On Rad's Radar? - linkedin Archives

Are You in the 5%?

2013-02-12T16:59:02Z

Recently, LinkedIn sent out an email (seemingly to everyone) to welcome in 200 million users and congratulate those with the top 1% and 5%. It was a great marketing gimmick to get lots of social mentions and website visits.

As this blog explains, everyone who received the email - 5% of 200M is 10M people! - would share it onliine. It reminds me of the Shift Happens video - due to the large number, is it really that special?

It's a numbers game. We feel special from recognition and winning and the mini-celebrity of it all. But as I tell my clients at the end of the day that activity better help you achieve a goal.

The Sales SWAT Team

2012-07-03T11:21:17Z

Zayo Group announced the formation of a dedicated team focused on Small Cell and Fiber to the Tower (FTT) initiative (in this press release). That's a good idea. In fact, when RAD-INFO INC is consulting on mergers between TDM companies and cloud companies, this is one approach that we have used.

There are different types of salespeople. Whale Hunters, farmers, transactional, good ones, bad ones, mediocre ones. Some companies grade the sales people as A, B, C. Taking a small group of A players to create a Sales SWAT team to take a product to market is a good idea. B and C teams can refer business to the "Closers" in the SWAT team. The compensation plan will have to be adjusted accordingly to provide for this type of sales structure.

Why a SWAT team? Let's look at the FTT market. The tower companies are merging together. SBA just dropped $1.45 billion to grab 3252 towers from TowerCo. SBA's revenue from 15,000 towers comes from mainly 3 companies: Sprint at 27%, while T-Mobile and VZW make up about 30-35% of the revenue. There are not a lot of cellcos in the US.

AT&T, VZW, Sprint, T-Mobile, Clearwire, Cricket/Leap, US Cellular, C Spire (formerly Cellular South), MetroPCS and nTelos make up the majority of the revenue. A bunch of rural cellcos make up the minority. That's why a SWAT team is a good idea. You know who the players are. You know that the sales interval is nearing its end. By that, I mean, that being the second fiber provider to a tower is way less profitable - and as contracts expire, it becomes a bidding war, which is even less profitable. So you want to be the first and hopefully sole fiber provider to a tower. The window is closing on this opportunity as cable companies, ILEC's, and regional fiber companies are all chasing this business. A SWAT team allows you to put the best people on it, give them a goal, a focus, and let them get to it.

Selling this focused to a small pool of prospects is more like selling for Boeing or Honeywell or a defense contractor. Boeing has a limited number of customers - airlines and friendly air forces. Boeing only has a few chances every 4 or 5 years to sell its planes. The Boeing's sales team spends a lot of time doing research on a prospect and even more preparing the sales presentation. READ: PREPARATION! What does a Police SWAT team do? Practice, Prepare, and Practice.

What does a typical telecom salesperson do? Run around chasing low hanging fruit. No practice. No prep. I see it time and again. On a tele-seminar last week, a sales guy was looking for a silver bullet. Is there a new way to prospect? Not really. Sure you can use LinkedIn to search for prospects, it is an easy way to kill an hour or so per day. However, the sales guy isn't doing research now, so would he want to do it in LinkedIn? Not likely.

I think more companies will establish Sales SWAT teams, especially for specialized services or product launches to get traction in the marketplace.

When I look at the Channel, I see carriers trying to find that perfect partner. Without knowing the skill set (like CCIE, MCA or CCISP) or specialty of a telecom agency, how would the carrier being able to help them specialize or provide them the service offerings (and accompanying marketing assistance) that would make for a successful partnership? For example, as a telecom agent, I mainly sell to service providers and mainly sell Internet bandwidth and transport. No matter how many times I tell that to carriers, they still try to get me to sell whatever the organization is pushing that quarter. What a waste of time.

Want a Channel SWAT Team? Look at the Agency's client base, history of sales, examine what offerings can be added to get stickier to that base, and make it about the Agency and its customers, not the carrier comp plan or what the C-Suite promised Wall Street.

When Cbeyond decided to go all-in on Cloud, it took a while to realize that they had to change more than the brochure. They had to change the sales force and th executive team. Cloud is not TDM. Cloud is not an Integrated Access Solution. If you want change - like to stop being a T1 slinger - you need to change culture, personnel, compensation plans, and your way of thinking. The whole company can't change overnight, but changes can be made incrementally with something like a Sales SWAT Team.

What is it with Agents and the Web?

2012-01-16T17:48:39Z

When I skim through telecom websites, it is pretty obvious that most telecom companies - agents, masters, VAR's, carriers, ITSP's, ISP's - don't really give the web any love.

The websites are rudimentary - many without an update in the last two years. A majority are filled with marketing buzz speak that does not clearly (and concisely) tell the audience what they do or sell. Why? You have 8 seconds to load a page and tell your story before people bounce. Page views are a nice statistic to chart, but at the end of the day, it is all about leads.

Another thing: what's with Agents not having a Linkedin profile at all or a partial profile? LinkedIn gets indexed by Google nicely. Having a complete profile (with picture) gives you access to possible prospects and partners.

We live in an age where everyone Googles you. If they do, what will they find? If your prospects find incomplete or useless information, you lose credibility. No sale without credibility.

It strikes me as funny that people selling INTERNET, don't appreciate Internet marketing.

UPDATE: According to this article, Company websites top source of new leads. If that is the case: that your website is a top source of leads – have you designed your website to optimize for leads?

Just Like Fishing

2011-10-28T19:40:06Z

I was reminded this morning while speaking to the STC that Marketing is just like fishing or hunting. You need to know what you will be trying to catch; what bait you will need; and where to hunt or fish.

Just like fishing, there are going to be some people just sitting in the boat catching nothing but a buzz and a sunburn because they are using the wrong bait (message) or there are no fish in that area.

Online marketing and social media really take that into account. Your message on Facebook (mainly a B2C play) will not work the same as it will on LinkedIn (mainly B2B) and it will be received on twitter or Google+ differently as well.

Marketing - online, offline, social - boils down to where are your prospects hanging out? What message will they respond to? How many times and how many ways can you touch that prospect with the appropriate message?

Sales Stalking

2011-07-27T15:33:08Z

With the loss of any privacy today online, cyber stalking for prospecting is easier. I know it sounds sinister, but the best way to sell is to know your prospect. Know if they NEED your service. Know if they can afford your service. Know if your service can actually benefit them. How to do that? Cyber-Stalking.

First, set up a Google alert with the CEO's name (and another for the corporate name). When you see PR from the company or about them, print it out and mail it to him - or share it with your socila network -- or email him with a short note of congratulations.

As Gitomer says, Give Value First! Maybe that value is information about their biggest competitor or industry reports. There's a lot to be said about BI (business intelligience).

Find out the CEO's sweet spot; chocolate, cigar, golf, something small that is related to this and send it to them.

Follow the company on LinkedIn and twitter. Know what they are up to. It may coincide with your services. For example, if they are opening a new office or hiring or even laying off. In Hosted VoIP, these are sales triggers.

If they just went Cloud, bandwidth, mobility, security and backup become important. Again sales triggers.

But it shouldn't be all about you, it should be about the Prospect. The more you know about them -- and their vertical - the more value you bring to the table.

If you see that they are hiring and there is a webinar about hiring practices today (or whatever), you could invite the prospect to join you at the event.

On LinkedIn, you can see their bio and shared connections. The company page may have info and news. There are many ways to skin a cat today -- you need to be working smarter and creatively. What worked before may not necessarily work now.

If you always get voicemail and your email goes unanswered, first off, be more creative with your messages! Is it about YOU or THEM? Next, try a different form of contact - a postal invite to a networking event; a CD or thumb-drive in the mail; flowers or balloons; ice cream or pizza for the office; or ping them on twitter; see them at an industry event; message them on LinkedIn.

BTW, on LinkedIn, don't use the canned invite message unless you know that person (F2F or face-to-face). Add a personal note about why you want to connect. It gets better results.

It's a new age, so some new tricks are required. Good luck!

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.

IBM's New(er) Strategies

2011-03-29T04:17:56Z

Image via Wikipedia

At IBM's Lotusphere this year (Feb. 1), IBM rolled out strategies for Cloud and Social Media.

IBM identified 5 ways that partners could benefit from the Cloud. They are as follows:

Cloud Application Providers - deliver business apps via a subscription model through the cloud such as SAAS
Cloud Builders - design, build and manage clients’ cloud needs, typically integrating with existing infrastructure.
Cloud Infrastructure Providers - provide a public cloud infrastructure or Platform as a Service (PaaS) on which app can be hosted.
Cloud Services Solution Providers - resell multiple public cloud services and offer complementary services such as training and integration.
Cloud Technology Providers - provide the tools, services, and technologies, such as cloud management, billing metering and monitoring — that help clients use the cloud more effectively.

These are ways for VAR's to stay in the business of providing applications and associated services.

According to some PR sent my way, " IBM is the largest consumer of social technologies. As a company, IBM takes social networking seriously - to develop products and services, to enable sellers to find and stay connected with clients, to train the next generation of leaders, and to build awareness of Smarter Planet among clients, influencers and other communities. IBM will showcase how it is poised to help clients exploit this transformation of a social business delivering new software, services and skills resources to help organizations adopt best practices, policies and software to transform their businesses, including: (1) New Cloud software and services that delivers a cloud-based office productivity suite; (2) New software to help companies and governments socially enable their business processes using the most successful mobile devices, including tablets, such as the iPad, iPhone, Google Android, RIM's Blackberry and Nokia devices."

See how they worked Cloud and social networking into that press release? Google Juice!

"IBM intends to offer a cloud-based version of LotusLive Symphony, an office productivity suite that will give organizations a social platform that enables them to simultaneously collaborate on documents in the cloud. LotusLive Symphony in the cloud complements IBM's on-premise, free of charge, office productivity suite, IBM Lotus Symphony." I didn't know IBM offered free office software.

In its collab suite, IBM will turn the inbox into the Activity Stream that feeds in twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and SAP through the Social Business toolkit. (Yeah, it says SAP in the release.)

Meetrix is an IBM Partner that offers IBM's enterprise-class Sametime Server in the Cloud. "Combining Meetrix with Broadworks Connector provides unique capability for Broadworks operators to deliver a full featured, over the top Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC 2) offering to business-class customers." Simple Signal is using this service. Meetrix is the only partner for Hosted Lotus Sametime presently, which allows Meetrix to offer "businesses access to enterprise-class UCC features such as instant messaging, chat, presence, awareness, document and presentation storage and sharing, audio and video, web conferencing and e-signature capabilities through SAAS." Note: digital e-Signature. [pr]

I'm guessing that this will compete against Microsoft Linc. I'm also guessing that the marketing and branding of this will take some time, which they don't have. The key may be the Activity Box and the digital e-Signature capabilities. At least, that's what I would be featuring in my marketing. It should be interesting to see, especially if other Broadsoft CLEC's jump on that wagon.

Thoughts from Social Fresh

2011-02-24T23:31:00Z

Social Fresh Tampa was this week but I only attended the final panel on Day 2. Justin Levy (now at Citrix) resonates with me. Zena Weist of H&R Block did not. Paula Berg formerly at Southwest Airlines, now with Linhart PR shoots straight. (See some of her SF keynote here). The other panelist spent too much time trying to prove that social media marketing wasn't snake oil.

They talked about the future being about checking in with TV shows and websites for points programs. I think all that checking in will burn people out. I have credit card rewards, coke rewards, and airline programs -- all basically worthless. I see that checking in (to me) would be basically worthless. It was mentioned becuase with the new FTC rules about cookies and tracking may change some online analytics. This may be the way to get real analytics - of loyal customers, which is the kind you want (not the 5000 people who just click Like and then shut off your feed to their feed. A panelist suggested that we need a "smarter use for Like".

Google Real Time search will become more important. (I think it already is especially for news).

Group texting from companies like Groupme or Beluga. A panelist called this "spin up communities" and another said it was "like a chat room".

Facebook is going to be using iFrames because they don't want you to leave and most users of FB don't like to leave FB to go out there. It's 1998 again people. iFrames and AOL-like behavior. Amazing how everything old is new again. A point here: building your business on FB instead of your own website/domain means you are at the whims of FB - and don't own anything. Just saying. You can't have it be about some platform or application. You have to find a way to get those prospects into your sales system.

A couple of college administrators asked questions. One asked what the business world needs from students. Paula Berg asked that students have a realistic expectation of what it means to work! (I blame Tim Ferriss and his 4-Hour Work Week on some of that entitlement expectation). Justin Levy said that they have to be realistic about experience. Being on twitter for a month is not experience. Students need to know how to tactically run a campaign. Know how to drive traffic with content - and more importantly know what kind of traffic they are driving. In addition, students need to know how to write. IM/text writing is not for email or any form of business communications. Expressing thoughts, ideas, benefits, ROI and TCO takes more than 140 characters.

Don't be afraid of negative comments. It's a chance to talk to your community (or marketplace).

Have a content strategy.

Finally, don't face-tweet. And don't face-tweet to LinkedIn!! I know not everyone follows your every waking thought on every platform - and there is a reason for that. And if they do, they don't want to see the same tweet three times. (Trust me, it wasn't that great.) You have to understand that people are on these platforms for very different reasons. Messaging on the platforms has to coincide with your strategy and how people interact and listen on the platform. On twitter, you can post 8 times a day. On FB, the stats are more like once every other day. On LinkedIn, people are there for business. I know you think it's all relative but it is not. All you are doing is adding to the social noise. And people are not listening -- even to you!! Imagine that.

So those are the take aways from the Social Fresh conference. Can't wait for next week because VoiceCon is having a twitter wall :)

12 Things to Do at the End of the Year

2010-12-13T19:43:17Z

12 Things to do at the End of the Year

Review 2010 goals and results.
Pat yourself on the back.
Thank an employee.
Thank a customer.
Talk to your Top 5 clients.
Get a testimonial.
Give a referral.
Write a recommendation for someone on LinkedIn.
Take some pictures to record where you are now.
Stretch yourself for 2011.
Create your Goals for 2011.
Learn something new in 2011

Big Challenge Selling Hosted PBX

2010-11-09T19:44:00Z

On LinkedIn (in the Hosted PBX group), the question was asked, "What's the biggest challenge you face selling your solution to end users and/or channel partners?" Here are some of the answers.

Can the end user trust the service delivery of the provider? This is a big question because there have been some failures in VoIP delivery over the years. VoIP has taken somewhat of a reputation hit. Quality of Service is very important going forward. Resilienct, Dependable, Reliable, Secure, and Quality - key words to ease the customers' minds.

This dovetails into the problem of selling this solution. Hardly any two offerings are alike. Sure, the Broadsoft based providers have similar features, but they package them differently. This means that a channel partner has to learn not just a new product, some technical info, but specifically the difference between two ITSP offerings. IN telco world, the only difference between CLEC Integrated T1 bundles was how many minutes. See the disconnect?

Plus PRI is a standard. SIP Trunking is a garbage can of 30+ RFC's that get implemented differently by every carrier and vendor resulting in inter-operability issues never faced before. PRI was plug-and-play. SIP trunk is plug-and-pray.

Sales are slower with Hosted VoIP. They certainly can be. It's a purchasing shift for the end user. How many salespeople are enthusiastic about this incredible solution? How many can do Solution Selling to match up the correct pain points with the appropriate ITSP and network design?

One person mentioned that "We have found the hardest part is getting them to switch. Even though they will be saving a lot of money, it's hard to make the switch. Companies really worry they will miss calls..." As a sales trainer, my reply is that you failed in the sales process. It is a challenge, but if you progress through the questioning, the discovery, the obstacles, and still have hesitation, did you do testimonials? Demos? Did you undercover what the true objection is?

Another issue is "Will your company be around next week?" Handling that unasked question might be significant. Remember that SunRocket and others cratered leaving customers stranded.

Finally, Hosted PBX and UC Solutions are not replacement services. The customer isn't asking for Cloud or UC or some other buzz term. They have a business to run and just want the phone and email to work. Selling the same old way with next gen services is an uphill battle. The thinking that got you here, won't get you there.

Promiscuous Networking

2010-09-22T15:09:35Z

While this whole social media thing is new and yet evolving, experts have emerged. Ninjas even. All these folks that lay a claim to knowing everything there is to know about social media. It was the same with multi-level marketing (MLM) aka network marketing. It was the same with real estate investing. It is even the same with SEO (search engine optimization).

So many experts. Of course, they are experts. When the mass majority doesn't have a clue about something, anyone confident can come along and be taken as an expert. You know what a Confidence Man is? A Con Man.

When I first joined LinkedIn, there was a group called LIONs. These were the numbers people - chasing to be connected to everyone on LinkedIn. (Today, you can buy that ability from LinkedIn.) I learned early on that it wasn't a game of numbers. I could connect with any of the Top 5 LION's and reach their whole network, so why go crazy?

There is a sense of accomplishment when you hit 500 connections and even more when you hit 1000, but it isn't about the numbers. It's about the quality.

I know quite a few people like the LIONs. I call them Promiscuous Networkers because they want to connect with everyone. One is very good at it. But let me tell you something about the Promiscuous Networkers: they can't hold a job.

No one is paying them per Fan or per connection. Along the way, they forgot what they were connecting for. Was it just to have an audience? It might be. But that doesn't pay either. Bands know this. You have to have something to sell them -- and then you have to package it the way your audience wants to buy it -- and then you have to actually market it to Ask them to Buy.

You can use social media as a broadcast medium, as a PR tool, but that is most likely not going to result in sales. Sales come from engagement. That's right, you have to engage the prospect, uncover the perceive pain, then provide the solution for that pain. That can be automated for commodities like DSL or LD or books, maybe even for a T1, but not for IP Comm. (And in my case, not for consulting or training either).

When building that network, you have to know something about the people in your network. One Promiscuous Networker likes to send out quotes and a popular one is about it's about how you make people feel. If that were true, how do you make them feel when you Face-tweet link after link? It's the engagement that people seek. You want to know that someone is reading your tweet, your blog; that someone got something out of the article that you got something out of.

I've kind of given up on Linkedin these last few months. It's so noisy now that people tweet to LinkedIn. The questions section is littered with repeated questions and baiters (people that send out a question to bait answers so they can connect with more people). The spammers, people that automatically add me to their newsletters, events announcements, etc., tired me out.

One segment kills me: the people who pimp out the groups. Do I really have to go to five or more groups to get an answer to a question? Yes, because the industry has been so fragmented by ten or more people setting up their own groups instead of adding to the communities that are already established. That's not a Linchpin. That's self-serving. But then Promiscuous Networkers may say, "What can I do for you?" but underneath they are thinking, "What will you do for me?"

A thing to remember about social media: What are you there for? All your actions stem from that.

You can automate what you do on social media using apps like Hootesuite, but what part of engagement or social is automated? Do you automate your offline sales and marketing efforts as well? Are sales good? Maybe it works for you.

Certainly, broadcast can work if you are looking to drive traffic to a website. That website will then need to have an excellent landing page and conversion system. (Most don't.)

You wouldn't run into a networking event in-person and do half the stuff people do online. Think first. Sales is about making a friend.

5 Prospecting Ideas

2010-07-16T15:01:50Z

Steve Cadley, the Salesologist from Cadley Consulting, and I discuss 5 prospecting ideas for businesses. The first key step is to define who your target is. It might be beneficial to make a list of the top 50 companies that you would like to be your customer.

Next, clarify the value that your service will bring to that prospect. That value should be tied into the target market.

Performing these two steps helps you disqualify prospects and to create a laser beam of an elevator pitch.

Then you are ready to use the 5 tips for prospecting: LinkedIn, social networks search, Google Alerts, Classified Ads, and the old fashioned door knocking and cold calling.

Remember that people buy from people and they buy emotively.

Do some research on your prospects to be better informed.

Should You Blog?

2010-07-14T17:16:27Z

A colleague asked me this morning about blogging. Here is some basic info.

How does this tie to my website? Is it a separate domain or just a page on my site? You can add blogging software like Wordpress to your website as a sub-domain (blog.domain.com) or use a folder (domain.com/blog) to re-direct to an external blog like wordpress.org or blogger.
How often do I need to blog? At least twice a week to get readers and noticed by search engine spiders.
What do I blog about? Is it topic related? Pick 5 keywords that you want to be an expert in and blog about them (and only them).
Do I need a special name for my blog? You can because headlines are important, but the coloring and logo should be similar to your website.
How much time do I allocate weekly to do this? A researched thought piece can take between 2-4 hours (like this post). I can write faster, shorter pieces that take about an hour.
Do I need to link it to LinkedIn (or other social network)? You don't have to link anything. But you can use the LinkedIn status window to let people know when a new blog post was published.
I don't have a Twitter account - do I need one? No. You don't need twitter unless you want more distractions and noise - and one more way for people to find you.
How much time to I need to allow to set this up? You can set up blogger or wordpress.org in about an hour. It could take a day to add Wordpress to your domain.
How do I know if people are following me? You can have people read the blog via feedburner (now owned by Google). That means they sign up to get each post as an email. People can read it via RSS in a reader or in something like Google Wave. You can add Google Analytics or a counter to see how many people hit your blog, but does the number really matter? As long as I get the occasional comment and email, I'm happy. For me, blogging is an outlet and a way to talk about the Industry. It's also an excellent source of leads and SEO on keywords I blog about.
Will it cost me anything? Wordpress software is free. Having a Ninja set it up (like CR8 Marketing) will cost you a little money. The real cost is in time. Weekly time to write the content.
Are there any risks? Yes, not blogging means that you are irrelevant :) Joking. But content is king, so how will people find you if you don't create content? You can be the most promiscuous networker with thousands of contacts across the social netscape, but does anyone know what you are an expert in? As Seth Godin says, What's your superpower?

The other reason to blog is to be Generous. Giving away your knowledge helps people. Some will buy from you. Many will not but will use your info anyway. So what?

How Much is Too Much?

2010-06-21T18:47:06Z

I was invited into yet another LinkedIn group today. This time from Telarus. Why? There are groups from Phone+ (Channel Partner Network), ChannelVision Magazine, Independent Telecom Consultants, Peer-to-Peer, Telecom Business Daily, Telecom Executives Business Network, Telecom Sales Pros, Telecommunications Professionals Network, and the Technology Channel Association.

A couple of months ago, a TCA Board member started Channel Update, kind of in direct conflict with what we were doing at TCA. In fact, it would have been wonderful if that company could have put that particpation into TCA's online effort.

So when I get yet another invite for yet another telecom group on LinkedIn from yet another Master Agent, I have to ask Why do we keep fragmenting our Industry?

Many discussions have to be cross-posted across several groups to get any kind of response. There just isn't that much online activity for the 10 groups. heck, there isn't that much activity for 8 groups.

TCA is holding a member conference call to discuss How to Choose a Master Agent. It should be interesting, because the main thing that Master Agents use as a differentiator is the commission points. Masters complain that agents are shopping their orders around to get the best commission, but what other differentiator is there? Money is not a Loyalty maker.

Nor is a selfish attitude. If you aren't helping to build the Channel. If you aren't being generous to the agent community. Why should the agent community have loyalty to you?

How Do They Avoid Being Just the Dumb Pipe

2010-02-11T14:20:43Z

On LinkedIn there was a question in the Telecom Executives Business Network group: "How can a Telco Service Provider value chain defend itself from the attack by the emerging "Cloud" services? My understanding is that the emerging "cloud" services remove value-add and differentiation from the Telco service providers which are cornered to act just as the bit-stream providers (especially for the retail market)."

My answer to that was as follows:

Most telco carriers worry about becoming a Dumb Pipe. Isenberg told them this would happen. They fired him instead of listening. All the value is in Layer 1 or Layer 7.

Layer 1 in owning the network and delivering fast Internet bandwidth. The value there is if you can also deliver it with Quality. The value for the Telco is to deliver it via as many ways as possible to maximize ARPU - wireline, wireless, Wi-Fi, WiMax, cellular.

The value at Layer 7 is the apps - Web 2.0, social networks, SAAS, ASP, virtualization, The Cloud. People have to get to their data. However, Telcos are horrible at implementing and selling managed services. Why?

When you are a cost-cutting organization you will not hire the right people, train your sales staff, provide the necessary customer care, and design a suitable user interface.

The RBOC's can barely keep their copper up and running. If you have a lousy experience with them in wireline or cellular, why would you move to them as your App Provider?

Remember that RBOC's couldn't even sell Centrex, which essentially the first hosted phone system type of service. Their E-Commerce initiatives have been failures. RBOC's partnered with Yahoo on their ISP DSL service.

This also falls under my rant that Telcos don't innovate. There was a time when AT&T Labs was the promised land for PhD's. It is a shadow of what it was in the 80's. Some of that is due to the fact it was spun-off with Lucent. Some of it is that the US doesn't graduate nearly enough PhD students. Some of it is that the R&D budget is shrinking fast. (We even cut the NASA budget). We need pure research. It leads to innovation. If the US is going to be the knowledge center in the future we need to continue to be the leader in research, innovation and patents. I see that shrinking. And it scares me.

When I think about the CEO's of Ma and Pa Bell, my take-away is that the customer is a number, an ARPU figure to be manipulated. Erik says it's the regulatory environment, but I think it is the Bell-head mindset. When you can't get billing right - either because the BSS is too clunky or it is a revenue source - why would someone trust you with their DATA? Fortune 5000 companies probably will because they play it safe and buy by the Brand, but the rest of the 8 million companies in the SMB space don't buy that way. They buy from who they like and trust.