Today, it is a hot mix of partners selling a broad spectrum of products. There are still grey haired T1 slingers at the shows, but there are new partners in the mix (which have been labeled "Born in the Cloud").
The Portfolio of the CLEC or business communications provider has changed significantly in just the last 3 to 4 years. If the portfolio has changed, if the product push has changed, have you?
As a channel manager, have you developed any new skills, techniques to go with these new times?
Several channel managers have been received promotions into new organizations. New positions require new skills. What are you reading?
Taking an MBA course today is very different from when I started my MBA at Sacred Heart University in 1989. Today, it is shortened (Executive MBA), specialized and virtual. Big change from four semesters in a classroom setting.
The way we communicate, the way we lead, the way buyers buy and sellers sell (as well as what is bought and sold) has all changed significantly in just a short time span.
My suggestions for channel execs is to read a lot (books and blogs); online classes (like the Personal Branding one by Gary Vee or the Leadership one by Seth Godin on Udemy), and/or coaching. Why coaching? For the external perspective that someone can give you. Look at any athlete - whether it is Ronda Rousey or a tennis player or the NFL Combine - athletes hire or work with different coaches to improve, gain skills, hone techniques and become the best they can be.
It is hard to see all of this while in the grind, in the rut that is daily life. We can barely lift our heads up, but a little improvement here or there would make a vast difference.
Things have changed, have you?
]]>MessageBroadcast was in and out of the channel in less than a year. I don't know how you think you will get traction and sales that fast from zero.
Press release after tweet after post about this SP or that SP signing up with a master agency. That's like saying, "Hey, look! We're on Page 2 of Google!" Or we added a dozen SKUs to Ingram's cloud brokerage service catalog! WOOT! That will get us some sales - as they wait by the phone for it to ring.
Your channel strategy has to be a lot like your direct sales strategy. The same principles apply. You wouldn't hire just anyone off the street to sell your services, right?
Then why would you want just anyone to be your channel partner?
The new strategy is to sign up the masters with the hope that the sub-agents will sell their stuff. How? Going back to the Google Page 2 scenario, you are 1 out of 80, 90 or 100+ SPs that a sub-agent can sell. How would the agent know:
If the master has 5 Hosted VoIP SPs, how do you think the agent (or channel manager of said master) decides who to quote? Sometimes they will quote them all - which is a lot of busy work for the SPs - and results in a useless funnel.
On Amazon, when you search K-Cup, there are 30,753 Results. Yeah. How do you slog through that to find what you really want to buy? You think being in a quote database is much different?
When you hire salespeople, there is an interview process and selection that takes place. We give lip service to when we go channel. More than once, an SP comes up with a channel partner criteria (or profile) that gets replaced with a mirror at a trade show because ROI at a show is determined by the number of people that can fog a mirror, not by the number of qualified partners that you find. At least in my experience.
Then after you hire salespeople, there is an on-boarding and training process, which, again, falls by the wayside in the channel.
Sales - direct or indirect - still requires:
One additional item that the Channel needs is adjacency or alignment. Does your business model (and who you target and why) align with the partner's business model? If your service is adjacent to their line of business (and has low sales friction), then it is likely they can and will sell it.
If the service is low cost - like under $200 per month - it isn't likely that a channel partner will sell it UNLESS it is a cheap replacement for something customers already have AND the sale is frictionless. And when I say frictionless, I mean no glitches, one page agreement, automated deployment, etc. (Amazon 1-click sales or Apple iStore is frictionless selling. People expect that now.) At $200 per month - even at 20 points - is $40 per month. How much time must the partner invest to make the $40? What is the likelihood that the $40 sale will adversely affect the customer relationship or derail a one thousand dollar recurring revenue sale to the same customer?
If you do have a sub-$100 item that will sell easily, may I suggest a network marketing style approach? Become the Amway of conferencing or whathaveyou.
I have worked with a lot of SPs and helped a number of channel programs, these are the basic elements. Don't treat the channel as if you are Talk Fusion (and anyone is a prospective partner and customer). Pretend as if real money is involved and choose your partners carefully (along with some planning).
Interesting note: back in the day (circa 2000) BellSouth required live classes for partners to take to get pay on a service. Want to sell Frame Relay? Take the class. Pass the exam. Get the cert. Some SPs have that today, notably Alteva. But Comcast is adding a certificate program to sell its services (a big win for the TCA).
]]>What a few AT&T partners couldn't figure out is how the channel partner can sell VoIP, transport and Internet Access without a CLEC license. Well, in many states those services can be sold without a CLEC license.
The other issue is the taxes and fees. There are 9000 rate centers in the US. Every city, county and state has different taxes and fees. The partner would have to outsource for that, because I would not suggest you guess what taxes are due.
So if you are tired of the ever-changing agent program, take the next step and become a service provider, where you can trade commission headaches with billing disputes.
All these years of calling the AT&T Channel Partner a solution provider seems real now: a true provider.
]]>This morning I was thinking: If I started out today (instead of 1999), it would be a little harder. Back in 1999, BellSouth paid out good commissions. I was selling wholesale DSL coupled with ATM circuits and DIA. The commissions were good enough that I could take care of my clients very well. Hand hold them. Manage the project. Fix bills. Help escalate repair. All of that without any worry because I was being paid well to do it.
Fast forward to today, not so much. 8x8's ARPU is $250. Cbeyond's cloud services ARPU is about $210. Cbeyond's T1 revenue is $653. T1's are as low as $199. Broadband is free with three cereal box tops. At even 15% commission, it would take a LOT of sales to bring in enough revenue to survive. A lot of transactions every week.
And none of these services turn up quick. Sure, T1 and EoC can be done in less than 30 days, but porting of numbers is still a PITA. The copper stuff (T1, EoC, xDSL) should be easy, but with ILECs wanted out of the union game - I mean, copper space - finding good copper can be a challenge. Then there is the inside conduit work to complete the job. Building out fiber can take longer than 6 months (and is never sooner than 120 days). An agent has to wait a LONG time to get paid. And get paid not a lot.
Even the price of bandwidth has come down so low that selling GigE ports of Internet isn't a one per month and you can breathe. It's one per week and you better get hustling Charlie!
And if you want repeat customers, you still have to stay on top of the install, provisioning, deployment, billing and repair -- or they go directly to the carrier, who upgrades them or changes the plan and POOF! you no longer get compensated. It's fun now.
As Cbeyond reported in Q3, cloud revenue is not selling fast enough to replace TDM revenue. I understand that EarthLink has a similar problem. And that problem is with the carrier!!!! Now shrink that to the Channel Partner - and imagine what the day-to-day is like! Yikes!!!
]]>It's funny that this happens now because I have been trying to get an order in for 3 weeks for a PRI in rural Texas. It only took 3 weeks for SBC's division of AT&T to say, "We can't port those numbers. Oh, and we aren't paying you for this either."
VZ already has TDM off the commission schedule. In Greater Tampa Bay, agents can sell TerraNova Telecom, which is selling inexpensive POTS lines and even ISDN. In SBC land, Agents will need to find a regional CLEC.
Why do you need PRI's? Reliability for healthcare facilities like hospitals, who don't want SIP yet. POTS lines are still required in some states by law for elevators and other essential spaces.
Also, for all the bluster, outgoing faxes work better on TDM than IP. Reliable, dependable TDM. In many ways, the dream of Fax over IP and HD Voice requires inter-connections that are still not in place yet.
Why take away TDM? Because AT&T "hopes to be operating an all-wireless, all-IP, all-cloud AT&T network by 2020." AT&T executives are urging faster FCC review of their plan to retire wired networks. Albeit the government shutdown (which distracted me for a couple of hours yesterday) has delayed it even further.
Verizon's own plans for copper replacement in NY and NJ have been stalemated by opposition. We still have 7 more years yet.
I still think that the RBOC's should just separate out the copper network. There are still many uses for copper - and it is already in the ground.
]]>However, ATT doesn't send any TAC (terms) or even welcome information to the customer. There is also a failure to mention that the verbal contracts auto-renew for 2 additional one year terms; thus, it's really a 3 year agreement!
"ATT will send the client a letter 30-60 days prior to the auto renewal, but if the letter isn't responded to, the original verbal contracts auto renews. Now, the client does have a 30 days window after the renewal to cancel and move service or cancel and opt for a different term, but no additional notification is sent after the renewal letter send prior to the end of the term." [ccs]
]]>Now the ILEC's are going Cloud with Terremark, Savvis, and roll your own. This is shocking to me, since I was there in 2001 when BellSouth (and other ILEC's) first attempted data center and e-Commerce. At the time, BellSouth had partners like EMC to deliver the managed servcies and IBM for the data center. But this isn't something they knew how to sell or how to market. Certainly, the market has changed to make it easier to sell, but are the ILEC's the right partner for Cloud?
I look at how they are struggling with declining wireline revenue (and mounting debt). They have been grasping at TV for consumer triple-play; tech support for broadband customers; and managed services. A managed router from AT&T is configured and managed in Singapore! The slight time difference affects support. Plus it is by email mainly.
Is that what Enterprise customers want?
Then I look at the Telecom Subpanel talks on Cybersecurity, in which reps from AT&T, Comcast, Century Link and MetroPCS were featured speakers in front of The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology hearing Wednesday morning on the cybersecurity threat to the nation's communications networks. The hearings are about regulation of security of the communications infrastructure - who will have oversight, what will be required, and the like, to be added to a bill. Like that will help. Sheesh!
And, of course, the carriers do NOT want to be regulated. In fact, CenturyLink is petitioning the FCC to forbear from "dominant carrier regulation and the Computer Inquiry tariffing requirement with respect to its packet-switched and optical transmission services" for those services subject to the regulations. "CenturyLink states that, because of recent mergers, its enterprise broadband services are subject to different regulations depending on which CenturyLink affiliate - Qwest, Embarq, or CenturyTel - previously provided (or didn't provide) those services." Whatever. They do what they want anyway. There isn't any FCC enforcement (of merger conditions or forbearance conditions).
That sentiment brings me back to cybersecurity and regulations. It would be kind of joke really. The FCC took over 10 years to come to grips with VoIP, how would it ever regulate something as fluid as security? And what would enforcement look like? Would it be something like CPNI?
There are over 1000 VoIP providers in the US plus the numerous LEC's, cablecos and cellcos. Does anyone really think that enforcement is a priority at the FCC?
So back to telco cloud services.
On the one hand, I like that Savvis is still Savvis and Terremark is still Terremark (without any telco infection, no offense). In fact, "Savvis is poised to lead in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service in addition to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting," according to Seeking Alpha. Given that every data center company from TELX to QTS have launched Cloud services, not to mention every CLEC, TWC (via Navisite) and most VAR's, would you rather sell IT services from an IT company or IT services from a telco?
The whole "I don't want to be regulated, I don't want to be a common carrier" is fine if you understand that to stop being a monopoly, you have to stop acting like one! You HAVE to provide customer service. You can't finger point when handling Managed Services or Cloud Services. You have to ANSWERS to solve problems for your customers.
I think that Cloud is going to be a bust for telcos, in general. They have been the pipe, the plumbers, for so long -- and even if you want to reach up to Layer 7 (to grab the money) doesn't mean you have the ability or will be able to deliver on it. Going into cellular was just another Layer 1 project.
Let me point out a few things. Many fiber companies (or divisions) can't find or price out their fiber. A cellco has mismanaged its network to the point of disrupting users and its 4G future. An ILEC has done such a poor job planning Metro Ethernet that it has run out of VLAN's in two major metros!
Cloud may turn out like FTTH and Telco TV: an investment that didn't work out. Or it may work out despite what I think will be glaring holes.
]]>
Drink your Kool-aid and use your systems once in a while to find out how bad they are!!!!
]]>Have they not seen SIMPL? That's the system that ACC Business uses. ACC Business is the step-child subsidiary of AT&T. The system is SIMPL.
The SMART system must mean that you need a higher IQ than me, because I stumbled through it again today while trying to put an opportunity in the system to get an MIS contract. It's hours of work for one quote. 90 minutes to put the lead through to contract request. BAH!
You can always tell an ILEC system: no AJAX, easy GUI, process flow, or any indication that the programmers have actually ever interacted with the system as a user.
]]>Product Management indicated that AT&T is no longer offering the Dry Fiber product. "The product was removed once the merger between AT&T & Bellsouth took place." But that is erroneous as the following filings will prove.
BellSouth filed to discontinue Dry Fiber service in July 2007 (see letter PDF here). Then AT&T filed with the FCC to withdraw its Section 63.71 application seeking to discontinue its provision of Dry Fiber service in Jan. 2008 (see letter PDF here). It currently is written into the FCC Tariff # 1 as 4-strand fiber transport (see PDF Tariff here).
Next it's over to the CLEC side of the house where the Wholesale account rep says that she only handles UNE. The other Wholesale rep handles FCC tariff items, but not a word out of her yet.
My big problem is that this service is listed in the tariff. It shouldn't be that hard to order service.
Next step for the client is a phone call. Either to call a telecom attorney (either Kris Twomey or Jonathan Marashlian); or to call the FCC Wireline Competition Bureau (202) 418-1500.