor. Gillette just discontinued it one day about five years ago. Who remember "the sponge"?  Senseless wreckage!  Well today add a new "wreck" and a soon-to-be-wreck.

Yesterday Facebook changed their "Fan Pages" to "Like Pages". That was dumb. Here I've been telling clients that in addition to corporate blogs they need a "Facebook Fan Page" now I guess I mean, "Oh you should have a 'Facebook Like Page'" It doesn't even make sense. 

To see what I'm talking about go to TA's home page at www.TelecomAssociation.com. In the far right hand column ...

Click here to read the rest of this blog post.

Filed at TA Marketing Telecom Blog

MegaPath + Covad = Good Stuff (for agents)?

Posted 4/9/10 
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

There's not a lot of merger activity going on in the telecom agent and channel partner industry so when two companies we think we know pretty well decide to combine forces it's a pretty interesting deal. When I saw that MegaPath and Covad, two TA vendor members, were merging I said to myself, "Wow" quickly followed by "I wonder why?"

I'll be the first to admit that while I have a business degree from a real college, I'm no mergers and acquisitions wizard. I do own my own business though and outside of making my clients happy I pretty much just think of two things all day long, "How can I cut costs or increase revenue?".

I imagine most business owners think the same way so I applied that thinking to MegaPath & Covad. In reading through the press releases on the subject, I drew the conclusion that Covad was the network of choice that Covad put a lot of their customers on to them provide all the MegaPath managed solutions. By merging with Covad are they going to really going to lower their wholesale costs all that much? What do they get by "owning Coved" that they didn't already have?  "Fewer network options and more headaches", I initially thought. Why buy a car when you can drive the one you like whenever you want anyway, right?

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Filed under MegaPath  CLEC

"TA Member Want Ads" Give Members Quick Feedback, Subscribe Now

Posted 4/6/10 
By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

TA help TA's 3,800 telecom agent and channel partner members get help from one another about what solutions, products and vendors they use to help their multi location and business customers. TA has established the "TA Member Want Ads" blog and Facebook group. It must be serving an unmet need because over 170 TA members joined the group in just four days.

The TA Want Ads blog can be viewed at www.TAwantAds.com. 

If you have a question or "a want" to share with your fellow TA members join the Facebook group and then post your query (no self-promotion please!)

If you want the query posted on the  www.TAwantAds.com blog email your query to [email protected]. 

The only real difference between the Want the  www.TAwantAds.com blogand the www.TAwantAds.com blog is the blog is more permanent and the Facebook group is more viral. Use one or both to tap into the expertise of your 3,500 TA member peers.

Visit the  www.TAwantAds.com blog       Visit the TA Want Ads Facebook group 

Posted under TA Want Ads Blog