Recently in conferences Category

Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing in 1999. Ten years later, most media companies don't understand the concept still. As Seth explains in the book and in his blog numerous times, when I give you my email address, it is a trust issue. I trust that you will not spam me; inundate me with off-topic email; and most importantly not sell my email address to third parties -- even if they are your partners. 

All too often, when I sign up for an event, I get inundated with email from the vendors of the event. This irks me for a number of reasons, but mostly because I did not give my email address to them.

This is a failure on so many levels. The media company has a database of email addresses that are mostly "junk". By that I mean. yahoo, hotmail, and the like. That means they are likely not sending email that will not be read.

An advertiser is paying to send an email that will be likely read. It does no good to pay for 5000 emails if 4500 of them are worthless, unopened, bounced or sitting in an email box that gets opened infrequently.

By the way, the CAN-SPAM Act is one thing, but your media company brand gets destroyed by these kind of hijinks. Act accordingly.

 

I am at the Broadsoft Connections event with 775 other folks piled into the Phoenician. Gorgeous hotel set at the foot of the mountains in Phoenix. Staff is nice and the suite is sweet.

I'm speaking tomorrow on a panel with Bell Canada, RoutIT, and KPN. The topic is how to build and market a profitable UC bundle. It's funny because my panel is in the customer retention market (ILEC's) and much of the audience is in the customer acquisition game.

Folks from  PBX-Change, Nuvox, Paetec, Callis, Simple Signal, Telovations, Cypress Communications and Digitel (of Atlanta) are in attendance. Lots of partners too. Polycom is here in force - over 30 people. Cisco, Aastra, Audio Codes, NEXTUSA and ADTRAN are just a few other the partners I met tonight.

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.

A piece of news hit me that just adds to the bad taste that COMPTEL leaves in my mouth. Here's an organization that is mainly composed of CLEC's. Since MCI and AT&T were acquired by RBOC's all teeth have left the building. I can't think of a single COMPTEL FCC or court victory. The big one was supposed to be Brand-X, but that turned out to be a huge loss.

This morning a CLEC client pointed out all the benefits that he gets from NRTC Coop and I am astounded.

So the news item was about VON. "will host a CTO Summit at which leading competitive service providers will develop a road map for creating a nationwide IP-based peering fabric that will bypass the legacy PSTN and support advanced services such as HD voice.....Committed to attending so far are Alteva, Telesphere, Simple Signal, Callis Communications, ISN Telcom, Broadcore, Global IP Solutions and Consolidated Technologies" as well as Broadsoft and Polycom, vendors for most of those attending.

This isn't really ground breaking because there are IP Peers like Arbinet and Stealth's VPF. But it's the first time that the ITSP's decided to start their own. And I have to wonder why COMPTEL wasn't behind this a couple of years ago. COMPTEL needs to start thinking of ways to add value to its membership, instead of just ways to make it really expensive to network with each other.

One of my sessions at ITEXPO in Los Angeles will be Developing Profitable Web 2.0 Solutions. The all-star panel consists of Ifbyphone, Voxeo, and Intelepeer, who will be talking about how to us an API to create a new app. Should be good content. Stop by at 9:30 AM on Thursday.

VoiceCon is in Orlando this week. I will be driving over on April 1 on my way to another conference in Deerfield Beach.

Next week, I will be in New Orleans for WordCamp, a conference for Wordpress bloggers. I have clients in the area, so I am looking forward to seeing them and meeting Chris Schultz in person. That guy is doing a lot of good things in NOLA.

Then April 22-24 I am in Dallas for a CEO Summit.

If you are in the area, let's meet up. Call me on GrandCentral/GoogleVoice at (786) 228-7039 or send me a tweet @radinfo.

If you are a carrier or a Master Agent, do you need more agents or do you need to give a lift to the ones you have?

There's a sales management theorem that when you use Pareto's Principle, you should spend you time with the Top 20% of your sales force not the bottom 20%. Why? Because the people bringing 80% of your sales are the ones you want to keep happy. Also, the more efficient and less bumpy you can make the sales process for them, the better for all the sales team, but especially the top dogs.

If you have a bunch of agents who signed up, what are you doing with them? Is your Channel Manager talking with them? What's he saying? The more you know about their business, the bigger the opportunity for you to actually work together.

Knowing the goals and strategy of your agents can help you target training, leads, case studies, white papers, and tips to them. The more relevant, the better.

Right now, I would be looking to add value to my agent channel. How?

1. Seminar with a tax specialist right now.
2. Seminar with a Financial Planner about IRA and the market
3. Seminar with a sales trainer for improvement in Consultative Selling

What? None of this has to do with telecom, you say? No kidding. But it shows that you value them as business people and want them to be successful. Sure. You could give them more webinars on MPLS or whatever the new acronymn is for cloud-based WAN connections, but are you really adding value? Do you know the Kawasaki 10-20-30 Rule? Do you survey your channel anonymously to get feedback on any training you give -

• one week later what do they remember;
• was it valuable time spent;
• what can they directly apply;
• any clients in the database that might be a fit now?
• do you know how to pitch the service/product?
• do you know who we target? and why?
• have you looked at your notes since the call?
• is working with you "easy & enjoyable"?

A couple of years ago, one carrier asked me what they could do to make working with them easier. Since I am rather direct, I answered explaining about the poor follow up. Sadly, it was never addressed. If you are going to drop the coin on a channel, don't set it up for failure.

As we head into Channel Partners Expo in Vegas, carriers and master agents will be looking for new agents and visiting with old ones.

• What are you specifically looking for in your next agent?
• What questions will I ask a prospective agent?
• Are we a quoting machine or lowest priced carrier?
• Does the agent already have a carrier like us? If so, why is he looking?

And I know some of you are thinking, "We just want to sign up agents!" Sure, but it isn't about numbers. It's about Enrolling partners into your Program." (or maybe it is just a Numbers Game - lots of agents, thousands of quotes, hope for the best, why aren't they selling my stuff?).

Right now, wholesale VoIP providers are looking for me to help them train their customers to sell more SIP trunking and Hosted PBX. They want their client ITSP's to be more successful. If you are a VOIP company and you have 75+ partners, is that a successful channel? Not unless 15 of those partners are selling a deal every week.

I'm not saying don't add new agents. I'm saying look at your current agents and figure out how to make them more successful so that they can create more revenue for you. It is a partnership after all.

I am looking forward to Miami Beach next week. I'll be leaving the chaos of Tampa in the midst of Super Bowl 43 on Sunday because flying out Monday was too expensive (and crazy). So I'll be in Miami Beach (staying at the host hotel, the Royal Palm) and watching the game at a neighborhood bar. If you are in town, ping me on twitter.

Have you checked out the Facebook page for IT Expo/4GWR?  Bowling party courtesy of DIDX on Tuesday evening.  And if you are looking to have dinner with some interesting people drop me a note - we will be at Meat Market on Monday night and Icebox on Tuesday.

There are plenty of no-charge reasons to go to the show: Microsoft Response Point training; Reseller Solutions Day (or How to Make Money with VOIP)  and this IS the place to learn about SIP Trunking.

Well, got to run and write some more notes for my keynote, The Road Ahead, at 4 PM on Tuesday for Telecom Agent Day.

I was lucky enough to be chosen to give the keynote for TMC's Telecom Agent Day at the Internet Telephony East Expo in Miami Beach on Feb. 3.

The Road Ahead:  So you want to know what tomorrow has in store? Come to this session to hear all about the opportunities that are waiting just ahead. The speaker will address the trends and the recent activity in the market and come away with a plan for addressing the challenges ahead.

So I would like to know what YOU think is coming down the pike. I spoke with Dan Goodwin at ATC this morning who expressed that agents need to be experts and on top of their game to be able to handle the constant change in this industry. Recently, a real estate agent told me that she welcomed this market, because all the amateurs left. I'm hoping for the same in telecom.

 I'm at ISPCON in San Jose all week so the updates will be few and far between.  Jack Brandt and I will be doing The Marketing Spotlight - Q&A from the audience on how to market your services. (Differentiate and Delivery). Then I am moderating a panel with Google, Optenet and IKANO about How to Build Successful Channel Partnerships.
If you are in San Jose, let's grab some coffee. Susan Bowen at DIDX is having a blogger's breakfast tomorrow at 8 AM. See you there!