Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter

On Rad's Radar?

| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

Marketing

3 Tricks to EoC

June 28, 2010

Ethernet over Copper is picking up steam. Hatteras Networks has something to do with that as they are the vendor for Metro Ethernet over Copper for former BellSouth. XO also has EoC in most of their markets. I saw an ad today from Tele-Pacific's EoC. Many of my clients - regional CLEC's - are selling G.SHDSL based services.
Posted in CLEC, Internet, Marketing, bandwidth, technology, telecommunications

How Much is Too Much?

June 21, 2010

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.

Posted in Marketing, agents, linkedin, social network

50 Ideas in 50 Minutes

June 20, 2010

Friday a client told me that he wanted me to re-do my talk titled 50 Ideas in 50 Minutes. This is a session that Jack Brandt and I did for the now defunct ISPCON shows. It was not original ideas but a collection of nuggets that people forget and do not implement. I thought that I would share them with you:

  1. Plan- so you have a path
  2. Strategy- so you aren't putting out fires
  3. Call your best customers just to make sure everything okay, then ask for referrals.
  4. Focus on goals
  5. Remember that Marketing takes 6-9-12 months
  6. Become an information source- newsletter, podcast, blog, keep people thinking you know everything
  7. Think tank for your biz: attorney, CPA, 2 best customers, 2 non customers
  8. Hosted non portable services- hosted exchange-makes you sticky
  9. Get others organized
  10. Phase out projects so goals met, not just GOAL
  11. Have a vision statement - so all employees/literature say the same thing.
  12. Add a closing script to calls/meetings
  13. FAIL FAST
  14. Who's your competition?
  15. Bring your customers people who can be their customers, they will never leave you
  16. Differentiate- show EASY, ROI, EFFICIENT
  17. Make customers experience EASY (VOIP doesn't do this)
  18. Who is your target customer?
  19. Go vertical- find a niche
  20. Figure out how to steal competition from a competitor
  21. Sell more to your current customers
  22. Vertical markets are less price sensitive
  23. FASTER and BETTER, NOT cheaper
  24. Be able to TCO and ROI on product/service
  25. Sell Something/Cross Sell
  26. Address women - they make most of the decisions
  27. Hire WOMEN to sell
  28. Hire Attorney to Sell for you
  29. Give back to the community, then talk about it
  30. Get employees to give back, then talk about it
  31. Encourage employees to provide feedback to company about how to improve
  32. Outsource and partner - you can't do everything
  33. Start every day with 2 cold calls, the rest of the day will be easy
  34. Do not leave voice mail for someone you've never met
  35. Have a unique selling proposition
  36. Always ask for a follow-up appointment
  37. Teach a class or seminar
  38. Create podcast or youtube video
  39. Hire Slow, fire FAST
  40. Let your employees find other employees
  41. Hire your vendors' employees
  42. Have a process
  43. Have a script - this creates consistency and a process for up sell
  44. Rent a theater with new release for just customers - they will tell everyone, better than $5 pen
  45. Free lunch and learns via chamber
  46. Marketing on hold
  47. Everyone is stressed, be friendly
  48. Takes average of 7 touches to a customer to get them on board
  49. Use the power of a Thank You, hand written, especially to women
  50. Have a mystery shopper
  51. Follow up on service calls to make sure their happy
  52. Have tie in's
  53. Charities - Co-Market with them.
  54. Door Hangers.
  55. Surveys.
  56. Documentation management/storage, Make it EASY.
  57. Pizza Box Advertisement
  58. Coffee cups for local coffee shop with both logo's on it.
  59. If you are comfortable, you are not doing anything that will get you to the next level.
  60. Biz coaches- SCORE.org is free/retired biz people to help
  61. Use college business & marketing dept's.
  62. Hire an intern.
  63. Make them laugh- leave a joke as voice mail.


Posted in Marketing, e-book, sales and selling, smb

Marketing is Not Sales

June 20, 2010

Marketing is creating noise. Marketing is puking on Twitter and other social networks.

Sales is about relationships. Never forget: people do business with people. Sales is also about product knowledge.

Posted in Marketing, cloud computing, sales and selling

The Big Push to the Cloud

May 25, 2010

The news is awash with stuff being pushed into the Cloud. Everything is going hosted. Reading press releases, it seems that conferencing is changing and everyone is rolling out a hosted PBX solution. It's a frenzy of zombies following the crowd.

Here are the problems: How do you stand out in the crowd?

Posted in Marketing, agents, apps, channel, cloud computing, saas, sales and selling, technology, training

Finding Your Best Clients

March 4, 2010

My agent pal, Dave, asked me how I find my clients. My first answer is that I sell only to a very specific vertical -- a Niche. And only to three verticals within that Niche - VoIP, regional CLEC and ISP. 

Look at your client base. Who are your top 5 or 10 clients?

Posted in Marketing, agents, sales and selling

The Social Media Panel Wrap Up

January 25, 2010

In a follow up to the Social media panel write up, here are the slides (and a few extra thoughts from yours truly)

Blogging, LinkedIn, forums, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Google Wave, YouTube, podcast, etc. Each is a tool for your communication.

Each is different and reaches a varied audience.

Posted in Marketing, expo, social network

How to Leverage Social Media for a Marketing Campaign

January 20, 2010

At TMC's ITEXPO, I moderated a panel after lunch titled How to Leverage Social Media for a Successful Marketing Campaign. Both panelists - Isaac Hazard, Director of Strategic Consulting, Mzinga; and Suzanne Bowen, VP Marketing & Business Development, Super Technologies, Inc. & DIDX - delivered case studies. 

What was the goal? 
How was it executed? 
What was the results/metrics/ROI?

How to Think about Social Media

You need to think about social media platforms as additional tools for the marketing toolbox.





Posted in Marketing, TMC, linkedin, social network, twitter

Applying Gary Vee

January 7, 2010

Last night I got to listen to Gary Vaynerchuk speaking about Crush It (Amazon affilaite link), his new book. He talked about branding your business via online marketing, which is what has made him famous (via video blogging about wine on Wine Library TV). [You can see a 15 minute talk of his on YouTube].

His primary thought is that Content is King. So if you run a company and your company isn't blogging, shame on you.

Posted in Marketing, linkedin, privacy, social network, twitter

Battle of the Maps

November 30, 2009

Cellular companies have some of the lamest ad campaigns. Apparently, the marketing folks AND their ad agencies are SO far removed from the consumers that they don't even know what message to spend millions on.

What difference does a coverage map make to the average consumer? Your phone either works or doesn't. Most folks I know buy a phone based on where they spend the most time.

Posted in Marketing, cellular, spectrum, wireless
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