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.
]]>The first thing is that the same team that lost four years ago (in a primary) was probably not going to win you this election. While I understand loyalty, we are in politics and business to win. To win, you have to be like a sports team. On a team, every draft and every opportunity we trade up to better players. We don't keep the whole team in place. We get a better running back or pitcher or quarterback (football, baseball, hockey).
Channel managers get swapped out all the time, but, with few exceptions, the upper management stays the same. Good strategy and its execution comes from the top, that management team. Sometimes they need to be shaken up or replaced. You want A Players in every position.
Also, what worked four years ago in strategy and marketing may not work today. In fact, we saw that this was indeed the case. Think about all the changes in just four years - or go back eight years to when social media first entered the picture for political fundraising.
From that we get to my second thing that drives me crazy: the marketing. This consists of the message and the medium. What was the message?
For the GOP with 20+ candidates, that slate looks like any master agent's UCaaS roster. How do you differentiate? How do you position against 20 candidates? You could go features, but that isn't what anyone cares about. WIIFM. What's in it for me? If you can't answer that, you are lost.
This election cycle there was the issue of fake news and misinformed voters. Now with the GOP Senate starting to repeal ObamaCare, we have seen that many folks didn't realize that the ACA (Affordable Care Act) was nicknamed Obamacare. Or that Kentucky residents had re-branded ObamaCare to something to raise enrollment. The misinformation about the ACA is widespread. So is the misinformation about UC, UCaaS, UC&C and SD-WAN.
When you have misinformed buyers, you need to do an education campaign. The best education campaign was Schoolhouse Rocks. It is easier to do today than it was in 80s. More platforms for the content. Cheap to produce quality video. You don't have to be Disney to do this, but you do have to make a conscious decision to go this route. You have to realize that your buyers need/want education. You have to strategize what that education is going to look like.
I know I yell message all day every day but you are putting out a message every day. Unfortunately, the message is ineffective.
]]>If your Brand is broken, run a Branding campaign not a negative campaign.
When your brand is broken -- maybe your uptime is three eights instead of nines or maybe your customer service is notoriously awful - the buyer doesn't have trust in you. You need Trust for being to buy.
Look at how Ma and Pa Bell (Verizon and AT&T)have been re-branding away from telecom. Meanwhile, CenturyLink, Windstream and Frontier have been struggling to find their brand, their message, their future.
EarthLink had struggles growing beyond a dial-up ISP. They tried so much stuff: DSL, cable resell, MVNO, Muni wi-fi, VoIP, fiber, etc. - before finding their groove in Retail.
FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) will get you so far, but the best brands in the DNC ran on hope, change and issues. Take a lesson from people doing it better than you. Learn from your rivals what resonates with your buyers.
I look at the independent candidates who took 9% of the total vote. They remind me of the 1195 other Hosted VoIP/UCaaS providers in the US. You say you are in the running, but are you even campaigning? Are you doing ANY effective marketing, advertising, PR? Chances are: notsomuch.
To look at Broadsoft as a candidate that thought it should have won - and quite frankly has disappointed. Of the top UCaaS providers - RC, 8x8, thinkingphones/Fuze, Star2Star, West, Broadview, Mitel, Jive, CoreDial, Cisco and Microsoft - none of them are using Broadsoft. That has to be disheartening. To some extent that is like the Democratic candidates for House and Senate that lost. The party leader didn't help them win; the big name, carrier grade softswitch didn't help the 400+ UCaaS players win either. (You could argue that a few are doing well, like Vonage Business, Nextiva, Evolve IP and Comcast. Yet mainly the Top 25 are anything but BSFT. Isn't that interesting?)
Doesn't matter the technology or the pedigree, you have to market to win.
]]>This report looks like it was done during Enterprise Connect (or whatever they call that show today) in Orlando where , surprise, the biggest sponsors were Cisco Spark and Unify!!!
It isn't really a fair view of the market. It's kind of slanted by the big dollars spent by companies that have more dollars than innovation; more dollars than execution; more PR than customer stories. Yet these companies will sell a lot of product and professional services due to that PR push. That despite the fact that there are so many other providers that can do a much better job on delivering a solution.
If you check the headlines, you would think there are only a couple of dozen companies in the UC space - RC, 8x8, VZ, MS, blah, blah. Yet there are hundreds that offer UCaaS.
If you want to get better press as a UC provider, court an analyst or two. Invite them to your user's conference or to dinner at a show. It isn't about power pointing them to death or stuffing pdf's down their inbox. It is about building a relationship and telling a story.
Oh, and don't make the intro email a press release. Don't add attachments - in today's hackable world I don't open any attachments. Tell a short story.
I get a bunch of emails from pr people. The meals are filled with marketing-ese and I have no idea what the company does. They aren't in stealth mode, but their message is. I don't have time to follow up or try to decipher it either. The truth about marketing whether by email, blog post, phone call or website: you have less than 8 seconds to grab my attention!!
]]>That's right. I have said it before. These prezos suck. It's painful to be in the audience and watch a video embedded in a slide deck.
Look, these prezos are no longer than 20 minutes. How about making them useful to the audience?
There are so many videos, books, blogs, and pointers on how to give a great presentation. Why ignore all of it? (At the least, this blog by Guy Kawasaki.)
I don't need a slide about the company or its investors.
I don't need a slide telling me that analysts predict huge growth in cloud. I get it. All that cloud research and mentioning how businesses are going cloud is all fluff -- fluffy clouds.
You know what you should discuss?
It would be fantastic if even half of those questions would be answered, but all I hear is DRaaS or DaaS -- I even heard EaaS (Everything as a service). Nothing very concrete about just mentioning the acronyms without explaining who would benefit.
Maybe it is just me and I don't understand this stuff like I should. But I also hear over and over from the channel management that agents quote too often and close too little. Well, if you gave a better presentation....
Let's take a look at the targets. Targets of 1-500 or 50-1500 does not help at all. That is literally most of the businesses out there.
The pitch is so intangible that partners can't figure out where you fit. Hence, they will just quote you and the other 3 look-alike.
Look at it another way: you spent all this money on equipment, data centers, product development, etc. not unlike a Wal-Mart does with its stores or Hilton does with its hotels, right? You stock the shelves with product - the direct, the indirect, the VADs, the masters. Then you give the sales force about as much training as Wal-Mart gives cashiers or Hilton gives the desk staff - and expect them to be able to not only sell your service but be able to express your brand message (value proposition). Unrealistic huh? Not to mention a complete waste of money.
I get engineers think it is all about the tech, but it isn't. In cloud, it is about deployment, on-boarding, service and other intangibles in order to have a decent customer experience.
A bunch of us at the show were talking about why there are so many Hosted VoIP providers: because there aren't any that have it down yet. One or two could dominate if they could just brand it, deploy it, on-board the customer and deliver a great customer experience. BAM! You would own the market.
And if you wonder why I complain about presentations so much, here's why:
Before I present, I spend hours (10-100 hours) on the slide deck, the speaker notes, practicing, etc. That happens whether it is a webinar for TCA or WIC or a apid speaking gig. Appreciate the time and attention that the audience is giving you.
If I can just swap out logos and not tell the difference....
]]>The big one is that the ILEC's have been getting rate hikes for years to pay for fiber that most customers are not receiving. FiOS is where it is - and that's the end of that project. U-Verse is fiber to the node and that isn't deployed everywhere either.
Mike Powell, former FCC Chair and now CEO of NCTA, has often gotten in woefully wrong in presenting the state of telecom. You can talk about top speeds all day long, but that isn't what the Majority of US addresses have access to nor is it the top speed broadband even remotely affordable for consumers - and even some small businesses (at $300 per month). The average US broadband speed is 6.6 Mbps. And if you don't bundle that broadband, it costs a lot.
Despite the promises and the rate hikes, telcos have invested $249 per person on average for broadband per year. Consumers spend on average $529 on broadband annually. At a retail job at $10 per hour that is one week's pay. Unsustainable!
62% of Americans buy broadband. That is all. Period. The market is flat.
Verizon and AT&T have a plan to disconnect the copper plant. VZ has already done so in the shade of Storm Sandy at the battery Park CO. All the CLEC customers out of the CO are out of luck, time and competition.
Telcos are basically unregulated at the state level - and the FCC is useless when it comes to enforcement and competition.
The point that everyone misses is this: our economy in America is service based. It is broadband fueled too - ask Apple or Amazon or Google.
Without cheap, fast Internet everywhere, what happens to that economy?
Clipping copper is detrimental to not only the CLEC's but to the majority of small businesses in the US. Ethernet-over-copper is quick to deploy and gives a great MB for the buck. EoC is the last stand against the cableco becoming the ILEC and the ILEC becoming irrelevant. (I laugh when the stock pickers only point to the dividend as if that was somehow any indication if a telco will tank or not.)
Promises from the RBOCs - Verizon and AT&T - for rate hikes or mergers have largely gone unenforced. The $14B announcement was just PR - spin. Nothing either company does is good for the economy, it is just good for them - for now.
How will Cloud services take off if the broadband is too expensive, unreliable or unavailable?
How will the Internet-centric economy stay competitive in that same environment? How does any of that withstand broadband caps and metering? How do corporations have more tele-workers in that same scenario?
]]>Rule 1 when presenting: Respect the Audience!
Respect their time, their Attention (which is a precious gift) and their Intelligence.
If you have 20 minutes, end it in 15 minutes so you have time for a question. Don't run over! You disrespect the event, other speakers, the audience and my attention when you run over your time limit.
Practice. At least once. That way you know how long it will take.
Short, sweet and to the point. We live in an ADD world.
If it is supposed to be a case study, present a case study, not a pitch or commercial. If you can't breakdown the sale for a case study - Who, What, Where, When, Why - I have to assume that you have no idea how you won the deal or why they bought. That's great.
Less is always more. Less slides. Less words per slide. Less talking.
There is never a time when less is not better. Ever. If you can't say what you have to in less than the allotted time, you suck. And I say that with love, because if you had prepared and practiced, you would know that (A) your message was off; (B) you were running long; (C) you were not clear and concise.
Get on twitter. Now! It teaches you to speak in 140 characters, so that you can learn to be concise.
I'm not picking on you or saying I am perfect. I will say that I am always on time, prepared, and have 1 crystal clear thought: What does my audience want to know?
It all comes back to Rule # 1: Respect the Audience. And frankly most speakers/presenters/panelists don't.
]]>On the webinar, we discussed testing the platform beforehand and backing up everything (speaker, voice, Internet, platform) to mitigate any problems.
At the end of the day, for the stakeholders it is about a memorable experience for the user (customer, employee, audience member).
1) Most press releases are not news to me. Personnel changes? Your CXO is speaking somewhere? Who cares? Unless you hire an ex-President or a convicted sex offender. Although T-Mobile hiring GC's Legere was a smart move.
2) Many press releases are chock full of marketing nonsense and say nothing useful about the company. Take this one. I don't even know what the software does!
3) Releasing a mobile app or relabeling your stuff with "as-a-service" is news - it is old news, because you are just doing me-too stuff, which is unimaginative and boring.
I get that the PR firm has to blanket the world with releases to get noise going and hopefully move the Google juice meter, but TMC (and other sites) have submission engines for that stuff.
Let me give you some samples:
nGenx Unveils Its Next Generation Desktop as a Service Offering
Snom releases new phone models and an IP-PBX
There is a new cloud service provider offering hosted virtual desktops, hosted virtual servers and cloud storage.
I am waiting for the 42,000 Office 365 resellers to put out their press releases.
MegaPath serves up a set of new cloud hosted services.
While I understand the press release machine, I don't understand why a company would want to opt-in bloggers to the media list. I should be asked to opt-in. There is a lot of noise in telecom, most of it around nothing special. This PR machine is making it harder to find anything special.
I get that much of the PR is for Wall Street because if the company isn't saying the right things, then getting money gets harder and more expensive. But doesn't the C-Suite realize that being one of 42,000 is going to mean no margin business?
]]>tw telecom has rolled out a virtual desktop services as well. TWC's NaviSite signed up with Desktone to deliver a cloud-based Desktop-as-a-Service. AllCovered is an MSP that is acquiring smaller MSP's that offer VDI.
Citrix and its partners, like Ncomputing, are bringing back the thin client for use with virtualization. And these thin clients are cheap!
I'm wondering when Dell will roll out a Wyse service offering. They didn't acquire Wyse, Sonicwall and others just to let them stand by themselves.
Best Buy's Geek Squad added a Channel program to help them sell Managed IT nationally. Managed IT, remote monitoring (of desktops, laptops, and servers), and virtual desktop are all kind of in the same bucket. And all require serious bandwidth. You aren't going to be running an office on VDI on cable modem, which may be why EarthLink and other CLEC's are embracing IT. One way to combat the cablization of the small business market (sub-$750 telecom spend) is to add enough reasons - VDI, VoIP, Cloud, monitoring, etc. - to require dedicated bandwidth (or even MPLS for private WAN and cloud). Dedicated bandwidth counters the cable modem versus the T1 debate.
We'll see if the right message and value proposition pop up in the marketplace to move the needle on this set of service offerings (VDI, Managed IT, RMM) from the CLEc world. The MSP sector already delivers these services.
One tool to make the message pop in the marketplace is smarter PR. CLEC's need to craft press releases to explain what services offerings are being sold, to whom, and why. It is one avenue to get the story as concrete as possible to the marketplace.
]]>And keynotes: Don't kill us with your presentation.
But also make it interesting - not a freaking commercial! I know you want to pitch your company like the shill executive with stock options you are, but remember that it is the audience's time too.
You are representing your company on that stage. If you are unprepared, tired, bored, distracted, boring, looking at your phone instead of the audience, it leaves an impression on the audience. A Brand is the sum total of experiences with your company, employees, services, etc. It has impact.
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]]>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.
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