All things being equal, telecom agents and channel partners have a pretty sweet life. We recommend multi-location network service solutions and get paid every month rain or shine. A multitude of hosted solutions have recently arrived on the market which now allow us to sell all the "unified communications" ("UC") solutions we've been hearing about that only increase the size of our deals.
The only thing that keeps us up at night? Equipment! Servers, routers, switches. Anything other than the phone sitting on the customer's desk that the "equipment pros" use to make really sweet customer solutions seem all complicated and difficult.
"Well you know that MPLS solution won't work the way you've proposed it because the customer just invested in a dozen left-handed 765 who-zit blade upgrades, that were supposed to be backwards compatible to the new 2010 China-Helsinki agreement but now it's raining!" Huh?
The only people that hate hearing that sort or tech-speak than me is the customer. Those systems integrators love it though because they know that they can get the network service guys nervous to the point that they'll give up half their commission even though they brought in the customer to the deal.
What's a poor telecom agent to do when the equipment jargon starts flying? Let's say that you actually do kind of understand what the equipment guy's saying but you think he might be wrong - or that he's recommending an equipment design that will be beat out by a competitor.
How's a network service guy figure out which equipment design is likely to win a deal so the network service guy can propose the right equipment solution without giving up half the monthly residual commission on the network service to the equipment guy?
Continue reading "How to Keep "Deal Control" Through a Friendly UC Equipment Expert" »
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