The Dip for Channel Partners

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

The Dip for Channel Partners

In the Art of Charm podcast with Seth Godin is a good listen, especially when Seth explains The Dip (at 8:30).

On the pre-med school path in college, The Dip is Organic Chemistry. You have to pass it in order to even think about succeeding in med school.

I think in telecom The Dip is cloud services. You can dabble at it, but that is like going on a diet. The diet works only if you dedicate and commit to the diet.

Up till now, telecom was all about replacement sales. Sure, there were some complex sales that involved network design, security, maybe some compliance issues, but no one had to be a sales engineer just to talk about it. And these kinds of deals were not every week.

Now we are at a point where cloud is in the mind and business plans of the customers. They are looking for someone to guide them through it. It being the intangibility of cloud and the plethora of AAS. Public, private, hybrid. SAAS, PAAS, IAAS, VPS. There is a lot to know. Security, disaster recovery, data integrity, backup, compliance, privacy, mobility, BYOD, yadda yadda. It is overwhelming for the sales channels in the space. Imagine what it is like for the buyers?

You can choose to continue to do business as you have. And that's fine. I saw an article on LinkedIn today about saving money on telecom. *facepalm* So obviously this is still going on (and will continue for a while). Just remember, selling the network (layers 1-3 on the OSI Model) is the EASY part. The person who sells your customer applications, AAS, cloud or even managed services will easily take the network piece away from you.

Cloud/AAS is The Dip. You can choose to push through it with learning, training, a renewed energy for the unknown or the new frontier - or you can choose to recognize the dip and go another way. It is a Dip because it is a chasm of new terms, technical detail, moving parts, integration, migration and more. It requires a change in the way that you sell. Cloud isn't a replacement service. You can try to sell it that way, but no one will be happy.

With cloud you are selling change. It is a tough road. According to a number of studies, SMB decision makers choose to go to cloud for flexibility, productivity and competitiveness. To get those gains, you have to change. So sell that change. It's a Dip not a Dead End or a Desert.



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