If I was starting my telecom agency today, what would I do?
When I started in 1999, I was selling basically one product (Wholesale DSL to ISPs). That was my entry drug of choice. It led to frame relay, ATM, IP Transit, DS1/DS3 and PRIs. But it was a single offering to a very targeted market. Most of those clients from 1999-2001 are still with me!
Certainly an agent starting out is going to be offering bandwidth in all its colors. However, I would build a multi-vendor bundle to sell to a specific audience. I am a big fan of vertical sales. Anyone can be a Generalist, but being a Specialist pays better. How many GPs (general practitioners) are left in medicine or law?
And being a Specialist doesn't mean that you have to turn away other business that comes to you, it just means that you have Focus. You have a target to aim at. You have an audience that you can get to know and develop a message for.
It is far easier to market a specific bundle aimed at a target vertical than it is to create a marketing message aimed at the generic masses.
Targeted marketing is cheaper. Easier to send email or postcards to every ISP in the BellSouth region than to target every SMB in a state.
One bundle I have been working on is the Verizon Wireless One Talk service with 4G backup, a Cradlepoint router, FiOS and a Square POS (point of sale) system. It is a targeted package - Retail. It allows for add-on sales: smartphones, video surveillance, email or Office365 and web hosting. You could also offer credit card processing and PCI DSS Compliance via EarthLink. You could go bigger with managed wi-fi. There are many add-ons, but the original 4 component bundle is where to start.
The bundle contains the essential ingredients of a small retail shop: broadband, backup (because retail can't make money without 100% uptime on the Internet for credit card processing and digital phone service), wireless network, phone system and cash register. Signing up with SYNNEX and any of the Alliance Partners would get you all the access you need to bundle that - and make commissions.
Anyway that is how I would start today. Chasing Verticals with a multi-vendor solution that I designed for them.
