Do you remember playing musical chairs in school? The music begins a chair is removed and you circle around until the music stops. When the music stops, you try to sit in a chair and not be left standing....
If I have to ask: Is it like this? You: No. Is it like that? You: No. Then you need to work on YOUR pitch some more. Why? Because it is not my job - or anyone's really -...
Verizon's VP Janet Schijns gave a presentation about Millennials and the Channel. A majority of the polled Millennials did not know what a Channel Partner was. Change or Die. (I thought when Tiffani Bova left Gartner, we would have...
Despite the numerous UC providers crowding the marketplace, the actual sales of UC seats is not skyrocketing. Companies with 25% growth like 8x8, number in the dozens, not in the hundreds. For some, it is a focus-message mess. They...
Wainhouse research says that the UCaaS industry will grow at a rate of 24% year over year. 8x8 is doing that with their revenue. "Total revenue of $53.2 million increased 29% year-over-year; service revenue of $48.9 million increased 29%...
I received this email yesterday from Momentum with the letter attached (with far too much private info not blacked out.) "As many of you already know, Windstream is eradicating their SMB Business (Customers billing under $1500) and sending them...
This testimonial for ANPI by an RLEC is worth listening to just to understand the thinking behind moving to cloud comms. Try at least the first 90 seconds. Seth Godin's blog today describes not a pyramid, but a Frustum....
I find it interesting that most service providers treat marketing as separate from the business as a shed in the backyard is separate from the house. Service providers would not hire someone off fiverr or elance to configure routers...
Reading this blog post this morning from author and former Green Beret, Bob Mayer (who also teaches writers and publishes writers) about the troubles of B&N got me thinking - and writing this post. It is interesting to me...
Voice Over Pete and I did 3 videos for RAD's Rants last month. This is Rant # 3 where we talk about channel marketing tactics - email, website, video. It is about giving value first. We talk about that...
I registered for a white paper and got dumped into the email automation bucket. And then the phone calls started. I registered a domain and the emails poured in. I mark them as a spam and delete them. I...
Today, Fone.do was featured on ProductHunt. In the discussion, Aircall.io was mentioned. Despite consolidation and analyst predictions of 20+% CAGR, we haven't really seen any real disruption in the space. Low price by itself is not disruption. We have...
WOW! In a study of 1,000 businesses by Evolve IP, "71.5% were not very familiar with what "Unified Communications" actually is". You can scratch that off your SEO key word list right now. The stat that "40 percent of...
There is a new CMO Council study (along with affiliate, Content ROI Center) out called "Lead Flow That Helps You Grow" focused on demand generation strategy. The report takes a deep look into the struggle companies are having in...
"Organizations looking to capture the attention of their customers have become increasingly reliant on video, graphics and photography as part of the marketing arsenal," writes the CMO Council. Is it because we are more visual - or because the...
The CMO Council study (along with affiliate, Content ROI Center) produced an infographic called "Lead Flow That Helps You Grow" focused on demand generation strategy. It is based on a report that examines "the struggle companies are having in...
The FCC recently ruled that phone companies CAN block robocalls - all types - if a customer requests it. Did you know that there was an FTC Robocall Challenge in 2013. (Thanks to M. Leblanc for filling me in.)...
There has been a wave of stories about the lack of marketing in tech/IT/telecom. I mention it all the time - and twice last week (here and here). But there was at least one other mention (here and here)...
I am heading to the Genband Perspectives15 show next week in Orlando. Going to see about Kandy and Nuvia plus some details on the fring idea. (Not to poke BSFT, but at least this show has some cool stuff...
The CLEC crowd is trying to move beyond the legacy services of network and minutes. Hard to do when customers still want to buy it. In much of the marketing, the services with the most buzz are: Unified Communications...
Jon Arnold wrote up a good review of Verizon's Broad Cloud offering (VCE). One glaring problem is that it targets in the SMB market. Arnold says that it is presented as a TDM replacement service. Why then is VCE...
I was reading a couple of articles about Target. The retailer has not been doing well lately, including closing all Canada stores after its expansion there last year! "David Schick of Stifel, says [Target] needs to go back to...
Some different things happening in the VoIP industry. Let's take a look. Phonism has come out of beta with their VoIP end-point management system. 8x8 "announced it is offering an unprecedented Service Level Agreement (SLA) to qualified enterprise customers...
Gary Vaynerchuk in a 2012 keynote at Inbound said a bunch of good stuff, but this was most profound: "I don't care about Facebook, Pinterest, tumblr, twitter. I care about social media because it sells shit! ... this is...
While Verizon is selling its wireline (including approximately 1.6 million FiOS Internet customers; and approximately 1.2 million FiOS Video customers), AT&T is upgrading U-Verse to 75 Mbps in some areas. Now they will actually be delivering broadband under the...