Recently in agents Category

I'm in Atlanta at the Microcorp event to moderate a round table for agents centered around sales and marketing. The title is Personal Branding. How do you promote your personal brand? 

When selling replacement commodity items, your brand may not be that important. However, when using the Consultative Sales approach or looking for the sweet spot in the role of Trusted Advisor, it is about your knowledge, skills, and reputation. In a nutshell, that is your brand.

A brand is the 1K of space in a prospect's memory that contains everything they know or fell about you or your company or your service. In many cases, that 1K is empty because they have no idea who you are. (What would they find if they Googled you?)

Your brand online is a summation of what the search engines contain about you (or your company). 

There are many places today to build a brand online: your website, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Squidoo, Twitter, Slideshare, YouTube and a host of other platforms. You see, before you had to take out an ad or a billboard; today, that ad or billboard can be online in the 21st century printing press of the Web and its publishing platforms (social networks). The whole revolution that we see online today is due to tools, software platforms, and user interfaces that created what is referred to as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 allowed for User Generated Content (UGC) by making it very easy for a consumer to add content / comments / thoughts to various websites, like TripAdvisor, Amazon, BizRate and others. 

That was the genius of Web 2.0. Social networks just took that a step further. But all of this means that it is easy for people to comment on your service or business. It's also easy for you to tell your story. 

Personal Branding starts with you telling your target audience the story of what you can do for them. How can you help their business get productive or efficient? How can you help them communicate to their customer better? Tell those stories. And you have a host of platforms to tell them on. Get started!

Master Agency Microcorp is holding its One-on-One Event for its agents in Atlanta next week. I will be moderating a session on Trends for 2010 & Beyond, where we will discuss the next series of services that Agents can create revenue streams from. 

You've heard the noise about Conferencing coming from the likes of Premiere and Inter-Call. With the Green movement and the economic realities of cutting down travel expenditures, video and web conferencing are selling. It's just a software application that can be sold as a service - (notice I mentioned app and SAAS there?). It creates a revenue stream for an Agent by cross-selling to your existing client base.

You can also offer Hosted Microsoft Exchange email and the Office Suite software. Alternatives to that would be Google Apps and now IBM LotusLive iNotes.

Managed Services is the new buzz word around the Industry. Outsourcing IT (computer support, server maintenance, software updating and backup) is a growing market segment as small businesses find it harder to keep IT staff in place (and trained). Also, IT is becoming mission critical -- well, access to data, email, voicemail is becoming business critical.

The panel will be with InContact, Sprint and New Edge Networks. We will be discussing 4G and M2M as a growth sector. Private Networking and QOS on the WAN for today's real-time traffic. And finally how apps like UC and Contact Center software can provide agents a renewed high margin business.

Please note I didn't mention Cloud or Virtualization.

Lots of parties last week at Channel Partners Expo. It seems like it is almost 2003 again. So back to the Delano we went with FusionTel. FusionTel wanted to make a splash by having a party at the Delano. It worked about 60 people showed up at 4:30 to have a few drinks and chat.

I got to start a conversation with their President, but we didn't get to finish it. I did get to chat with Stacy Conrad, Senior Director of Partner Sales, about agents selling their Hosted VoIP service. The latest story is about an agent who sold their service.

The vertical was Healthcare. Fusion was sold because the customer, who is based in Massachusetts, was opening a new site in California and needed the combo pack - phones and Internet service. The agent presented the customer with the concept of trying Hosted VoIP instead of buying the traditional phone service and on-premise PBX. 

The value proposition that FusionTel presents is lower up front cost (CAPEX) as well as enhanced features. But the sales trigger was likely the ability for the receptionist in Mass. to also answer calls for Cali. and transfer calls for free via extension dialing. This freed the company from needing a receptionist in CA. 

"We differentiated ourselves by our expertise, our professional on site installation, and our competitive pricing," Stacy Conrad remarked.

I moderated a panel on Telecom Billing Issues at Channel Partners this week. It was a full room. Apparently, one or two people thought it was too hard on the carriers (or I was too hard on a carrier). 

If you have been in telecom for more than a year (and have any voice customers) then you know that there are billing issues. Heck, even on simple IP or transport bills there are errors and surprises. And by surprises I mean line items that aren't obvious.

One carrier in the audience to offense to some of the panel discussion, but what it boils down to is that they don't charge what it costs to deliver a minute of service. The numerous extra line items (other than legitimate federal, state, county and city taxes and USF fees) are just ways to make a profit - but confusing the customer. As I said on the panel, if it actually costs 4 cents to deliver a call, why not just charge 4 cents instead of quoting 1 cent then adding $80 in additional charges? 

Airlines are the only ones nickel and diming the consumer.

ADTRAN announced that it has teamed with telecom master agent, Telecom Brokerage, Inc. (TBI), to help channel partners drive revenue growth and become more competitive in the Small and Medium Enterprise market. (If you aren't a Cisco VAR, you need a hardware partner). 

When an agent can combine ADTRAN's industry-leading WAN solutions, including multiservice routers and managed switches, with TBI's partnerships with leading national and regional telecom service providers, agents can benefit from a complete solution; greater account knowledge and control; and generate an additional revenue stream.

The Channel is Shifting - and by that I do not mean a paradigm shift. I mean, that some telecom company channel programs are shifting away from a typical Agent focus and aiming squarely at the VAR Channel.

XO has a distribution deal with Tech Data that gives them access to a ide and deep VAR base. Once the VAR's figure out that taking the WAN piece isn't that difficult, the value added reseller will become what the system integrator is to Microsoft Partners:  the glue that small business needs to mesh it all together.

The Systems Integrator doesn't just install software, they right API's or drivers or database hooks to make data flow in an easier fashion through the system. The basic MCP just sells licenses and Exchange seats. See the analogy? Are you just selling seats or are you looking to become the partner to small business owners? The Go-To guy for all things tech.

BTW, it's not just XO. L3  is making this shift as are other companies. As I like to say, once the guy has seen your porn files on your hard drive, you are going to buy anything he has to sell. That's why VAR's make big coin pushing back-up and VoIP -- just apps to add revenue.

We'll see how this shapes up as Everything Channel pushes into the Agent space and the ChannelVision magazine launches an agent show at ITEXPO West next year. Two weeks to the Channel Partners Expo in South Beach. See you there! (Stop by the TCA booth!)

UPDATE:  According to the latest issue of Phone+, 33% of New Edge Network's revenues come from agents leads. The goal is to move that to 50%.  Broadview Networks says that agents drive about 40% of sales and 50% of new sales. With these kinds of numbers, why are these companies not supporting a strong agent channel through support of TCA?

Being a telecom agent usually means that you will have commission challenges with your vendors (the carriers). 

I have been on the receiving end of a big dent in my pay a couple of times. (Netting sucks). But it is the nature of the beast.

I would like to point out that time and again when agents bring their commission issues to me (because I am a blogger and a founding member of the TCA, a non-profit association for the betterment of the  agent channel), the dispute is a Contract dispute. Your agent agreement is a contract. If you do not follow the contract, you do not get paid. For instance, if there is a quota which you fail to meet, the carrier has the option to stop paying you. Even some Evergreen contracts have out clauses. 

When Carrier A buys Carrier B and you do not sign a new agreement with Carrier A, do you expect them to keep paying you? You probably do, but that's not how it usually works. 

So while I was at the ITEXPO West I saw the disgruntled XO agent wearing his shirt, and all I keep thinking is: Would any carrier work with this guy at this point? And has he tried to settle it?

Talking with a mutual fund manager today about CLEC Strategy. The interesting point that was made is that if you don't own your own facilities is your business model short term?

Interestingly, if you own your own facilities - whether that is fiber, MTU, or wireless - then you certainly have an advantage. To get there, you need to sell Dense. Then convert to facilities from rented plant. This was the idea behind UNE-P, which th eCLEC's failed to follow through on.

They are even doing agin now by selling to anyone regardless of location. The overall strategy has to be to sell UNE-L then move to your own plant as soon as you can. Special Access services are expensive and eat up CLEC margin, even at 40% margin the difference between UNE-L costs and Special Access won't work.

The other key is your sales team. Most CLEC's and other companies competing with the ILEC's have traditional sold on price. Order taking. Now that the ILEC's are de-regulated they can price out at or below CLEC rates. Uh oh! What's a sales drone (order taker) to do?

Now we have to solution sell. Agents have been doing that but even agents have an issue learning IP, Storage, eCommerce, Managed Services, Desktop services, Cloud Computing, SAAS, etc.  It's too much. 

The CLEC with the best trained sales team - and the best services portfolio - will win.

There's a lot of buzz about TEM in the Industry now. Telecom Expense Management. It's about controlling the costs of telecom. It's a big expense especially for multi-location and Enterprise companies. 

TAM is telecom asset management which means it tracks cell phones and laptop data cards. Some TAM also tracks laptops, including Lojack style software to delete info from smartphones and laptops.

TEM is is used to track the following:

1. Contract expiration - so you can notify the carrier before the auto-renewal kicks in
2. Contract terms - how much, how long, etc.
3. Billing reconciliation - 10% of all bills are wrong I am told.
4. Hidden charges -  I'm doing a panel on this - many hidden charges.
5. Circuit location - circuits don't routinely get disconnected as they should. If you close an office or downsize, you want to do the same with the circuits
6. Spending - are conferencing, long distance or cellular minutes increasing?

Today, businesses need to contain costs. TEM is the way to do that. For agents, it's another way to be valuable and to make some dough.

A client who ordered a 2xT1 MIS in March wants a stand alone Internet T1 at the same location to segment some traffic. Trying to pull a simple contract for this customer is a bear. Why?

DUNS number given to me by the carrier in March. Not found. Please request a DUNS number. HUH?

Nothing can be input without a DUNS. No where to just pull a contract. Why does it have to be so difficult? Why do agents have to spend hours in your systems to sell a sub-$500 standard service? Why do we have to take hours of training on these systems?

My first reaction is because RBOCs don't want agents. They keep cutting commissions and adding more requirements. Making it more difficult to make a living as an agent for them.

It is simply easier at this point to just sell resellers - Acces2Go or NIT or WBS. It's residual based commission. It's roughly the same rate. And it's so much simpler.