On Rad's Radar? - email Archives

Cloudy Math

2012-12-11T03:10:14Z

There is a lot of talk about the big money that Agents and VAR's can make if they just switch over to sell Managed Services and Cloud Services. Here are some facts about cloud.

M5 had the highest ARPU (average invoice per customer) when ShoreTel bought them - at $2000. Most other cloud communications providers hint at lower ARPU - maybe around $1000 per customer. However, 8x8 and Cbeyond are public and their cloud ARPU sits at between $200 and $250.

When you examine the "cloud services" of many carriers, it is just Hosted Exchange, Sharepoint and maybe some backup. That's $9 + $10 + $20 = $39 per user per month. Add in a Hosted PBX seat at $30 and you are now at $69 per month. For 20 employees, that's not a bad billing invoice for Agents, but it is also an unlikely sale. What small business will pay $1380 per month for phone and email? A PRI at $550 plus maybe $100 for the PBX lease and $50 per YEAR for Google has you covered. Add in some Dropbox and Bingo!

This isn't to discourage you. It's to put a pin in the hype balloon, which is starting to annoy me.

You will have to sell upmarket. There are 83K businesses in the US with 100-499 employees, according to the 2009 US Census (the last year data is available). With 1000 cloud service providers in the US that will be a fun Red Ocean to swim in.

There are only 17,500 business with more than 500 employees. That 's the spot you would like to sell in but you would need to be connected or a white elephant hunter.

That leaves Agents chasing 20-99 employees - since that is a majority of the businesses in the US. Let's call the average 40. If you sell that business the full boat: Internet, Hosted voice, email and backup - the ARPU is worth it. The sales cycle will be longer. The deployment will require more input and project management than Agents are used to. (In fact, it is more than most carriers have ever had to do!!!) Post-sales support will also be required. So overall, it is a lot more work for a stickier client with more ARPU than you are used to. Are you up for that challenge?

Let's go back to the 8x8 example at $256 of ARPU. That's about a 9 employee shop. So you sell them 8x8 voice, cable modem AND another broadband service (like DSL or 4G or fixed wireless). You offer them Google Apps for SMB via NeoNova for some small change. Add in some Mozy Pro back-up (or Carbonite or other backup service that pays you). Next you try to get the cell phones - there has to be a couple that are corporate owned -- for a few more dollars. Don't forget the 4G data plan.

So you wrapped up the Internet Access, mobility, voice, some DR (disaster recovery), backup, email and office suite. After that, what software do they use? How about Conferencing? Do you see? You have to grab the whole wallet (or you can't make much money).

It has to become a lot like McD's. What do they do? A call center hits you first in the drive-thru with, "Would you like to try our ______ special today?" No. "okay. Order when you are ready." But don't forget "Do you want fries with that? or can we Super Size that for you?" It sounds cheesy but you are going to have to do it.

CenturyLink, XO, MegaPath and quite a few other carriers offer transit, Hosted voice and cloud services. It will all be on one bill, with one carrier to blame, with one throat to choke. It makes it easier to sell --- check boxes on an order form or site survey.

You better hurry because the MSP's like MindShift and others are already out there doing this.

When you consider that Parallels AS platform allows hosting companies - like Intermedia.Net - to sell, bill and deploy these services (Hosted PBX, email, storage, office) with a click on an online order page, spend this month - the last month of 2012 - deciding what your plan is going to be for 2013. While I hate the hype, many of your competitors are already targeting your customers. Selling them a T1 will be easy after they sell them VDI or backup or Hosted PBX. Then what do you do?

Again, you have to do it but I wanted you to have a realistic view of what it was going to be like. You have vacuum up the services - all of them - heck, sell them office supplies if someone will pay you for it! Managed Print anyone ;)

The Spoken Word

2012-11-01T20:21:12Z

I gave it a shot at podcasting some of the news tidbits. It's 5 minutes. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

Alpheus is going from wholesale to Enterprise. They are going to put their 7 data centers to good use for Hosted VoIP and SIP trunking, managed security, storage and vCompute. Alpheus will be utilizing type II circuits from cable, twt, L3 and Masergy.

Hostway stopped by my desk at ITEXPO to talk about their Cloud white label platform. Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, faxing, web hosting, managed hosting, PAAS, API development, database management, technology consulting, cloud migration - are all just a part of their offerings. To me that is too many things to be good at - or even clear about.

Hostway will tailor solutions for a solution provider (CLEC, VAR, whatever), including helping you decide what customers want to buy and how to market to them.

Colologix, a Canadian data center company, has expanded into Toronto and Dallas at 151 Front and the Infomart, respectively.

The Alternate to Cloud

2012-08-15T20:09:00Z

For Agents that just don't want to go cloud, there are some alternatives. In my latest book, SELLECOM 2: Selling Cloud Services, there are a few products that Agents can sell that still fall inside the Replacement services umbrella. T1, broadband, cellular, voice are all replacement services for the transactional agent. That road is bumpy. It won't take much for you to make some extra revenue.

One way is SIP Trunking. Everyone offers it. Find someone you like and trust and sell that, although if you are reading this blog, you probably are selling SIP Trunking already.

Next up is Conferencing. Web, audio and video conferencing are coming of age. Most companies use some kind of conferencing, you just have to get in the habit of asking about it. It's as easy as asking them if they use Webex. Then go into your pitch about quoting them a cheaper rate. You will see a couple of conferencing companies with booths at CPExpo in Orlando in 3 weeks.

Another easy one is efax. If you are selling VoIP, what do your customers do about faxing? One answer is efax from you.

One more quick one for your customers is email. Hosted MS Exchange, Blackberry Enterprise Server, Office 365, Zimbra, Zoho and Google Apps are all answers to the email question. Almost all of them pay you a commission through a vendor. (Google doesn't.) Zoho just rolled out email marketing into their suite of services. J2 bought Landslide.com to create CRM with email marketing. J2 also sells efax. Faxbetter.com is owned by my pal and is always looking for partners to sell 50+ numbers. The efax and email space are a nice little sale that will make you money.

Now to hit two bigger options that may be considered SAAS, but them conferencing, efax and email are all cloud services too. Just most folks don't look at it that way.

Telecom Expense Management is finely coming into its own. Many master agencies - like PARTNERIQ by TBI, INSITE from Microcorp - are offering TEM. Your typical medium sized business problem has more than one contract for telecom. Multi-location businesses have a number of circuits at each location. TEM allows for the centralization and organization of billing and contract data. If you sell it, you end up being the outside telecom department for that business. Isn't that what you want? That's always been my goal.

The final thought for Agents is MDM, mobile device management. There are so many reasons to offer MDM. "One laptop is stolen every 53 seconds! 70 million smartphones are lost each year, with only 7 percent recovered."

"MDM is in essence software that secures, monitors, manages and supports mobile devices deployed across mobile operators, service providers and enterprises and its s main objective is to provide a high level of security on a mobile communications network, while supporting multiple devices and continuing to reduce cost and downtime," writes TMCnet. TDMobility and MetTel are just a couple of vendors that offer agents and VAR's the MDM service to sell.

TEM and MDM offer "a complete view of customer spend, billing; Inventory and trouble ticket management." They are a way for you to differentiate yourself from other agents and other sales teams, while increasing your own profitability per account.

We hear a lot of talk about cloud - and technically these are cloud too - but you have to add to the catalog of services you offer today to become a trusted advisor. TEM and MDM are just two ways to have a value based conversation with your customers.

My Favorite CRM Gets J2'ed

2012-06-25T16:30:15Z

There is a CRM system that comes with dial-in help (as the Optional VIP Sales Assistant Support of the Gold package). That's right! Salespeople can call in to an assistant that will type in the info and ask for whatever info they need from the CRM system. It's called Landslide and it was just acquired by J2 Global which owns eFax.

CRM only works if the salesperson uses it and works it. Landslide has a lot of nifty features including social CRM which means that it can integrate data from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook directly into their Contact profile. It integrates with QuickBooks, GoToMeeting and an email marketing module.

J2 Global has been adding to its portfolio for a couple of years by buying up Internet fax competitors. J2 now offers more than just efax. It sells virtual phone (like Google Voice), hosted email, email marketing (like Constant Contact), online data backup and kind of a unified communications system that is like Grasshopper Group or Phone.com. Now CRM. They have put together a nice catalog of cloud services for the SMB space. No idea how integrated they are though - or if they are just stand-alone apps.

Will It Rain for EarthLink in the Cloud?

2012-05-24T04:32:20Z

EarthLink is really pulling out the umbrella to get it to rain in Cloud. EarthLink picked up XO's former CMO, Michael Toplisek, as EVP of IT Services. The press release says that he was President of Concentric Cloud, but that was for a hot minute, since XO only rolled out that brand 2 weeks ago. He's not a cloud guy - he worked at XO, Global Crossing, MCI and Frontier - all telcos. The only IT he got near was conferencing at GC. Why would you spin this resume? (Especially after the Yahoo resume-gate.)

EarthLink rolled out 4 cloud packages. "The Cloud Launch Pad, the Cloud Entry Bundle, and the Secure Email Bundle enable customers to economically partner with EarthLink to complement their internal IT resources by leveraging a comprehensive mix of IT Services and security experts in an enterprise class data center environment." [Source: PR Newswire] FYI, "Cloud Launch Pad is designed for organizations that want to leverage the benefits of a virtual environment or that currently run VMware® environments and need additional elastic computing capacity."

These products allow the business to keep things intact, but layer on Cloud Services from EarthLink to complement the current system or outsource extra capacity or services.

The Secure Email Bundle is with Zimbra, encryption and archiving.

The fourth package is Cloud Workspace, which is hosted virtual desktop.

An interesting play since it sounds like it requires MPLS. If so, then ELNK is tying their products to MPLS, probably to insure quality of service delivery.

Will they be able to sell these services against other MSP's and VMware partners? We'll see. It will depend on training - not just salespeople but the marketplace as well.

Watch this video where all the Master Agents talk about why they are choosing EarthLink.

What is the Market Expecting?

2012-04-01T17:46:30Z

Tuesday I was in Vegas at the Channel Partners Conference mainly for the TCA events. At the TCA Channel Chief Summit, Tiffani Bova of Gartner and Rauline Ochs of IPED Market Bridge Alliance presented research. The take away for me was in perspective.

No one buys the way most service providers sell. That's why we are always searching for Consultative Sales Professionals. Because the whole industry sells what they want - and it is followed up by a series of me-too.

Just because one CLEC is selling Managed Security does not mean that the marketplace wants it or will buy it or that it will want it delivered that exact way. It also doesn't mean that the next eight CLEC's or service providers need to market that same offering.

The market is consuming technology differently. It enters the business via the consumer. About 70% of devices are owned by the consumer in the business environment. Only about 30% are paid for by the business. That means support for devices either isn't available or is imposed on the IT staff by the employees. That's a confusing (and expensive) way to handle it. Don't you agree?

Most of what Bova and Ochs presented had to do with mobility and Cloud. Mobility is a huge problem for most CLEC's as the model for cellular sales is unprofitable - whether they sign a wholesale, agent or MVNO contract - the margin on cellular is thin to none.

And what is prompting Cloud? Two things: ubiquitous broadband and a mobile workforce.

Ubiquitous is really hyperbole because even with 3G, 4G and wi-fi, you can't get bandwidth everywhere and even when it is available it is shoddy (like at tech conference hotels).

Mobile workforce means a couple of things. One that more businesses have accepted remote workers - whether at home locally, across the country or across the globe. The economic downturn (and all the consolidation) has translated into businesses having less workers but expecting more work. This means working at home, while on the road, etc. Hence, not just email, but the application data has to be available from any authorized, connected device. That is the beauty of Cloud.

Cloud changes the way business is done.

Read that again, because that means it has to be sold that way.

It's easier to sell email, because everyone has email and it is almost a requirement. Selling unified messaging gets more complicated. Unified Communications and Collaboration is just too complex of a sale, of an explanation, of an implementation, of a deployment. That's where the service providers want to go, but they neglect the challenge of the sale. There is a lack of the story, the sales triggers, the value proposition, the WHY, and of course the on-boarding.

One thing Bova pointed out was that VDI (virtual desktop) sales have grown in EMEA (Africa and Mid-East) while have stagnated in North America. One reason: VAR's have too big a quota with HP or Dell to take a 500 desktop refresh to VDI instead of selling 500 desktops. Not just the quota for the discount, but to sustain Gold level service. It's the same with Cisco, Microsoft, etc. VAR's will keep selling what they sell for 2 reasons: First, to maintain the current level of vendor support to continue to service current clients in the manner that is expected (or even contracted). Second, making the changes to shift business to an MSP or all service model is complicated and expensive. Bova suggested firing clients and employees to create the business you will need in 5 years, but that's easy to say from a consulting seat. Not so easy from a business owner perspective.

When EarthLink told its channel partners in Tampa that it only wanted Multi-Site multi-access opportunities, it didn't come right out and say that it would stop selling T1's, but that was the underlying message. (And ELNK did tell me that 1GB and 10GB private line, even ON-net, was not what they wanted to sell.) That's one way to start planning for where you want to be. Say no while being specific about what you are looking to offer.

As a whole I don't think the service providers have any idea what buyers are buying or why. Just because you WANT to sell MPLS with security or Hosted UC&C or whatever, doesn't mean that prospects will actually BUY it (that way).

When does something become a commodity? When the customer buys it directly online.

For non-commodity services, you need a well trained sales force that understands the brand, the value proposition, and the target. As an industry we aren't there yet.

I'm going to leave you with that.

Coming soon two posts: (1) Master Agents are like Pharma Reps. (2) Tech Data versus Master Agents.

What Else Are You Going to Sell?

2012-03-04T23:44:40Z

TDM is running out of runway. Agents have already switched to selling Ethernet, MPLS and SIP Trunking. What else can they be selling?

Back-up, like Conferencing, is a cash cow that Agents just don't sell. From archiving email per federal regulations to backing up laptops, smartphones, databases, customer records, billing and more "in the Cloud", online backup service isn't much different from Google (see Chrome ad) or Apple iCloud. Access to everything you need through an authorized device attached to the Internet is the beauty to Cloud services, but backing up data is vital to business continuity. How long can a business run without billing records or a customer database? Not very long. Think how flummoxed you are when you lose your contacts in your smartphone. Imagine that contact list was your business. That's why backup is important (to your customers). VAR's are already selling different versions of online backup: their own; a white-label from Remote Backup, DriveHQ or LiveDrive; and a resell of Carbonite (who is hugging Agents right now) or Intronis (who loves the Channel) or Anxient or many others. There are some like SugarSync or Mozy that backup your smartphone and your laptop to the same account.

Managed Security - most of the CLEC's (XO, EarthLink, Netwolves, Integra, Cbeyond), the RBOCs and the ILEC's (Windstream and CenturyLink) offer some type of security offering, usually Managed Firewall, IDS (Intrusion Detection Service) and Network Monitoring. As more data moves to the web (Cloud), security will become even more significant, in the form of email and application security, encryption, event and log management, and mobile device management. For example, Reflexion provides hosted email security, archiving and encryption services exclusively through the channel.

Hosting and email services - everyone has a website or blog; everyone has email. Why shouldn't you be offering those services too? XO started out as Concentric Network, a hosting company. This was Cloud before it was called that. XO sells Hosted Exchange and website hosting. Megapath just rolled out the Microsoft suite. Intercall offers Live365. It isn't big dollars, but it is a place to get your feet wet in Cloud and apps.

Managed IT - remote monitoring of servers and desktops - is a VAR service powered by software like Autotask, Connectwise, Kaseya and GFI MAX. As businesses are essentially dependent upon computers and technology to do business, managed IT services become an option when skilled technical support staff are too expensive, churned or unavailable.

A step past, Managed IT is the remote desktop - aka Desktop-as-a-service (a term I dislike) and VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). In 1999, Wyse terminals were going to replace desktops for efficiency. It didn't happen (except in the POS space.) Now we are trying it again. MSP's offer this service - with a big fat helping of bandwidth. There are big names in this space, including Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft. There are also a number of providers, like IIS Group, who provide VDI through the channel. Navisite, which TWC owns, just chose Desktone as its DaaS partner.

Next to DaaS is HaaS, or Hardware as a Service. Don't ask me how this is different or how it isn't just leasing. Ask Chartec.

There are issues with selling cloud services - like the service provider's (SP's) financial position; redundancy and resiliency of the SP's architecture; SP's ability to scale in terms of on-boarding new customers properly and scaling tech support for end users; the end users' experiences as cloud services will change some business environmental factors; and licensing issues.

That being said, Agents should be surveying their current customers about the needs outlined here. Why? To get a bigger share of the customer's wallet.

Another way to look at it is: the customer is going to shop these services like he shops T1's, broadband, and voice. He might as well pay you to shop them for him, like he does for the telecom stuff. Get in there!

If you liked this, you might like this blog post too:

What about selling Cloud

One addition, I interviewed VAR Dynamics (local boys from Tampa) at ITEXPO. VAR Dynamics is a private-label Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud business apps provider selling exclusively through channels. Apps include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft SharePoint, Zimbra, BlackBerry BES, email encryption, email archiving and more. There will be cross-over in what a provider sells. Just as VAR Dynamics sells the Microsoft software and email security, CLEC's that you are already familiar with - like XO and Cbeyond - offer a variety of services to sell deep into your customers.

How Do You Make it Rain in the Cloud?

2011-10-10T16:12:31Z

Here at Microcorp's One-on-One event, I moderated a panel this morning about various cloud services with Level3 (CDN), Cbeyond (Virtual Servers), Intercall (Microsoft 365/Linc), EarthLink (Security), and PAETEC (Visual Messaging). It's an eclectic mix, but that should tell you that there are many ways to leverage this thing called CLOUD to make money.

The Cloud is really a value for IT services. It's about leveraging the technology and the technical skill set of another company in order to let the business focus on their own finctionality, instead of the tech that might help the business operate.

The move to the Cloud by carriers is due to the lack of margin growth in the primary business of access. It's moving up the OSI stack from Layer 1 (wireless, copper, fiber) to Layer 3 (Internet) to Layer 7 (Apps). As we have learned with the iPhone, people use apps. Apps drive traffic. So if you go after the apps and move them into a data center (into the Cloud!), then you make it possible for the business to have access to that data 24/7 from any where with many devices - laptops, smartphones, etc. That's the trend in the marketplace.

Just to simplify Cloud for you: email, anti-virus, websites (hosting), Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Google Apps, Gmail, Hosted PBX, conferencing (GoToMeeting, Webex), Skype - are all examples of cloud applications.

The three things driving the cloud trend: ubiquious broadband, the economy, and the fast paced technology space. The economy means that companies have to do more with less (less people and less money). It means that there is cost cutting. Broadband is available in most places - DSL, cable modem, 3G, 4G, WiMax, LTE, satellite, wi-fi. This means you can get access to your data and apps (Gmail, Google Apps, Dropbox, whatever) from any where. Finally, the technology is changing so fast that by the time you install it, the tech is probably almost obsolete. Cloud apps means that you lessen CAPEX and upgrades (like with Microsoft software) are taken care of my the service provider.

There's revenue here. Either you be the one to have the conversation with your customers or someone else will. And they will get those commodity services like broadband, T1 and PRI after they get the cloud services.

The Future of Media

2011-09-30T15:29:16Z

The buzz is that email is dead. Oh, voice is dying also. And if you believe all the hype, sell your airline stocks since video conferencing and tele-presence will replace travel.

"A company's corporate website is the top source of new sales leads--second only to personal connections and referrals, and more than seven times more effective than social media, according to a 2011 Demandbase National Marketing and Sales Study released today by marketing technology company Demandbase and online business network Focus, according to an article in the Tech Journal South. Yet the buzz says it's all social media.

Voice isn't dead either. If it was the contact center space would be folding up tents. Granted robo-calling is annoying, but it still won't end any time soon. (It just may get more challenging to reach humans instead of voicemail.)

Email is still my number one communication platform. Project management, clients, prospecting and more all happen via email. Notifications end up in email. When companies talk about unified messaging, it's about one inbox - the email tray.

Everyone has their preferred method of communicating: email, voice, text, chat, FB, twitter, and more. It is getting more baffling for people to keep track of conversation threads as they bounce from one medium to another - text to email to FB. But it all comes back to email - maybe mainly due to the inbox and inbox organization that we are used to. Texts, chats, notifications and more can all come back to an email inbox to be stored, organized and searched. That's why email will be around a while longer. Longer than you think anyway.

The future of media will be fractious at best.

Want an interesting look at new media?

How Not to Interact on LinkedIn

2011-07-19T15:32:28Z

I received this email from a contact on LinkedIn:

I asked the contact if it was a mass email. He replied yes. And asked him not to send me any more mass emails. He replied, "You have been removed as a LinkedIn connection. Best of luck. FYI remove yourself from Linkedin to avoid messages from other connections."

The thing is I have 1400 connections on LinkedIn and am in over 20 groups. Like you, I already have a heavy email load. Getting 700 emails in a day is typical (depending on how many projects I am handling that week.) I work on trimming my signal-to-noise ratio on social networks. All notifications are off. If someone sends me a mass email that is of no interest to me, I will tell them. This sales guy emailed me that he received 20 inquiries and 1 negative (mine). Well, 20 out of 1400 is a 1.4% response rate which is pretty good. Most are probably window shopping, so he will have busy work for the rest of the week.

It's the other 1379 that I worry about. If he was removed by anyone, he wouldn't know. If he upset someone he wouldn't know, because most people don't reply like that. A majority probably just deleted it. But why use mass email to an unsegmented audience? Is that what you want associated with your name? On LinkedIn your name is the brand that your network sees.

It would be more effective to send out a personal note to each person. Does this take longer? Of course. Is it more effective? Yes. Does it get better responses? When done correctly.

Jeffrey Gitomer talks about giving Value first. His Sales Bible [affil] is excellent. The first and best sales book I read was Bob Burg's Endless Referrals [affil]. Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing [affil] years ago; then wrote a book called Tribes. These are just 4 examples of books that could help you with email marketing communications.

It is difficult to get attention today, but that means you have to be Creative, not lazy.

And a quick social networks lesson: SOCIAL is the first name. If you wouldn't do it at a party or in-person event, like run around to everyone to push your business card on them, then don't do it online.

The sales guy sent me an e-book about Leveraging LinkedIn. I know the author. He is a LION - LinkedIn Open Networker. He is one of the networkers that think being connected to 17,000 people is an advantage. I don't understand the advantage, but that's me. How do you give a referral or a recommendation when you can't possibly know that much about a majority of the 17,000? What help can you be to your network other than to pass on mass emails?

Email segmentation is a factor for marketing success. So is network segmentation - at least to me.

The social media case studies show that interacting with your network (or followers or tribe) will get you success. Seth Godin argues that the Internet has ended mass marketing. In the book, High Probability Selling [affil], the lesson is that hard selling and cold calling are ineffective today. Too many gates up - voicemail, locked doors, doormen, spam filters. We need a warm lead, a referral or an intro. We are seeing a shift from pushing at the masses to pull marketing (or inbound marketing). It's about giving value first and staying in front of your tribe of high probable prospects. Not everyone is a prospect. It's a fact. Some people won't like you or trust you or ever buy from you. Many don't want or need your service; some can't afford it. Why would you market to these folks?

When selling Cloud Communications, you know who your best prospects are: more than 20 phones, multi-location, outdated PBX, moving or opening a new office, remote workers, and contact centers. I'm pretty sure that all of the 1400 people don't fall in these categories. And how many were actual decision makers? How much busy work do you want to do?

It wasn't a lot of work from the sales guy. How hard is it to mass email your whole address book? But how do you maintain your reputation while doing that? People have to like you and trust you to buy from you. The one instance of trust that was presented to the sales guy was "here's my contact info". Was that trust broken when he spammed them? Probably.

Using his own headline: Think Outside the Box! Stop doing all the easy stuff and get creative! Give your network value and you will see sales come in.

The Future of Bell DSL

2011-01-27T19:43:59Z

AT&T announced that they "nearly" hit 3 million U-Verse TV customers. In comparison, Bell added 2.8M new wireless customers in the 4th quarter and sold 4.1 million iPhones. Bell has 95M wireless subscribers. [see PDF]. Wireless ARPU is $62.88. Total wireless churn is at 1.32%. Ma Bell is now a $120B wireless and Internet company.

This is a misnomer: "Consumer wireline broadband connections include DSL lines, U-verse High Speed Internet access and satellite broadband."

AT&T has approximately 7.8 million DSL subscribers, but that is not their focus. Neither is Voice or PSTN or TDM.

Over at Pa Bell, err, Verizon, according to Telecompetitor, "FiOS services now account for 53% of all of Verizon consumer wireline revenue. No doubt that Verizon is a FTTH and wireless company. Its copper legacy has never been in more doubt." And 'Verizon lost a whopping 564K DSL subscribers in all of 2010, 145K of which were lost in the 4th quarter alone." in comparison, in 3Q10 Comcast, which has 16.7M broadband subs, added 249K in one quarter! Comcast has a broadband penetration of 32.6%. FiOS is at just under 30%.

This doesn't bode well for wholesale DSL customers of either company. It also should have OTT (over-the-top) companies (VoIP and TV) to start reflecting on a strategy for dealing with port blocking, metering, and other fun and interesting ways that FiOS will want to keep all of the revenue.

Here's something else to make you scratch your head, VZ has partnered with Google for a specially branded Google Apps and Gmail for Verizon for small and medium business.

Net-Heads Versus Bell-Heads

2010-10-07T03:28:10Z

So I gave my talk today about Net-Heads versus Bell-heads at CVX (Channel Vision Expo). There is a shift happening in the telecom world. Not only is the world of IT and the world of Telecom blending, but technology is becoming even more pervasive in the business world. More technology means more problems and much more support is needed. But it also means opportunity for agents.

Seth Godin says that Linchpins make the complex simple. That's the opportunity: make the complex simple.

As Agents, we have to stop asking for the bill and start asking intelligient open-ended questions that gets the prospect talking about not just the telco services and the phone system, but how the business uses software, applications and data. As an Agent, you want to chase after not just the Total Telecom Budget but a chunk of the IT budget too!

You may not get it all at once, but you sell a SIP Trunk as the first step towards that goal.

To do that, you will have to learn new skills in sales and in technology.
Managed Hosting and The Cloud are both application driven. You have to know something about how hosting and The Cloud work. Then you have to learn about the prospects' business and how the business uses applications.

There's a lot of buzz about Cloud, SAAS, UC, FMC and SIP Trunking. These are the new products to replace Long Distance, PRI and Integrated T1. In time you will know these services like you do T1's.

You have been selling Broadband for a while. That gives your clients access to The Cloud, to Apps, to their Data, which is what they really want. They aren't buying Broadband. Customers are buying access to email, Facebook, Google, even bing. As real-time applications are placed on the network, you get to add more bandwidth and/or QOS (quality of service). When you learn it, you can sell SAAS, backup, firewall/security, redundant access, and so much more. Oh, yes, there is so much opportunity.

Google VoIP

2010-01-04T20:21:58Z

Tom Keating has a blog post about Google's VoIP Plans. (Cue the Dr. Evil laugh). What Google is trying to do, according to Google VP of Product Management, Bradly Horowitz's hints at their future roadmap when he said, "What we're trying to do with telephony is give people a seamless experience that frees up their telephony communication from the silos where it's lived for the last decade. Voicemail, my contacts, all of those things have been segregated from the rest of my Web experience. We have big plans to do a better job."

VoIP Providers should be well on their way to this point or even past it by now. I won't rant about the missed opportunities with unified messaging (which is basically what Google delivers to a degree with Google Voice now), but I will rant about the noise to signal ratio when it comes to Unified Communications. It has become the keyword everyone has used in this industry in 2009 without truly defining it or actually delivering it. It has been vague, complex, complicated, and without an owner's manual. Maybe it will take Google to scare some providers into re-thinking. Re-thinking what?

Marketing message (wouldn't it be great to say better than Google?)
Sales Pitch (not about savings, but about ease of use)
Customer Portal/GUI (Stupid easy and intuitive)
Owner's manual/training (YouTube?)
Product management (it's what benefits the customer; what they will buy)

Unsubscribe and Permission

2009-11-17T15:40:06Z

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.

Top Trends for Agents

2009-10-11T23:45:26Z

I'm in Atlanta speaking at the Microcorp One-on-One event about Trends in 2010. The three trends that I see for agents are the following: Applications, Quality of Service (QOS), and Mobile Broadband (MBB). But they are kind of inter-dependent. Ubiquious broadband leads to innovative uses and applications. Applications like on smartphones lead to a greater need for mobile broadband networks.

Mobile Broadband is growing. Smartphones are replacing cellular handsets. Social networks are moving to mobile devices so people can Facebook and Tweet. RIM's Blackberry brought us mobile email, but it is a standard on many phones now. Netbooks and data cards are presenting the US cellular companies with some fits. They like the additional revenue, but have to keep dropping billions on the network backhaul and capacity upgrades. (And another $45B+ on the upgrade to LTE/4G).

All this means that there are new uses for the mobile broadband, like the Kindle. Sprint's Wispernet allows Amazon to instantly download books, magazines, newspapers and blogs to Kindle devices. Machine-to-machine devices can utilize the cellular data network to provide connectivity for ATM machines, security cameras, and a host of other devices that need to communicate with a NOC or remote server.

All of this is a cycle of applications driving network usage. Ubiquious broadband driving more apps. It's one reason that the FCC needs to maintain open network and Net Neutrality guidelines in place.

Applications - like email, databases, office suites, CRM - are creating a demand for managed services, such as an outsourced IT department. In addition, businesses are looking at the Cloud - moving applications to a data center for redundancy, security, and availability - as a way to save money and stop worrying about the IT department. With applications being delivered in the Cloud or by way of SAAS or even Virtualization, Agents have a chance to offer more than just Internet Access or WAN circuits, like private line. Agents can sell Layer 2 to Layer 7 - pipe to apps. It's a way to get deeper into accounts. It's a way to offer a complete solution. It's a way to deliver on the label of Trusted Advisor.

Applications are driving sales. Voice and email are just the primary apps. Business critical data is also driving mobile broadband. Ubiquious broadband is allowing for innovative ways of accessing data. The problem becomes reliable access to the data. That's where Quality of Service comes in. QOS on the WAN is what is needed to access data reliably and quickly. The MPLS trigger is the Class of Service reliability and prioritization of data over the network. This is paramount for businesses running a truly converged network with video, database, VoIP, email and Internet riding the same pipes. WAN Optimization is selling due to the cost containment and the performance enhancement. Big bang for the buck.

So the agents can sell mobile broadband, applications via Virtualization or SAAS, and add QOS to the WAN to provide reliable access to these business critical data.