“All Universal Service high-cost support recipients are reminded that support must be used for its intended purpose,” stated the FCC notice. It seems that the rural carriers under CAF, ETC, legacy high-cost and rate-of-return carriers are taking liberties with rates and expenses.

“Just as carriers must not use USF funds for inappropriate expenses, we remind rate-of-return carriers that section 65.450 of our rules prohibits them from including expenses in their revenue requirements unless such expenses are “recognized by the Commission as necessary to the provision” of interstate telecommunications services.7 [FCC notice]

This is what consumers dislike about these programs: ABUSE.

The FCC is probing the special access charges of 4 carriers for being potentially unjust – AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink and Frontier.

Competify – representing Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, Comptel, and Public Knowledge – issued a statement praising the FCC action: “The FCC’s efforts will help treat the incumbent broadband gatekeeper’s chronic illness, an illness that has left Americans paying the price – often in the form of hidden fees.”

The fees are getting ridiculous. Charter adds a $5.19 Local Broadcast TV surcharge, according to a DSLR reader.

With consumer wages, income and spending flat, ARPU can’t go up. Consumers want to spend less, but the big guys want them to spend more. So advertise low rates then tax, fee, surcharge up the ass to get the money they need to keep thier Wall Street masters at bay.

Frontier bought 3 states from Verizon- CA, TX, FL. The $10B debt is costing the carrier between 8.75 and 11 points. Yet they all keep piling on the debt. Meanwhile, AT&T was able to sell $17.5 Billion in bonds (for its DTV purchase) at between 2.5 and 3.5 points. And that is just a small portion of AT&T’s $114 Billion in debt! They need to add on to pay all that back.

The American Library Association is launching a 5-state LEAP program to assess E-Rate and develop of vision for the future of broadband in learning.

B2B sales of cloud communications is selling change. And that is the problem. No one likes change. So you are fighting the tide.

Seth Godin has an excellent post about offense and defense of change and buyers.

Invest in sales training for your people who are selling Hosted PBX/UCaaS/cloud comm. Oct. 30. Register here!

Earlier this year I surveyed a bunch of service providers to find out what CRM system they have, these are the results. [There is also my list of CRM from late 2014.]

I say have or deployed as opposed to use, because most CRM in tech companies is bought by the owner, a non-sales person, who wants to reduce swivel chair and to have the system connect to everything like single sign on is a thing. You have to ask yourself: what is the CRM for? 3 things.

One, the salesperson to record his activity. That is first and foremost. If the salesperson won’t use it because it is clunky or has bad UX (user design), then the system will be a failure. Also, when the salesperson leaves your company, you want to have all the contacts and data about your prospects, customers and funnel. All of it in the CRM. [see here]

Two, monitoring the funnel and salespeople daily and weekly activity. If there isn’t a simple way to see what the salespeople are doing, then the CRM is worthless to management.

Three, a tool for valuation. Without a CRM, investors won’t value your company. Good business requires systems. CRM is a system to see customers, funnel, contracts, prospects (market size), etc. So if you ever want to sell, use CRM.

CLECs and ISPs tend to build their own or use an open source platform like SugarCRM, although I would advise against clunky software. You need a good GUI (user interface) that makes it easy for the salespeople to use. In many cases, it has to be mobile accessible too.

MSPs tend to use the platform of their business like ConnectWise or Autotask. Clunky. You can use another system and do some swivel chair.

IDEA2 has an answer for the clunky CRM interface — use Slack as your interface! IDEA2 just launched Sasquatch. You can easily build a CRM system using the IDEA2 platform with if-this-then-that functions, build an API, and connect the system to Marketo, Mailchimp, Gmail, etc. It is the wave of the future: business-functions-as-a-service. Cloud 2.0 if you will or at east SAAS 2.0.

Because everyone wants the CRM to connect, check the available API integration. Zoho has a lot. Some telecom agents use SalesReach with Salesforce – lot of integrations, seems like overkill (or overpay) to me, but it works for them.

There are a lot of CRM systems out there. Simple ones that work for small business like Real Simple or Batchbook or Insightly. Contactually seems more like contact management system for an online business than a full CRM. Depends what you need.

I don’t talk about the big ones like Salesforce or MS Dynamics because it seems like overkill for most of the service providers I work with. However, if you are a Microsoft shop, Dynamics would seem to be an avenue to examine.

There are 9 alternatives including Nimble, Pipeline and Pipelinedeals.

SIDEBAR

If you need dialer software, Ringio must have pivoted because it talks about dialer software for Zoho and Salesforce. Five9 cloud contact center software has dialer integration for CRM.

While this is an interesting cartoon from Gapingvoid, the post that goes with it is even better. Who knows what empowerment means? But as the leader of your business, do you give your employees the permission to do their best work? Do they know that they can take some initiative? Are you encouraging that by recognizing it and rewarding it (even in a small way)?

Harvard Biz Review has a lengthy article about how to empower employees. You want your employees to feel a part of IT, not just a cog in the wheel. If you take care of the employees, they take care of the customers and magic happens.

Sales is mainly about Time Management. Lots to do; burning through the hours. Here are a couple of ways to re-think the time management scenario.

“Just as time management isn’t always about time (it is about the tasks we choose to invest in) — work life happiness and success can have as much do to with what we are not bringing to the table, as with what we are currently applying.” [linkedin]

From the Ugly Truth about Time Management: “Here’s the thing — a time-management problem is usually not a time issue – it is a task issue. Specifically, you are not sorting through your work life and deciding which tasks really matter.”

I think Work-Life balance is a myth. It is about choice. What are your priorities, your values? What is most important to you? That said:

In sales training, I always say Dis-Qualify as fast as possible, so you can spend time on the best prospects. In life, same thing. Ask yourself this: Will doing this get me closer to any of my goals?

You have to learn to be okay with saying NO (in order to say YES to the important stuff. Not the Urgent; the important.)

We put out fires every day. We want to be helpful. Add some fire fighting time to your schedule.