In UC&C (and most software) "CIOs will be buying into the customer experience and not the technology," writes RingCentral's Sahil Rekhi."In 2017, CIOs will be buying communication solutions with a focus on experiences rather than technology; removing distinctions between communication, collaboration and productivity. Workplace communication and collaboration tools in the cloud will be made to create a unified and consistent experience across multiple devices, moving businesses away from a siloed approach to communications." Most ITSPs are not set up for the complete mobile experience yet, let alone a full UC&C CX (customer experience).
There are providers still trying to add analytics to call logs. Because we are still stuck on replacement instead of impact, outcome or experience. (One reason that Slack took off: UX!)
GOOD READS:
Fred Wilson's frank look at what will happen in 2017.
Start the new year with better sales meetings HERE.
PR trends in 2017. Content versus Attention versus Influencers = Viewers running away to the "Dark Social", "the amount of communication which occurs behind closed doors and messaging apps and private groups."
Sales Hacker's Top 10 Trends & Predictions Heading Into 2017.
This is a twofer: 5 lessons from the book LinkedIn's head of recruiting recommends to all new managers is a summary of Ryan Holiday's book.
Are you hiring? Good read on what to look for. I always say Attitude first, but this CEO says have a meal with the candidate and look for Gratitude and excitement.
MEDIA PAIN
Medium has laid off one-third its staff. Medium is a blogging/media platform founded by the same guy who founded Blogger, Odeo and twitter. He is having an issue with business models as the world of the Internet is based on free. No idea why he didn't try charging $9.99 per year per reader or some other nominal amount. It isn't a volume shop like Huffington or Buzzfeed. It has a targeted audience. But that is the problem: everyone uses the model that they see, not one designed specifically for their product.
As Seth Godin pointed out, "Newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn't want to hear. We've responded by not buying newspapers any more." That is why we have click-bait, fake news, struggling newspapers and uneducated voters. It is all about the pageview, even in this content marketing world. Go figure!
RETAIL SUFFERS!
Sears is closing 150 more stores. Macys is closing stores. Retail had a bad holiday season - and the stock market is unforgiving. American Apparel is BK (and Amazon is trying to buy it.) Retail has to change. Big time. Also, malls have to re-think what they are to consumers.
Fast food is hiring robots and self-serve kiosks; retail is tanking. What will teenagers do for employment? What will many others do for employment in place of managers, buyers, maintenance, etc.
Ford is staying. Carrier is staying but they got tax breaks and other bonuses to do so. And they are going to automate those jobs out of existence. AI is replacing some fund managers. If you can't fix or code a robot, what will you do for a job?
]]>Velis4 has been acquired by a company called Globalgig. Ernest Cunningham will be the CEO of the combined company, while Anthony Jett, Velis4's current CEO, becomes the COO. Globalgig brings a global vision to Velis4, who will be expanding into Europe and Australia soon.
"The one global product of interest to Globalgig is the multi-IMSI SIM, a revolutionary technology enabling Globalgig subscribers to use their own local SIM card anywhere for low rates. Traveling employees just need to turn their device on and the Globalgig system will automatically select the available IMSI having the most optimal rate and service. Customers enjoy seamless worldwide coverage."
Speaking of mergers, CB Insights has the list of the 27 worst mergers (or failed M&A).
Andy Abramson hints that Vonage is selling off its consumer business.
T-Mobile has an MVNO named Walmart Family Mobile that it sold to TracFone.
Reports say that Verizon is close to selling off its data centers for $3.5B, which is a good return on the Terremark acquisition in 2011 for $1.4B. There are 18 facilities and it looks like Equinix is the likely buyer.
Rumors at Dreamforce are swirling about Salesforce buying twitter -- for its customer service functionality.
The big news this week is Yahoo! Verizon is buying them for $4B but they just let folks know that 500M accounts were hacked 2 years ago!!! - and now it seems that they were scanning emails for the feds (3 letter agencies). Rich Tehrani does make a good point that in an Age of Cloud, US providers are now at a disadvantage globally because the feds are so ingrained in cloud providers.
A little something from Salesforce: a customer service survey infographic.
]]>5. Is your cloud provider HIPAA compliant? An 11 point checklist via GCN.
4. May 2015: 11 Major Social Media Changes This Month. Facebook algorithm, Pinterest buttons, Linkedin phone number search, twitter DMs and more.
3. How busy is the Internet? Here is a graphic of an Internet Minute.
2. Sales is difficult enough, but these 5 bad sales habits will sink your chances.
1. Mary Meeker is called a futurist. She works for VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Each year she presents her Internet Trends. [196 slides so you won't go through all of them but she shows the size of the internet today plus the apps marketplace. Worth a look.]
]]>One really wants to do the project but the people aren't in place yet. The time isn't right. Is the time every really right?
More than one is just too busy to make a decision. Too busy. Stephen Covey would tell then to read his book.
Many business owners - me included - are busy running from task to task. That is a fast path to the day running you and not the other way around.
There are like a million articles on the web - about 20 of those are on BusinessInsider, Forbes or Entrepreneur mag - about how really cool people, really rich people or Steve Jobs work their day. You know what? It is all about Working Your Day (and not the other way around).
When I coached with Keith Rosen we worked on my time management. The four things I learned:
Quite a few things contribute to success. Here are a few:
That multi-tasking is like cutting down trees by whacking at each one once, then going back and whacking at it again. We see it on the road: people talking or reading their cell phones who are not paying attention to driving, There are numerous articles about this, but you cannot active listen and do other cognitive activities. And if you are only going to passively listen, why bother?
Look how many tabs you have open in your browser. Really? Bookmark that stuff. If it was important you will get to it, if not why is that tab open? I fall into this every day as I open link after link from FB or twitter or my RSS reader. Then 2 hours are up and hardly any of the stuff was pertinent. Sure more trivia in my head but nothing actionable.
Delegating is tough because you have to stop to say, "Let me let James do that" then tell James to do that and maybe explain it. So by then it could be done. Key is: COULD. Between virtual assistants, oDesk, fiverr and other platforms you can find someone to do some of your tasks for you. It frees up your time to do other stuff. It requires trusting some else to do it and you not micro-managing it, but those are issues you have to work on anyway, right? ;) One year, my VA's ganged up on me to tell me to learn to delegate. It's a work in progress.
Most of the projects in the air are either marketing or sales training. Putting them off means missed revenue opportunities. How many of those do you think you have lying around? You read about the consolidation and how the cablecos are going to crush the market, you can't delay opportunities that are there.
Realize that some of it isn't that you are too busy to decide; it's more about the fear or the risk or the other excuse.
Rarely does an investment in sales training go to waste. Sure the salesperson may leave but you demonstrated that you care about their development -- to your employees now and future. In many cases, one additional sale will pay for the training. Just one.
Marketing projects: Lead generation is the number one problem for service providers. Without some kind of marketing, how do you get lead gen?
I did my annual Goal Setting webinar yesterday. One of the draft decks is up on slideshare along with a slide deck from 2010. Wouldn't hurt to run through the goal setting exercise.
]]>The note said:
Hello Friend!
@radinfo We noticed that you're a fan of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Bright House Networks. Thank you! We got together and figured you would appreciate this fan package to cheer during the playoffs! We'd love to know that this arrived safely, so please feel free to tweet us. Thank you for choosing us! #GoBolts!
@BrightHouseCare & @TBLightning
I don't spend hours each week trialing new schemes on social media platforms.
I understand that social media is just one component of a comprehensive marketing plan.
Social media only makes sense if you have a goal and your target demographic use the platform. Would you use an all billboard strategy for your business? Then why would you think that twitter is going to work as a stand-alone tactic?
TV ads still work for mass media. They work even better when the ads are emotional and are also available on YouTube. Some campaigns have gotten traction by pushing TV audiences to websites or social media platforms (or both).
Ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish (that can be measured).
Are you driving traffic to your blog?
Are you engaging your current customer for added support?
Are you trying to generate leads?
These are all different strategies that require planning because none of it can be done in a vacuum.
Remember: it is all marketing. Social media are just a new set of tools like radio, TV, print ads and billboards.
]]>"38% of salespeople understand the customer's issues and are able to identify how the vendor can help." Just 38%. That means two-thirds of salespeople are still selling the old way. Training and sales coaching is needed.
"If you have more money than brains, focus on outbound (old fashioned) marketing. If you have more brains, focus on inbound marketing." - Roberto Ricossa, VP of Marketing & Inside Sales at Avaya.
"It's critical today that all partners build out robust service offerings. Leads to higher volume, higher margin deals." Good advice.
"Avaya has 360K IP office systems <- Compared to #ShoreTel's 28K customers, shows the breadth of IP office customers Avaya has now sold more IP Office than its ever sold BCM." from Sheila McGee-Smith.
"IP Office" is Swiss Army knife for mid-market - turnkey or DYI component sourcing, flexible packaging / deployment / licensing models.
"Avaya is everywhere!" Voice-Video-Data together.
Shifting Strategy from tech to customers. <-- Good lesson there.
"Play Offense" - growing market, no need to focus only on protecting installed base "relevance leads to revenue"- great quote from CTO Brett Shockley. Play Offense was a theme apparently. (see here)
Dino Marasco, VP, Global Service Provider and Systems Integrators at Avaya, asks "AvayaEPF crowd if they think Avaya is in the cloud business. Only 5% of hands go up, since Avaya has been VERY quiet re: cloud"
Avaya CMO Mark Wilson, "@Avaya will soon launch new advertising campaign that emphasizes use cases. Avaya will also revamp website." Website and ads - apparently the CMO missed the comment earlier about more money than brains. You need a website, but a new website by itself isn't going to work. Use cases are almost a requirement today since we have moved beyond just a phone system - and we have to demonstrate value specifically to target verticals.
"Avaya Operation Services (managed services) had more $10M deals than #CPE in 2013 for the first time," tweets Richard Steranka, VP, WW Partner Organization at Avaya. Professional services is required since unified communications needs Integration in order for the organization to see the most benefit.
Blair Pleasant wrote, "This is a different Avaya than I've heard in a while - use cases, business value, etc. So refreshing. finally!" Avaya is a very different company from 10 years ago. Today, two-thirds of revenue is from software, not hardware. (Plus those big PS/MS deals at $10M).
The tweets about Avaya are telling a story about the change happening at a traditional premise based PBX company, a hardware company. If Avaya is making a shift this big - hardware to software, adding video to voice, big dollar PS deals - then channel partners should also be making a shift to stay relevant.
]]>In other IPO news, RingCentral raised $90+ million in its IPO. it seems the VoIP VC's are looking to get some of their cash back after a long wait.
MSP "ITsavvy just acquired CT Networks as part of its growth by acquisition strategy," according to its press release. ITsavvy will now be able to provide voice solutions from quite a few vendors: Cisco, ShoreTel, Mitel and NEC.
Earlier this year ITSavvy acquired Directech Solutions for its copier and print business.
Hawaii Telcom competes acquisition of cloud computing company, SystemMetrics Corp., to take another step away from being "just" the ILEC.
Intermedia.Net, webhosting company turned cloud services vendor, acquired SaaSID to enhance its Single SignOn features.
Busy month for bankers.
Oh, and Birch refinanced and increased its credit line for more acquisitions. It completed the acquisition of Ernest but not Lightyear yet.
]]>Tomorrow at 11 AM is my session on Social Media #itexpoqa
Gary Vanderchuck has a decent interview about social media on HuffPro.
Lastly, Seth Godin on marketing for small businesses. Make something that is easy to sell!!
Follow me on twitter at @radinfo
]]>Social Media (SM) , mobility, are cloud - threats to some, opportunities to some - both to many.
"Behave like a three-year old: fall down, learn something, try again."
How do you scale marketing and lower customer acquisition costs in cloud?
The Channel is hiring sales <-- luv to know where they are finding them.
Amazon has $1bill cloud biz and not even 5 people on the street.
Amazon, folks, offers just 2 services in self-serve fashion.
RainKing, Salesforce, radian6 (social media), data mining to understand clients better.
Vendors need scale, but the channel needs customer intimacy (and the channel needs to build its own brand).
Manufacturers do not like the channel. Channel Partners are not enamored with the the manufacturers either.
Biggest Issue: Mainly vendors don't understand what the channel does. Manufacturers/vendors do not like that channel partners are not exclusive and offer choice to the marketplace. [Telecom vendors are the same way!]
@UBMChannel: Number 1 trouble w/ vendors: they don't understand solution provider business and value. "We are not just vehicles to end customers" #BoB12
@UBMChannel: Marketing has changed as businesses do. Moving from finding customers to how do customers find you? #BoB12
Overall, even as the marketplace is changing, manufacturers are slow to change. Vendors still want the channel to just get them customers, push their products and get out of the way. The Channel now wants to build a brand, retain customers, increase wallet share, and sell managed services (some of which will be their own). Unfortunately, there isn't a huge ROI on that strategy for vendors. In Telecom as well.
A final point by the panel revolved around Gartner pushing the Cloud Services Broker model on VAR's. The panel thought that was a ridiculously low margin business - basically, transactional. It is likely going to become what the VAD (value added distributors like Ingram and Tech Data) will become in some sense.
Here's the flipside to that. Right now VAR's have accounts with both Ingram and Tech Data (and likely at least one other distributor like SYNNEX, D&H, CDW, Insight). When looking for hardware, VAR checks to see who has it in stock, at which distribution center, and for how much. When things switch to cloud services, it is unlikely that VAR's will have accounts at all 3 because they are not going to manage SAAS accounts across multiple vendors like they do now. It will be about going with 1 or 2 plus having their own.
The panel noted that we are in the midst of a change in the VAR business to a completely new organization - structure, personnel, skills, compensation, financing, marketing, sales and metrics will all be different when it is all done.
Sales is changing. Not only what is sold, but to who - IT is not the only buyer in an Enterprise any more. IT doesn't own the desktop anymore due to consumerization of IT. CMO and CFO buy differently from CIO. Can IT sales people sell to buyers other than IT?
Plus sales isn't about low hanging fruit anymore. It's about harvesting the whole tree. Acquiring customers is getting harder and more expensive. Retaining customers will be huge. Acquiring customers is different now. CLIENTS FIND YOU NOW, via blogs, social media, SEO, PPC. Are you involved in that???
The three panelists are making money now on Help Desk, End user Compute Space (which can include VDI) and in Global Managed Services (including help desk).
]]>The VoIP industry makes a couple of claims that I think are ridiculous:
(1) I will save you money. I don't know how we save companies any more money. Rates are lower than ever. In this race to Zero, the industry is losing. How do the prices keep going down when the costs to deliver the services have not declined that much? Payroll, rent, Origination, Termination, colocation and Special Access have not declined that much. It seems ridiculous to me. Not to mention, there is always someone coming along who will sell it cheaper. And cheaper means less quality, less support, less customer satisfaction.
(2) You can save by firing that guy or gal. Huh? For VoIP, how many SMB accounts have a dedicated person for the PBX? What happens to the IT maintenance when you "eliminate" that IT guy? Who manages the WAN, LAN and WLAN? Oh, more managed services you can sell. You still need Digital Hands on-site in the same way that data centers offer Digital Hands service.
Most VoIP companies have no idea what benefit they provide, so being lazy, they go with Cost Savings. The LD and CLEC companies have trained the marketplace to ignore this claim. It explains why sales is such an uphill battle for Hosted VoIP. No one is listening to the tired messaging.
Forbes has this article: "Cloud Providers Pitch Cost Savings, But Enterprises Want More." "What's the big promise constantly being made about cloud computing? Cost savings, cost savings, cost savings." Tired. And wrong.
" 61% say they are already meeting their goals for achieving more flexibility in their infrastructures. Also, they like cloud as an alternative to acquiring in-house skills on their own to manage new applications."
Ah, benefits.
Look, as the audience heard during the ITEXPO keynotes: Cloud, including VoIP, is about Outcomes. It is about flexibility and mobility. Ultimately, cloud has to provide a business outcome, a business process improvement.
Cloud - computing and communications - is about UX, the user experience.
Try selling that - it is stickier. When the cablecos roll out Hosted PBX and voice in your market, they own the network; it gives them QoS; they have a brand; marketing muscle; and can beat you on price. Your message has to be about more than Price. (or you have to be in a market segment that the Duopoly doesn't want.)
Votacall did respond on twitter. see the tweets.
]]>Please be advised that the FUSF rate for Q1 of 2012 has increased from 15.3% to 17.9%. For further information regarding FUSF Fees and rates please see the FCC website.
RebTel is #2 behind Skype with 15M users doing 2 billion minutes of international calling. [venturebeat]
Both Florida state and federal lawmakers are trying to overturn the NFL blackout rules. Main argument is those stadiums were paid for with public tax dollars. [tbo]
Besides the M5-ShoreTel deal, I saw 2 other acquisitions occur. [radinfo]
Your open wi-fi access point leaves you open to lawsuits. Awesome! [radinfo]
FCC Eyes Google Voice’s Rural Call Blocking - just a part of the whole FCC Rural call completion review and the inter-carrier compensation issue. BTW, it's AT&T that keeps poking Google in the eye at the FCC about this.
EarthLink is still utilizing the AX platform from New Edge Networks (now named EarthLink Business). XCast just set up an NNI (an inter-connection) with that platform for better performance. The AX platform allows cloud providers to connect to EarthLink's nationwide MPLS network for better quality to the users.
TELX is building another data center in NYC, land of not much commercial space for sale.
MITEL has achieved CLEC status in all 50 states. Maybe that's to help it deliver Hosted MITEL UC service to its customers.
]]>First, set up a Google alert with the CEO's name (and another for the corporate name). When you see PR from the company or about them, print it out and mail it to him - or share it with your socila network -- or email him with a short note of congratulations.
As Gitomer says, Give Value First! Maybe that value is information about their biggest competitor or industry reports. There's a lot to be said about BI (business intelligience).
Find out the CEO's sweet spot; chocolate, cigar, golf, something small that is related to this and send it to them.
Follow the company on LinkedIn and twitter. Know what they are up to. It may coincide with your services. For example, if they are opening a new office or hiring or even laying off. In Hosted VoIP, these are sales triggers.
If they just went Cloud, bandwidth, mobility, security and backup become important. Again sales triggers.
But it shouldn't be all about you, it should be about the Prospect. The more you know about them -- and their vertical - the more value you bring to the table.
If you see that they are hiring and there is a webinar about hiring practices today (or whatever), you could invite the prospect to join you at the event.
On LinkedIn, you can see their bio and shared connections. The company page may have info and news. There are many ways to skin a cat today -- you need to be working smarter and creatively. What worked before may not necessarily work now.
If you always get voicemail and your email goes unanswered, first off, be more creative with your messages! Is it about YOU or THEM? Next, try a different form of contact - a postal invite to a networking event; a CD or thumb-drive in the mail; flowers or balloons; ice cream or pizza for the office; or ping them on twitter; see them at an industry event; message them on LinkedIn.
BTW, on LinkedIn, don't use the canned invite message unless you know that person (F2F or face-to-face). Add a personal note about why you want to connect. It gets better results.
It's a new age, so some new tricks are required. Good luck!
]]>He narrates a detailed video about SIP Trunking: Learn the Steps to a Smooth Enterprise SIP Trunk Implementation. Good info for Agents to use to learn on their own at their own pace.
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