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

organizations

New President and CEO at Microcorp

May 29, 2014

On the heels of yesterday's email about buying up master agency bases, Microcorp announced today that Brad Miehl, founder of MicroCorp, will ne replaced as President by Microcorp's current Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Phil Keenan, a 28-year industry veteran.

Karin Fields will take over reigns as both COO and CEO.

Big shift to one of the largest and older master agencies who, according to the email yesterday, is looking to grow through acquisition of other agencies.

The Master Agencies seem to be at the transition stage if you look at the number of management changes that have taken place in the last couple of years.

Lessons from a Poet

May 28, 2014

The port, author and teacher Dr. Maya Angelou passed away this morning. My Facebook feed is full of her quotes this morning. I had heard her quotes, but didn't know who she was or that she originally wrote these quotes.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

More Music Chairs in Telecom

May 7, 2014

There has been an awful lot of layoffs, let-go's, downsizing and right-sizing in our industry in the last couple of years. With the impending Comcast-TWC merger and the subsequent M&A from ATT (w/DirecTV) and Sprint (with T-Mobile), there will be about 50K more folks looking for a new position.

Garrett Smith left VoIP Supply to start his own company, Pitch + Pivot in Buffalo.

XO has named a new Channel head.

The One Pain in the Hosted VoIP Business

April 28, 2014

After spending much of this year with Hosted VoIP companies in the US and UK, I have to say that the one pain in the their business is scale.

Scale means a couple of things, like finding talent to hire that doesn't destroy the culture (or chase away other talent). Maintaining the corporate culture is part of scale, too. Scale also involves processes in the business.

Why Pivot?

April 18, 2014

In business, a pivot is a strategy change (especially in Lean Startup processes). When you look at brick-and-mortar companies like RadioShack, Sears/K-Mart, there have been strategy changes but not really what I would call a pivot - or even a course correction. The pivot for B&N was going digital with the Nook (right or wrong it was a pivot). Plaxo pivoted (out of extinction) when it added Pulse.

Where's the Sales Friction?

March 14, 2014

When you look at your anemic sales growth, what is in the way? Where is the friction?

Is it that your sales team isn't closing enough deals? Or is it your sales team is confused about your product catalog?

How ShoreTel Broke M5

March 10, 2014

In February of 2012, PBX maker ShoreTel bought hosted PBX provider, M5 Networks. At the time, M5 had 2000 customers - just two thousand - with an ARPU of $2000. (That's $4 million per month in revenue, $48 mill per year.)

M5 was selling to big organizations like Ziff-Davis and Amnesty.

Elements of a Kick @ss Team

February 24, 2014

Tommy Norman is a scrum master, who leads the Agile User group in Nashville when he isn't doing dev work for Holland Square Group. His keynote at FISPA Live in Nashvile was about Building Kick Ass Teams. Here are the 7 essential elements to a kick ass team.

The top qualities of a team include: Trust; no egos and complimentary skill sets.

6 Actions for Your Business in 2014

December 30, 2013

Borrowed from this article. Six actions to take in January to improve your business in 2014. I have mentioned these many times before in talks and blog posts here and in my other blog.

  1. Better define your role in your customers' businesses
  2. Evaluate Your Staff
  3. Invest in your staff*
  4. Evaluate your services (anything new added, or old to stop offering?)
  5. Change your culture (or fight to maintain your culture)
  6. Evaluate your customers (fire some, profile the best ones)

Define your role by being clear and concise on your benefits, values, outcomes that businesses, especially small businesses, can expect and generally receive by utilizing your services versus your many competitors.

Short Week Musings

November 26, 2013

Thanksgiving and Hanukkah this week mixed with winter weather in many parts of the US has made for a slow week, but a busy travel week. Soon, thanks to the new FCC Chair Wheeler, that passenger barely squeezed into the ever shrinking airline seat next you will soon be able to use his cell phone on the flight - further annoying already annoyed people.

Blackberry has a new CEO, John Chen, who is making $88 million to sell them off, because if his tenure at Sybase is any indication, he isn't a turn around exec.

After 34 years as chairman of Level3, Walter Scott is retiring.

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