You got my attention. I already had one go around with Convey and LSI over this.
Convey Services is SAAS company that runs a portal for master agencies. LSI and ByteGrid hired Convey to handle their portals and an event. Convey did a poor job on the details of this. The email came from them, not LSI or ByteGrid. The email didn't explain clearly anything actually.
Convey tracks agent usage of the portal. Where they go, what they look at. I figured they scraped my email from that. Convey says it was provided by LSI, who got it from a LinkedIn connection with one of their executives.
Everything about these 4 or 5 emails has been the showcase for the Lazy Marketer. Quick, Dirty and Hurried.
It was a blast email, but the emails were CC'ed instead of BCC'ed. (So I will likely get even more spam.) If you can't Blind CC, do I really think you can handle Compliance issues?
For your own education, HIPAA is not HIPPA. This does not exude confidence.
I asked to be removed from the email twice - both to Convey and LSI. No idea how ByteGrid got it. I have never done business with any of these companies.
Also, it takes one minute to look at my website or my twitter or my LinkedIn profile to know that I reside in Tampa Florida. Why do I get invited to so many events in Atlanta and Miami? One is a 7 hour drive and the other is 4 hours. From companies I have no relationship with?
If you aren't careful with my email, why I would I trust you with my client?
I know you think I made a mountain out of a molehill, but I get tired of the pile of email I get that is this or even more irrelevant.
I understand you want to get the word out. It's a fun event. Let's Blast it out! NO!!! STOP!
It's like when a Channel Manager from a carrier I quoted but never sold, does the musical chairs to another company and pings me from there. I shake my head.
3 Things:
Don't Be Lazy.
]]>Highlights:
Smartphone growth is slowing.
Global Internet use continues to grow at 10% year over year, with 3.4 billion people on the Internet as of 2016. [QZ]
Advertising is about visuals (pics/vid), measurement, mobile and engagement. UCG (user generated content) is back.
Growth in Internet population is slowing, but growth in online ads is accelerating.
Combined, Google and Facebook accounted for 85% of the total internet ad revenue growth between 2015 and 2016. [QZ]
Amazon Alexa and other voice assistant devices are disrupting Brands as well as text based search. That is going to effect advertising revenue on one hand. On the other hand, Alexa is pushing Amazon house brands over better known quantities in order to push up margins. And they are winning at it!
Customer Service is about real time customer conversations. The Holy Grail used to be single call resolution that was hampered by silos and technology. Today with AI, Cloud, omni-channel contact center, we are closer than ever to that goal.
Retail has some bright spots but requires strong community and specific target market (slide 58). Or Subscriptions. [Funny, I say the same thing about UC/Hosted VoIP!]
For Restaurants, Eating Out is now Eating in with restaurant delivery. Grocery shopping is also about personal and delivery. Do you see where this is trending?
I am skipping Gaming, China, india, except to say that Gaming is a skills school and the old time the phone is put away (as another tech toy has your attention).
88% of U.S. consumers use at least one digital health tool.
"The rise of fitness trackers and health apps are collecting more user data than ever, while hospitals are sharing more health care information with patients. The average hospital holds 50 petabytes of health care data, and the total amount of that data is growing by 48 percent a year, Meeker says." [venturebeat]
What happens online in 60 seconds: HERE.
]]>Chase and Nike are to give you an idea what big brands spend. Granted that AT&T and Verizon have revenue of $155B and $120B per year, respectively. The ad budget is just about 2% of revenue. Most B2B companies are spending 10% of revenue on marketing (that includes advertising, digital, direct, social, etc.).
I understand that Branding is tough, but brands are valuable. Ask AT&T or Coke. SBC bought AT&T but canned the SBC brand.
You have to do some marketing especially in the crowded me-too space we are in. At the very least, you have to do PR.
When Google or Amazon or Apple do something - let alone launch a product - they get a ton of hype, buzz, mentions and attention. Unfortunately, Joe's UC Service will have to figure out how to manufacture some attention. The buzz has been that Amazon Echo will change UC. Even f it doesn't, you have to be innovating and marketing. Peter Drucker said so.
Contact me if you want to talk about.
]]>CenturyLink is saying that after it scoops up Level3, they will be able to compete with cable in the SMB space. Really? You are going to offer up $300 pipes?
"Basically take some market share away from the cable companies, especially on the small and midsize customers where Qwest had lost quite a bit of market share when we bought Qwest." So you broke Qwest and its ability to sell to the SMB. What makes C-Link think you will find your mojo again?
I'm certain that during the 20+ months of integration, it will be challenging for a small business to procure bandwidth from you.
Charter/Spectrum makes it very hard to order from. It takes weeks to get a quote and contract. Then the order has to be scrubbed, checked and double-checked for 2-3 weeks. Another site survey as time ticks away and the client wonders when they will see the circuit. And despite this horrendous process of 7 departments having to touch the order (probably on paper in a file folder), it will look easy compared to a combined LEC of LevelLink or Century3 or whatever you call it.
It used to just be voice that was a bitch to deal with. LNP and toll-free RESPORs were a pain with added paperwork. Then with Hosted PBX, the extension to email mapping and other PBX planning (hunt groups, ACD, auto attendant) added to the complexity. Voice has many moving parts. Now network takes as long as voice!! Or longer. Even when there is NO construction necessary.
Makes me fear selling anything complex with most carriers.
The one thing that gets missed all the time: It isn't about EBITDA or synergies or fiber. It is about the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE*!
End to end - from the time the prospect first encounters the provider until the long after the service is up and running, every touch of the prospect/customer adds to or takes away from the experience. Billing, support, admin, delays, lack of communications, handling expectations, CPE, and more are touch points where the CX could be improved.
It is interesting that a company would spend big dollars to redesign a website but not redesign its contract or quoting process or customer care service. Google Fiber was deliberate in how the sales offices would look and feel; the color of the boxes for CPE; and so much more. Their take rate and deployment were awful but the marketing details were very good.
With cratering revenues, I get why the merger mania is happening. But that doesn't solve the underlying problem that revenues are cratering and all products are a commodity. Until that is fixed, the rest of the actions - the new website, the mergers - are just distractions for stakeholders.
Our industry has new technology called SD-WAN that we have already over-hyped and turned into a commodity. It is hard to believe that it is all about cost savings already. Basically, you have explained to customers that broadband is just fine with a 4G card and an SD-WAN box in place of a Cisco or ADTRAN. So boom! there goes the Ethernet sales and MPLS can't be ripped out fast enough. Like Charlie Brown with a kite!
*CX or UX stands for Customer or User Experience
]]>Most of the collapse was due to the Big 3 claimed 94% of the market by 1955. So a hundred other companies were competing for 6% of the market.
And it was a Big Market. "A total of almost 58 million cars were produced and sold during the 1950s by the American manufacturers. Compared to the total population of the United States by the end of the decade, 179,323,175, that is almost one new vehicle for every three living persons of all ages." [wiki]
It reminds me of the cable industry. There were hundreds of mom-and-pop cable companies. Some merged to be regional; some sold out. Now there are 660 cable operators according to NCTA, but it is mainly just 4 with majority market share - Charter, Comcast, Cox, Altice.
CLEC numbers have dwindled. RBOCs are back together in 2 buckets - Verizon and AT&T. Frontier, CenturyLink, Windstream, VZ and AT&T have the lion share of the business telecom market.
Hosted VoIP/UC is a lot like the auto industry in the 1950s. Only the product is so similar as to be indistinguishable. At least, cars had distinguishing features like car doors, lines, looks, radio, interior. VoIP pretty much all looks the same. Some of the mobile apps are starting to change that a little.
Some of it is scale. Once the Big 3 got big, costs go down, name recognition goes up. The smaller guys cannot afford to make one-tenth the number of cars at the same cost. Vendors give volume discounts but when Ford is selling 12M cars and Edsel is selling is 108 thousand! there will be cost differences. It is one of the things that smaller ISPs don't grasp. They want to resell from AT&T or Verizon for cheaper than their vendor. It doesn't work that way in any industry. Do you think Firestone sold tires to Ford for a lot less than Edsel?
The problem with cable/pay TV right now is that the OTT product is a little cheaper and much better at meeting the needs of the buyers. Think Netflix or Hulu.
There are so many analogies but look at Italian food. Chains with Italian food like Olive Garden and Carabba's appeal to masses who just want food that looks Italian and is affordable. The foodies want the authentic food. Still others want pampering and service etc. VoIP providers are shooting for the masses. They have a mass market product for the masses. They are Olive Garden. However, in technology today, there isn't really a MASS market. There are many market segments with different types of buyers with varying needs and desires.
Only so many brands (I use that term loosely in telecom) will dominate the mass market. Everyone else will be niche or fringe (like the MSO sector or even the auto industry).
]]>It isn't a sprint. It isn't about just growth. It is about steady growth and customer experience. Also, product-market/fit.
On LinkedIn this morning, there were at least 3 posts from channel managers closing business for their partners. If the channel managers are closing business, that is a better use of time than recruiting. And maybe a trainer is needed to teach sales skills and product to both channel managers and partners to keep those skills and knowledge fresh.
The other topic on LinkedIn this morning: SD-WAN. All generic info being shared under the umbrella of the vendors. This is not a good start to content marketing. This is not a good start to branding and positioning.
Seth Godin is giving a 100 day online marketing seminar. Take it!!!!
CenturyLink data centers were acquired by a group of private equity firms (Medina Capital and BC Partners) for $2.8B. This group will combine the 57 data centers with four cyber-security and data analytics portfolio companies to form Cyxtera. (Who picked that name?) The CEO of Medina Capital will be running the new firm and he used to be CEO of Terremark.
Verizon closed on the sales of their data centers (formerly Terremark) to Equinix this week. Windstream sold theirs to Tierpoint a while ago.
The divestiture of data centers by Windstream, Verizon and Centurylink does not represent a bad position for data centers. It means that the telcos didn't have the skills to leverage DCIM. The data center market is hot and growing. Inter-connection, peering, colocation and cloud computing infrastructure (IAAS, PAAS, VM, Hosting) are all in demand right now. Data center construction is growing by 8% per year.
Polycom was acquired by a PE firm. Many top execs have left. One went to Star2Star. This week the CMO went to Intermedia.Net.
]]>By that, I mean, if you can fog that mirror, you are a partner.
Shouldn't partner programs be more like the NFL or NHL draft than an army recruitment office?
Wouldn't it be better to not sign up everyone?
It would certainly help providers' partners if there was demand for the service offering and if there was just a handful of partners to supply that demand. Instead we have little demand* for the services and everyone can be a partner.
That is the VAD theory, because a value add distributor is similar to a store. They can carry anything. They are in logistics, warehousing and distribution. That is all the value they bring. In stock or not?
On the Master Agent side, I just don't understand the signing up of 20+ UC providers, 10+ data center providers and 10+ Microsoft Partners.
For perspective, USLEC had 26,000 clients when Paetec bought them; Cbeyond had 51K when Birch acquired it; 8x8 has 48K. These aren't large numbers. "In 2012, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, there were 5.73 million employer firms in the US. Firms with fewer than 500 workers accounted for 99.7 percent of those businesses, and businesses with less than 20 workers made up 89.6 percent." [SBE] The sweet spot for businesses, according to CompTIA, is 10-100 employees, which represents a 20% slice of the overall market - or 1.8 million businesses. FYI, 50K of 5M is 1%.
What's my point? No one is crushing it (or ever will). A lack of funds, crappy marketing (if any), no focus and flawed strategy that is poorly executed are all factors that mess with success in telecom. If AT BEST you are going to get 50K businesses, do you really need 450 to 2500 partners signed up to hit it?
Wouldn't providers do better with the zealots?
Verizon and BellSouth/AT&T used to be exclusive. Partners could only sell their services. It worked out well for both parties. It meant there was focus, specialization. Co-selling worked too.
By signing up every master agency, vendors think they get access to more partners. They don't. Most partners use 5 (five) master agents. VARs use at least 2 (more likely 3) different VADs. So by signing up more partners, vendors get their logo in more places, but they don't get more partners. In fact, what they DO get is to fork over more dollars for events.
The model can't last much longer. And if they did the numbers over the last even 4 years, they would find that Pareto knew exactly what he was talking about. Also, that the amount of busy work given to channel managers is just piling up. Hard to hit quota when bogged down with recruiting, quoting, selling, reporting, funnel and a hundred other things.
What vendors confuse is exposure for demand; logo placement for marketing.
I've written about it often and enough. Where's the competitive analysis of the marketplace? Who is your target? Why do they buy? Why YOU and not THEM?
It is very different with network. Lit buildings and fiber routes are the factor. You don't have that with managed services or security or cloud. The limiting factor for voice/VoIP/UC is LNP which has mostly been solved (except for pockets of independent IOC territories).
Put up the red velvet rope. Sign up, train, on-board and work with partners who actually want to work with you. And limit that. It builds up the relationships that you have. It makes your partners stronger.
It isn't going to limit vendor revenues, because vendors are probably quoting and saying YES to stuff that they shouldn't be. Vendors are NOT getting deals that they would like to - or that they built for - because they are too busy chasing every single partner and every single opportunity. In the process, the vendors are diluting their message (brand) and wearing out their channel managers. But hey what do I know. I have not only seen this playbook, everyone has a copy of it, and yet no one is winning using it.
*DEMAND = after 15 years, UC has only penetrated to 29% of the market? CLECs have been around since 1996 and can't get more than 1% of the market - in 20+ years.
]]>If you cannot see the flash mp3 player, you can listen on SoundCloud HERE or download the mp3 HERE.
]]>Since most product markets are flat (think broadband, cellular, voice, TV), the race is on to take customers away. Without a better mouse trap, it is all about price.
In an industry (ours), where technology is painted as the product and we mainly sell replacement products (SIP Trunks for POTS and PRI, Ethernet for T1, 4G for DSL), the price compression happens quickly. This means less commission and less income for the partners (agents).
Despite this dilemma and the revenue decline it has caused carriers that has resulted in industry consolidation, carriers have not done enough Product Market/Fit testing. Once again they go wide instead of deep. (At least EarthLink went deep into Retail.)
Money is only left in verticals and specialization. HIPAA and other compliance allow for a discussion about business needs, not cost savings. Talking about business needs, outcomes, and pain points are how you move away from the RFP process.
Selling into verticals means that you can speak their language; bring best practices (or at least anecdotes); and word of mouth is louder in a silo.
This is just part one of several to come on how partners can make more margin.
]]>This and some other moves clearly closes the book on the era of the CLEC.
Southern Light got acquired by UNITI Fiber (formerly CS&L which was the Windstream spin-off REIT) for $700M.
The Intelisys division of Scansource finally revealed that they acquired Kingcom, the exclusive Verizon partner that they run their VZ business through. Just bringing it all in house.
There were more announcements of companies picking a SD-WAN partner: OneStream picked Versa; Star2Star chose Velocloud; Nitel chose Versa, too. This is quickly becoming like Hosted VoIP/UC. It will quickly become a commodity, faster than any technology the channel has sold.
AT&T bought Straight Path for a billion dollars for the spectrum. Any spectrum is property with a water view right now.
]]>In the SpiceWorks IT Buyer guide, "IT pros at small companies are often both the business and IT decision makers." And no one reads your brochures. Interesting that IT buyers don't trust social media.
A CompTIA SMB study "identified the "sweet spot" of the SMB market to be companies with 10 to 99 employees. Those companies represent a 20% slice of the overall market. But it's a big slice in terms of sheer numbers: 1.8 million businesses fit the sweet spot description."
Another interesting point from CompTIA's study: "CompTIA breaks down the SMB market into three subcategories, the largest of which is "budget conscious" companies that represent 78% of the estimated nine million U.S. small businesses. Herbert said much of what that segment spends on IT boils down to break/fix services and other items such as web design."
"Healthcare IT professionals believe their data is safer in the cloud than on premises according to a survey released by Evolve IP." [source] They mean private cloud though. "Other key results of the survey showed that, on average, healthcare organizations have between two and three services (2.75 average) in the cloud." If you want to sell to healthcare, UCaaS, data backup and retrieval and hosted email (Exchange, Office365, whatever).
Bonus material from my friend at MOJO Marketing, whose CEO spoke at MSP World: Anatomy of a Wildly Successful Digital Marketing Campaign.
]]>That is a lot of noise. That is a lot of email begging for attention.
We have a sales problem. Cold calling, cold emailing, spam, robo-dialing, call centers, direct mail, pop-ups, etc. have created an audience that has gotten really good at ignoring people.
Buyers complete more than half the sales process before talking to a salesperson. Why? Because no one wants to talk to a salesperson. No one wants to be added to the list. No one wants to be sold, but they want to buy. And for non-logical reasons.
All these vendors looking to the channel for sales. But are channel partners looking for new vendors? Not really. Unless your product is in demand. And most aren't.
Not only that most companies do ZERO marketing. No branding. No PR. No anything. This not only doesn't help demand, it stifles lead generation and even hampers building trust, the number one requirement for sales.
People ask friends on social networks for recommendations. They aren't looking in the yellow pages. They aren't even Googling it. They don't see billboards, because they are watching their phones instead! They don't get newspapers. News now comes on the mobile or as a trend on a social network or in a social media feed. That has turned it all around. It makes everyone a Publisher; everyone is a media company. (Seth Godin said that a few years ago!)
So the vendors will turn to more master agencies, who quite frankly have too many vendors also. The portfolios if printed would be a Sears catalog or a copy of War and Peace!! That doesn't solve the Noise-Attention-Demand problem either!
Despite what YOU want or need quota or revenue wise, not everyone will want to offer your product. There has to be some alignment. Either they already sell something similar or the customer base is your target market. Unfortunately, no one wants to identify a small target market. It has to be 1-1000 or Everyone! Or Wall Street and VCs will not give you more money.
It is important to note that most channels supply demand with sales activities, BUT THEY DO NOT DRIVE DEMAND! They do not create demand in the buyers. That is supposed to be done by the vendors like IBM, HP, Cisco, Comcast, Verizon Wireless, AT&T.
These named vendors are some of the biggest spenders on advertising. Effective is a different story. Branding or awareness campaigns are not lead generation.
The problem is all Marketing.
Peter Drucker said "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two-and only two-basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." Later he added, "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself... The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous."
Cable broadband did that. Microsoft a few times. Apple. Cisco for a little while. Now, who does that?
The Product-Market Fit is ignored. The Customer isn't even included in any of the product launch. It's like, "Well, there are similar products out there, so we need one." Whether or not there is a customer for that product. Any innovation added? Not a new feature but actual innovation? Probably not.
When Amazon launched Chime, the response was OOOH! Then it was: "That's a crowded space." But Amazon will take friction out of some of the sales process. It will also eliminated some margin for many players in that space.
The companies in the price and spiff war, have failed in all areas of marketing. They have basically given up. I'm kind of tired of the Race to Zero.
Think about cellular phone plans. For most people, it is about good enough. Not the best. That is the problem VZW faces right now. The best just can't command the same premium anymore.
Think about Internet. Broadband is good enough. Except when it is down or congested. Except when your speeds or throughput suck. But for many people buying Internet for their business, it is good enough.
For most people, it is about good enough. They go with Cheaper because no one has explained the Value.
When the master agency has 24 VoIP/UC vendors, I dare anyone to explain the Value of one over the other. Or the specific difference in service offerings.
I already see it happening with SD-WAN. It is the MPLS replacement with broadband IP-VPN. We have been there and done that, but again price, because we don't know how to market.
And why do we choose to market the technology as the product???????
Even with security, where is the demand? Every enterprise needs it. Companies get hacked every day. But the cost benefit analysis says we will risk it. Not much demand.
The channel cannot manufacture demand. That isn't what they do. They sell to people who want to buy. And they sell them what the customer wants, not needs.
And quite frankly, especially in voice, the channel sells the cheapest.
Basically we are all in the insurance sales game now. Think about that.
And it is all the fault of the vendors. For NOT positioning better. For lack of Product-Market fit. For not branding, lousy stories, lack of marketing and then following all that up with having no floor on the pricing. It's a complete business disaster.
]]>In this podcast, I speak with TelePacific's SVP Ken Bisnoff on why TelePacific is re-branding. The CLEC of old is gone. Telecom is shifting to be more than voice and Internet. TelePacific has transitioned to a Managed Services Carrier with its acquisition of DSCI. TelePacific is not the same company it was even 5 years ago. It is now a Tier 1 CSP for Microsoft. There is a SOC (security operations center) in St. Louis. The lines of business have changed. Now the name will too.
One point made during the podcast to note: the providers are shifting, but Agents need to shift too.
If you cannot see the flash player, you can download the mp3 or listen on Soundcloud.
]]>In cable news, you get a site survey done supposedly before quoting. You get the quote; give it to the customer who says Yes. You get paperwork; customer signs paperwork. Then three days after the paperwork is submitted, the site survey comes back. "Subject: Construction required. Comments: A site survey was completed that determine there is a total construction cost of $71,972 for construction to bring service. Your organization can pay the contribution of $69,687 or we can amend the contract to 36 months and increase total MRC to $2,400." Mind you , that $2400 per month is for cable broadband - 150x10. This happens TOO often. It makes no sense to me at all.
There are new acronyms to know in Security. According to 451 Research, "Managed security services (MSS) is an emerging sector of the security and managed services market. As new security threats evolve, many organizations find they lack the expertise to protect against increasingly complex attacks and meet compliance requirements. Security is one of the IT functions that can be managed by a service provider." MSS providers are MSSPs. If the MSSP develops and delivers security technologies and services, it is a security service technology provider (SSTP). If the MSSP focuses on delivering security services, but does not develop their own technology, then these MSSPs are "pure play". There are also Hybrids that mix the two. Fun, right?
Businesses buy a lot of software. Office365, Google for Work, email and web hosting just being the start. CRM, UC, conferencing, digital marketing technology, Business Intelligence (BI), Virtualization, Data Storage and Database and ERP. 451 Research survey suggests that spending will be up for software in 2017.
"SAN-based Storage (67%) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Arrays (59%) are currently the most widely used storage systems by companies, followed by Backup/Recovery Software and Disk Backup Appliances (44%)," according to 451 Research. "Respondents were asked which storage systems and related products, including upgrades/refreshes, they plan to purchase in 2017, and SAN-based Storage Arrays (48%) tops the list, followed by Third-party Cloud Storage Services (34%) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) Array (34%)."
This leads me to suggest that you ask your customers about software and storage. There is money to be made there and you are leaving it on the table.
Interesting article about identity - product to consumer identity in music on NYT.
Seth Godin repeatedly says that there is no mass market. Yet time and again providers want the whole ocean. There are too many segments to the marketplace. There are a number of different buyer persona. There are different reasons to buy. It can't be treated as a single market buying Cocoa Puffs.
"But music is still, pretty obviously, tied to people." So is user adoption of your service. User adoption is critical for lower churn, more engagement and for the business to actually get something out of the purchase.
]]>