On Rad's Radar? - Marketing Archives

A Lesson in Value Proposition

2012-05-24T02:41:02Z

This came across my twitter stream this week:

"Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a killer value proposition" on VentureBeat by Michael Skok, a Venture Capitalist at North Bridge Venture Partners. His slideshare page contains a couple of really good decks of information about Go-To-Market and Value Prop - two things that I help companies address in this industry.

That's his Go-to-Market diagram.

A Value Proposition is created by filling in these blanks:

For (target customers)
Who are dissatisfied with (the current alternative)
Our product is a (new product)
That provides (key problem-solving capability)
Unlike (the product alternative)

When he asks (in slide 20) "What is your compelling breakthrough?" I think about Hosted PBX companies. None of them have any special sauce. If 400 of you have a Broadsoft, it comes down to a few variables:

sales execution and marketing acumen;
technology proficiency to get all the pieces of UC to work smoothly;
onboarding success, which means customer service too;
integration services with other tech for the customer;

When I look at Agents, the same applies. You don't really have any special sauce either, so to stand out you need to either be great at sales, marketing, customer service, or product knowledge, but really a combination of these.

For Master Agents, it will come down to culture and tools that they develop.

Skok says something that Seth Godin preaches: "Ideas are worth little to nothing without: People to execute; Culture to select the right people; and Vision to attract the best stakeholders."

No Special Sauce

2012-05-21T21:04:07Z

There is no special sauce.

Everyone has the same technology (or will 5 minutes after you market yours).

It was never about the technology.

It has always been about the Customer Experience!

(What do you think churn is all about? They don't like you and will leave for a few dollars off. It's the CX - the customer experience - that retains them.)

That means you have to stop talking about the technology now.

A Day in My Brain

2012-05-18T14:19:54Z

I was in NYC (Tribeca) this week to spend the day at a Q&A session with Seth Godin. He is a marketing guru and author of a lot of best selling business books. Like these:

Here are some of the gems that I liked.

"A "brand" is the promise of an experience." [Boy, could I riff on that one!] Brand IS the experience. Accept that most people won't like you. Build a tribe that will.

Commit to one marketplace or two. You can't chop all the trees down in the forest with one hatchet.

"It's way easier to sell water to thirsty people than to make thirsty people. It's OK to remind people they're thirsty." The corollary to that is People buy to avoid pain more often than they buy to gain pleasure.

You can try to create demand for your service, like trying to make people thirsty. Or you can find thirsty people and sell them water.

"Define failure before you start. When you reach that point, stop, learn and move on to the next thing." [It's a concept from Seth's book, The Dip]

"The secret, I think, is in understanding what matters."

"People spend their time and attention and money in places that make them feel valued." Are you making your customers feel valued?

What is the world view of your target customer? Does your marketing line up with that?

For a brief few, Seth talked about working for a start-up versus working for Google or Apple or Facebook. A start-up is about growth If you want fast-paced; to make an impact; and to learn, join the start-up. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are in the "keep it going" mode. You won't have an impact there. You will be a cog in the machine. In our world, working for any of the billion dollar LEC's or MSO's is like working for Facebook, only a lot less cool on your resume.

What is Important to you? Tom Peters says that he can tell what is important to you from calendar. What does your schedule say about what's important to you?

It's all about Direct Marketing and Pay for Performance. (Social media is a tool of direct marketing.)

There is no road map.

It's all about connection and association. Are you connecting people?

We have mass disruption going on today. Every industry including our own is being disrupted by the Internet. Why? The Internet is the first device that is both a Receiver and a transmitter. That's the problem.

Hopefully one of these nuggets gets you thinking.

Some notes made it to this Power Point I created.

The Incumbent Mindset

2012-05-10T18:02:28Z

I'm heading to NYC next week to attend Seth Godin's seminar. It is always worth the trip to me. From his Domino Project newsletter today, a little insight:

"It happens to just about every industry, from hard drives to furniture--the insurgents, coming up from the bottom of the market, had an incentive to refine their techniques, engage with their customers and innovate. The incumbents, saddled with much higher costs and less innovation, watched themselves go bankrupt, one by one."

Can you say China? HUAWEI? Vonage? 8x8?

Every market gets disrupted. The Internet has been the greatest tool of disruption. Think about Netflix and Google Apps.

"Instead of working hard to keep their share of a shrinking pie, or working even harder to make sure the industry stays as is, I think the most essential thing legacy ~~book industry~~ players can do is set up independent ventures with great people and little interference and work really hard to put themselves out of business by starting at the bottom, not by reinforcing the top."

Some ILEC's like Windstream, TDS and CenturyLink have used acquisitions as a way to counter-balance disruption that broadband and cellular have done to the market. M&A will only get you so far.

We are already seeing where Live365/Office suites have become a commodity. VoIP is certainly sold as a commodity. Hosted PBX is probably next. Any time you can automate it, someone will come along, with less costs, and undercut your price. The Incumbents will have to take the hit just to stay in the game. Look at CLEC's and the T1 market. The cablecos are disrupting the T1 market. Next it will be MPLS.

It will be skill set, human talent, integration, customer care, and WOM that will set your product offering apart from the rest of the crowd.

That Seth Godin always gets my mind going.

Why PR Is Important

2012-04-20T14:51:54Z

On a call today talking about the value of different CLEC's and ILEC's and why some are trading so low and some so high. For the most part, it comes down to Wall Street's perception of the business. Actually, a large part is what the stock traders think the business is.

For example, Cincinnati Bell is an ILEC with declining wireline revenues like Frontier, Fairpoint and TDS. Like TDS, CinBell has been buying up data centers. Via acquisitions and the public relations that goes with those actions, CinBell is changing the way Wall Street looks at their firm.

Public relations plays a big part in stock price, especially when you consider that most people have very little idea about the World of Telecom. Throw in cable and cloud and you have confused not just Wall Street, but even people in our own Industry.

When I work with master agencies and service providers on their online marketing strategy, the discussion is generally around, "How do we make what you do concrete and easy to understand?" or "How do we tell a story that describes it picture perfect so that it can be repeated?"

To take that another step, PR is about who your clients are, who your employees are, and who the company is (in terms of the marketplace). With so many CLEC's, VoIP Providers and Cloud companies, PR is one way to differentiate yourself. For example, if you close a deal with a school system, a government agency, a retail chain, you want to describe that sale - who, what they bought, the benefits of the purchase, and maybe why they bought from you. Like a mini case study.

If you look at something like a softswitch manufacturer, you can tell from analyst calls that Wall Street doesn't really have a handle on what they do - mainly software licensing. And because of all the hype with Cloud, cloud stocks are doing well despite most folks not knowing what the heck the cloud is! Amazing isn't it?

One last point: PR helps telcos out because the PR machine props up the stock price which in turn lowers their debt payments which can be tied to a stock price (or other financial metric).

There are a few avenues for PR: press releases, case studies, social media, executives speaking at conferences, media interviews, and more. So many ways to get the message out and yet so few do it (well).

It's Not Just About Price

2012-04-16T20:17:42Z

This article in the NYT article about Amazon is about the book publishing industry. Amazon is waging a battle against book publishers over price. As a book buyer, I often wonder how an e-book can cost almost the same as the printed version. In this article, the publishes yell about the way Amazon undercuts their other sellers and demands lower prices - like Home Depot and WalMart.

Reading the comments, I think most people miss two points: books can still be published without publishers (although they may be inferior products) and Amazon is more about ease of business - easy to order, easy to get delivered. Most websites do NOT have that. Yesterday, during a pitch at Startup Weekend Tampa, one company mentioned the online shopping cart abandonment problem - 65% on average - it is about ease of use and transparency. On Amazon, you know what shipping and taxes (zero) will cost before you get through the cart. Not so on most other sites. You get shipping sticker shock (maybe because we are used to almost free shipping and no taxes from online retailers). There is also the matter of filling in all the forms. So folks just say Good bye. Wasn't OpenID supposed to help with this problem?

Everyone blames it on the pricing model. Doesn't matter the Industry - books or telecom. It isn't just price. It's Value, Trust and Ease.

Value is something that needs to be communicated. If you can't deliver a product - book or telecom service - as cheaply as the giant, you have to accept a smaller market share. You have to deliver Value first and last. You have to build Trust. And you better be easy to deal with from the sale to the end of time. Or you lose. The difference between cost and price is Value. Not everyone sees Value.

There's a number out there - 1000, 2000, 10K, 100K, 1M - the number of customers that you need to have a healthy business selling at your price and delivering your value. It's called a Tribe. Go build it!

When the authors talk about publishers, not all publishers give value. And they do take some control. To self publish (or use Amazon), you have to market your books yourself. In other words, you have to build your Tribe. Some authors do this well, some don't.

In the article, they talk about Amazon being all that is left. That's unlikely, with Apple, Barnes & Noble, Independents and the Big Book Houses. And as much as I rail against WalMart, there are alternatives.

This makes me say look at how Target competes against WalMart. One way is talking about design and the exclusive stuff they offer. It's still clothes, just Bundled better. It's a nicer, cleaner store (User Experience).

So when you are competing against the Giant, think about these factors: What is your Value? Are you building a Tribe? How are you Bundling your product? How Easy are you to buy from and deal with? Do they Trust you? These are the hallmarks of success.

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.

I Can Do It Myself

2012-03-06T14:37:09Z

I hear this all the time: "I can do it myself!" Backup solution? No, I'll build one myself. Outsource your email? No, I can run my own email server. White-label VoIP? Nope. I'm going to spin up an Asterisk box and use that.

You think I am kidding, but I'm not.

Yesterday it was: We needed to re-do our Broadsoft portal. After shopping around, we decided to build it ourselves.

It makes me wonder about a couple of things:

Are you a hobby or a business? A hobby is when you like to tinker with technology. A business is something else.

Do you know what your time and effort is worth? It takes a lot of time and effort to build a solution, maintain that hardware and software, and support it. Add in licensing, backup, redundancy and security to that budget number. Factor in that while spending your time and effort on Building Your Own, you could have been doing something else -- some other priority, some other revenue generating activity, or personal time.

There is always a debate about buy versus build. There are many reasons to buy: faster to market, outsourced skill and support, no CAPEX, knowledge base, etc. Yet there are reasons to build: you want more control, special features, proprietary, etc.

In today's world, where most service providers don't market very well or brand themselves (or their servcies), buying is the way to go. Why? It isn't about you or what you want. It's about your customers and what they want. It's a speed to market. It's about capturing wallet. And you can't do all that by yourselves. You just can't.

When I examine VDI, VoIP/Hosted PBX, UC, backup and conferencing, there isn't any special sauce being pitched. To the marketplace, it's one big nosie box about the tech and its features. That's why it doesn't sell fast and that's why you don't have to spend the effort building your own (in my opinion).

Can you put a competitive service together that your customers will be happy with in the most efficient manner?

Don't look at the cost (unless you factor in your time saved), look at results.

Cbeyond 2.0

2012-02-27T20:40:02Z

Cbeyond laid off 200 employees last week. "The company said it is reducing its traditional entry level direct sales force by about half while building a new direct sales group dedicated to managing existing and new technology dependent customers."

In a message to agents today:

"Cbeyond is making some significant changes that are going to directly benefit their Agent Partners. They will be reducing their entry level sales force by 50% and redefining the roles of the existing team. They will also be providing agents with enhanced support systems and marketing, along with hiring channel-centric cloud sales engineers to help partners secure deals. Per Zane Long, VP Indirect Channel Sales, "... agents are a critical part of the team that will help us build what we are calling Cbeyond 2.0".

Cbeyond is going through changes. It no longer opens new metro areas for telecom and network servcies. This puts a bottleneck on revenue growth and employee satisfaction, because during the emergence of new metros, employees had opportunity for advancement. Now there's a bottleneck. These layoffs will create some more pressure for a CLEC that is essentially a sales and marketing arm. Sure, technically they did a good job with SIP Trunking, but other than that it has been a marketing machine. Now it is reinventing itself into a cloud services provider. "By the end of 2013, Cbeyond expects about 25 percent of revenues will be generated from its cloud-only customers and its customers who buy both network and cloud services." ARPU will be lower for cloud services, compared to telecom services, but the margins will be higher. Well, until next month when cloud becomes such a commodity that it becomes a bloody price war like VoIP.

What About Selling Cloud?

2012-02-21T15:55:02Z

At The CPZ, the rest of the panel were cloud guys (VAR's and Hosted UC). This is a snippet of the conversation where the panel is talking about how transactional telecom sales are dead, long live the Cloud!

People deemed LD dead years ago (like when MCI went BK), too, but there are still a large number of agents and resellers making money on LD and pre-paid calling cards.

Until TDM is retired, agents will still be selling POTS, DSL and T1 - and making a living doing so.

Here's the problem with selling Cloud (other than the fact that cloud providers keep screwing commissions to agents):

The sales process is different! Selling replacement telecom services is not the same as selling managed services (like cloud and IT). How different? The conversation, script, questions and prospecting for IT is distinct. The buyers may not be the same. Sales triggers are dissimilar. It requires sales and product training.

I worked for a Novell VAR from 1996-1999. The sales trigger was when something broke. In telecom, the sales trigger is usually the end of the contract, because the penalties for leaving early are huge. Other sales triggers for telecom: expansion, moving, or a shift in IT (i.e., more bandwidth needed because of VoIP, Citrix or backup).

Dave makes a point about "do you want to be in that cheap stuff or do you want to do good by your customer". Do agents want to be in "the cheap stuff"? No. Our commissions are based on MRR. We would like it to be as high as possible. However, we don't make the prices, the carriers do, so why blame the sales force?

In some cases - like government agencies -- the prospect is looking to reduce the telecom spend due to budget constraints. If I don't do it, someone will.

Back to being mad about the prices falling:

Agents didn't commoditize telecom, CLEC's did. It started with the LD penny wars and has continued every since. In 1999, when Covad, Rhythms and Northpoint all IPO'ed, all 3 selling DSL nationwide against each other without any differentiation was another hit. DSL (broadband) created pricing pressure on the T1 business, which continues to erode to this day. Moreover, the Integrated T1 became a commodity long ago, again due to a lack of CLEC differentiation (branding, innovation, product design and marketing). SIP trunking came along as a "cheaper" alternative to a PRI. See how that goes?

Today, we have $200 Covad T1's and $2 per MB Cogent bandwidth adding to the price compression. So who's fault is it? (I won't even get into the companies that went through BK and really screwed up telecom with that arbitrage mindset or the fact that even as revenue diminishes debt is increasing.)

When you look at the Hosted VoIP space, there isn't a whole lot of differentiation either. There are so many players, it is confusing to the buyers and sellers. It doesn't help that so many of the providers don't know what they want to be or who they want to target. "Wholesale, white-label, retail - whatever! Just sell something!"

In the video, I make a point that no sales person is going to walk away from revenue. Well, most carriers don't walk away from revenue either - even bad revenue (no margin revenue).

Let me give you an example: there is a Hosted UC shop that really only wants UC customers, but doesn't really say that to its Channel. When an Agent brings them "small" hosted PBX deals, it is frowned upon -- but they don't say No (to the revenue).

If the carrier doesn't have a target market - like AboveNet and Smoothstone do - then it is selling against everyone everywhere. That's just stupid. Service Providers need to start thinking like fiber and cablecos: ON-Net is Good. Type II is bad.

As we get into Cloud services, we are talking bloody red ocean - everyone and their brother is a player: web hosts, data centers, MSP, VAR, telcos, cablecos, CLEC, ITSP. Yeah, that will make it easy to sell. How would an agent even do a competitive analysis?

If you want an Agent to sell your stuff, answer these questions:

Who is buying your stuff right now? (Be specific: vertical, NAICS code, buyer title)
Why are they buying it?
Why are they buying it from you?
What's your special sauce? Or where's the beef?
What questions are you asking to get the conversation going?
What was the sales trigger for the buyer? (in other words, what made them want to buy?)

If you can't answer these questions (or want to give me BS answers), this is your problem! Don't blame the Channel.

Enchanting Keynote at Parallels Summit 2012

2012-02-16T17:05:07Z

Guy Kawasaki was the keynote yesterday morning for the Parallels Summit 2012 in Orlando. (Vodka bar was open at 8:20 AM!)

Guy talked about the key points from his book,Enchantment .

One is You Must be Likable. Richard Branson of Virgin is likable. He has a real smile- a Duchenne smile. A Duchenne smile leads to crow's feet. One factor in being likable is to accept others, no matter the color, politics, religion, looks, tattoos, etc. Have a YES Attitude. How can you help other people?

The second point was to Achieve Trustworthiness. In sales, people have to Like you and Trust you to buy from you.

Amazon, Zappos, and Nordstrom have established Trust, because they give customers trust first (with their return policy).

Guy spoke about Bakers. Be a Baker, not an Eater. Bakers know they can always bake more. Bakers are more trustworthy than eaters.

A way to gain trust: Agree on something. Start with that.

Point 3 was Do Something DICEE - Deep Intelligent Complete Empower Elegant

Enchant people with great stuff.

What goes into the ecosystem: software, docs, support, installation, webinars, follow-up, and more for a complete and total product system. More importantly a great customer experience (UX).

LIKE, TRUST, DICEE and LAUNCH.

Launch your product by Telling a Story. Guy says, "Plant many seeds." In other words, tell lots of people, because you have no idea how it will TIP.

Enchant the Influencers. You just don't always know who they are. kawasaki suggested reading Influence by Robert Cialdini. A point in that book was to Invoke Reciprocation. "I know you would do this for me."

Guy says that SXSW was what made Twitter tip (not the A-Listers who use it today).

When telling your story, stop talking tech - calories, MB's, CPU, etc. It's not about calories, but how many miles I have to run to burn it off. It's not how many GB's, but the number of songs or customer records or whatever that it will hold.

Kawasaki gave the example of My Key by Ford, which allows parents to program the car via the key they give their teenager - how loud the stereo can go and how fast the car can go. Great story. Good UX (user experience or benefits).

Another Point: Overcome Resistance by Re-Positioning the Story or by providing Social Proof. For the iPod, social proof was the white earbuds.

Sell the Dream, not the tech. What will it do? What will it be like to own it and use it? Use the technology to Enchant the audience. Social media is a way to enchant by providing value, information, insight, assistance. Social media also means fast, flat and frequent.

3 Pillars: Trust, Quality and Likability.

In the break-out session with Guy, he was asked about the commodity business (like web hosting, since we were at Parallels show. Parallels is a control panel for web hosting companies.) "If you truly believe it is a Commodity that you sell, You Lose." If YOU don't believe that there is something Unique or Valuable about your product -- or that the client is better off with YOUR service -- get out of the game. You can't win. Bah-bye!

Two images to look at: HERE and THERE. If you need help figuring out how to market in a hyper-competitive space, call my office at (813) 963-5884.

4G, 3G: Who knows?

2012-02-13T13:44:06Z

This morning Broadcom announced 5G: "Broadcom Extends 5G WiFi Leadership with New 802.11ac Chips." This is kind of funny because most folks are confused by 3G versus 4G. Many think that iPhones run on 4G, but actually they all run on the 3G networks. No radio in there yet to pick up 4G.

Saturday Night Live has a nice video where they demonstrate the confusion that VZW has exploited about 4G, here on the verge or on NBC.

Despite all the ads from the Big 4 cellcos about 4G, "Large portions of the western half of the U.S. do not have access to 3G or faster mobile broadband service, according to a new map released by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission," according to a PCWorld article.

Social Media Channel Integration

2012-02-07T22:38:51Z

An ITEXPO panel on Wed. discussed social media integration in the contact center. Sanjay Popli of LiveOps, Manuel Ramirez of Avaya, and Alex Quilici of YouMail spent 45 minutes talking about social media and call centers.

There are five steps a company needs to take to implement social media strategy in a contact center.

Monitor social channels
Decide on Relevance
Assign employees to tasks
Establish Policies
Design procedure for interacting with the rest of the Org

The contact center could be monitoring for leads, complaints or opportunities on social media platforms. These platforms can include twitter, Facebook, Google+, Yahoo groups, forums, LinkedIn or any of the other thousands of online communities and networks that exist.

It is a way for call center to move from a cost center to a revenue center. Not just by following up on sales leads, but by preserving the brand and reputation of the company.

One item that all panelists agreed upon was that the time for response from a company has shrunk from a day to an hour. It's about speed now.

Another reminder from the panel is that conversations about your service and brand ARE indeeed taking place online (like on DSLReports and GetSatisfaction.com). Ignore it at your own peril.

Monitoring or Listening also includes finding out where your customers are hanging out online. Go where they are.

A final note was that previously most online commenters were anonymous. Today, about 70% are very traceable. That means you can identify them and interact with them. There are many books written about creating raving fans out of disgruntled customers. It is possible online as well.

Day 1 at ITEXPO

2012-02-01T05:31:06Z

I had a couple of good conversations today. One was with Greg Plum who has embarked on a new chapter in his career at StartMeeting.com. Plum is exciting about building the channel for this start-up conferencing company for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he believes that StartMeeting.com will be a disruptor, a serious game changer in the conference space. They offer conferencing - audio and web - like so many others, right? It is HD audio though. There is file and desktop sharing. We'll see. The launch is at the channel show in Vegas.

I met with ONYX today. ONYX is a distributor of value added products - like Grandstream IP phones and Digium - to Latin America. Headquartered in Miami, ONYX is turning a corner, realizing that Education and Local will be the keys for growth.

On the Local side, ONYX has offices in four Latin America countries now. A local presence is needed for distribution and support and a local presence. ONYX has plans to open offices in every country in Latin America.

The second key is education. With 20 years of experience, ONYX is rolling out how-to videos on its products, developing a knowledge base, and offering product and know-how training to its VAR's and others on IP-PBX, IP Phones and Asterisk - in Spanish too.

A final note about ONYX is that it migrated its back office computer systems to the cloud in order to utilize tablet based access for real-time inventory and more. Accessing the back office over an Android smartphone or tablet is speed to market.

Globecomm was next up to discuss their TEMPO product - a managed platform for streaming video specifically for Fortune 5000 companies. Analytics and whatnot are included in the platform. For corporate training and webcasts.

4 Examples of PR for PR Sake

2012-01-30T17:23:51Z

Here are 4 examples of press releases just for the sake of press releases. That is, just to fill the online PR machine with your name and keywords to help your

EarthLink releases software to help retailers focus on core business. Nice headline but the rest of release doesn't really say how EarthLink's one-source solution for telecom helps retailers do that (specifically). A specific case study would have been better for all concerned. It would have been a spotlight on a customer for EarthLink while demonstrating how the retailer utilized the services.

Cbeyond announces a new Master Agent, CMS. There sounds like a template that could be used for any master agent or carrier.

VoIP Supply Announces Results of Customer Experience Survey. I like the guys at VoIP Supply but a press release about how your customers like you? That's just humorous.