I have written about retails troubles before, but this KPMG global survey asks 18,430 consumers about their most recent online shopping experiences.

“Today’s consumer no longer goes shopping, but is shopping, all the time and everywhere. And in a truly global online marketplace, competition is no longer limited to local shops during regular business hours. Consumers can easily buy from retailers and manufacturers located anywhere in the world – or from those with no physical retail locations at all,” comments Willy Kruh, Global Chair, Consumer Markets, KPMG International.[KPMG]

That means the competition is blood red. It is leaving bodies in the road (American Apparel, Sports Authority, etc).

It also means that buyers are always shopping for your stuff too! Retail buying habits bleed into what we do – B2B selling.

Key point from KPMG: “Excellent customer support was the number one loyalty-earning attribute, cited by 65 percent of the respondents.”

A key point from a phone call today: “Who is taking care of the customer experience?” If you are in UCaaS, who is managing the user experience? Who is making certain that the users can access softphones and that they work? Who is training and re-training on system features and functionality?

From the time the contract is inked, the real work begins. In that sense it isn’t a retail experience, where free shipping or 1-click shopping are priorities. Implementation, deployment, training and user experience. Who’s doing that well?

Tags: customer service, hosted pbx, retail, UC, UX, voip
Related tags: shopping, experience, retail, training, global

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On Wed., 2/8 at 3 pm, I will be moderating a panel on Women in Tech at ITEXPO in Ft Lauderdale. Why is a guy moderating this panel? Probably because I wanted to see this session at ITEXPO. When I took it to TMC, Dave and Erik told me to run with it.

This topic has been on my mind for some time. The fraternity of telecom seemed to boil over last summer. We just had a presidential election cycle where one candidate played the gender card as several right media outlets put it, while also being maligned because of her gender. That played out on a national level.

Having run startup and tech events in Tampa for years, it is still largely a male dominated space. Just 18% of Computer Science Degrees go to Women. How many Entrepreneurship degrees go to women? Probably less.

In the last year, there have been a number of articles like this one about Why Women Quit Tech. To address this and have a good discourse, a panel of distinguished women was chosen from volunteers:

• Caitlin Clark-Zigmond, VP of Product at CoreDial;
• Angela Leavitt, CEO of Mojo Marketing;
• Karin Fields, CEO of master agency MicroCorp;
• Grace Schroeder, CEO of software house SLINGR.

As one female CEO wrote me, “You know what is interesting is that a lot of this article is exactly what Sheryl Sandberg wrote in “Lean in.” For the most part women in Tech are in marketing and operations. They aren’t in the “driving” positions.” True enough, because as I look at the Board of Women in Channel, half are in marketing and half are in channel sales. (Also, not certain how many expo attendees have read or heard about Sandberg’s book.)

Come join the discussion in Ft Lauderdale!

Tags: itexpo, technology, women
Related tags: women, marketing, panel, because, itexpo

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How many articles and keynotes have been about how channel partners aren’t jumping into cloud? I find it funny that it is mainly vendors and “consultants” saying this. It’s Microsoft. It’s every booth at CP Expo. It is the channel magazines (like here) and the channel consultants.

The one thing missing from this cloud strategy: business model.

For all the talk about monthly recurring revenue, the commissions off cloud services are tiny compared with the time it takes to sell and support.

Even with the drop in uptime for carriers, the amount of support for network services is small. The sale is easy. The commissions are fair. High ROI.

Microsoft Office365 is starts at $60 per seat per year. That is a commission of fifty cents! If the client calls with just one support call, all of your profit is gone.

In network, almost all carriers deliver services as advertised. There isn’t really a big trust issue with the customers. It’s plugged in and usually works. Stays up most of the time.

The same can be said of PRI. But SIP trunks? That gets tricky with inter-operability, with porting numbers, with quality of service. There are so many providers that it isn’t even possible to do an apples to apples comparison. Easier to sell POTS lines, in my opinion.

UCaaS has been notorious for porting problems; QoS issues; lack of user training; and deployment mishaps. Also, too many features, not enough pain for the buyer to move to what looks like a complex system. At ARPU of about $350, that is a lot to overcome to make a little bit of money. The SPIFF War that pays out up to 6X MRC is getting attention, especially if the partner can just throw a lead over the fence, let the ITSP close it and collect his $200 after passing GO!

The big impact from cloud is the integration. But who is going to do that integration? Who is going to come in and add the Zaps or the IFTTT? Who is going to script together the various pieces of software to get data to flow without swivel chair?

On a client call recently, they mentioned that many IBM A/S-400s are still in service. Those applications don’t easily port to the cloud for a number of reasons. There are a number of software applications that won’t easily port to the cloud. That’s why we have the Hybrid Cloud strategy, right? Which just means that some stuff stays as is, some stuff goes to AWS/MS/IBM/Rackspace, some stuff moves to a private data center. (SD-WAN plays the part of making that network optimized for a hybrid environment, or as I like to call it the usual system.)

I’m not saying cloud isn’t here to stay (see here). I am saying that the Business Model for Partners to be Cloud First has not become mainstream yet.

A good Cloud Engineer/Cloud Architect or a knowledgeable Sales Engineer are expensive full time positions. It would take a lot of large deals to begin to offset that investment in talent. There is a new skill set needed for cloud services that wasn’t needed for managed IT services. New sales skill set too as the sale transitions from transactional replacement of services (cable for T1 or Ethernet for T1) to consultative selling involving business needs and impact.

“What we’ve found working with clients who want to begin taking advantage of the cloud’s cost and accessibility advantages is that they will start new projects in the cloud, but will leave their legacy systems intact.” To find these deals, you would need to be proactive in marketing your firm as a cloud expert (and actually have the chops to pull it off without burning the client and your reputation, which is a real problem that vendors don’t want to address.)

Personally, I wonder about the economics of cloud. VDI, UCaaS, CRM and Office 365 are going to cost you ($40+$30+$100+$5) roughly $175 per month per employee. At 99 employees that is $200K per year. Seems like a lot, but if you are the partner and you get most of that share that is $20K per year in commission.

Tags: channel partners, cloud communications, cloud computing, cloud services broker, commissions, microsoft
Related tags: cloud services, cloud strategy, applications easily, integration going, business model, cloud

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At lunch today with a political consultant, we discussed the presidential campaign. Here are two things that drive me crazy about HRC and DNC that you should think about for your own company.

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.

See marketing lessons from the election.

Tags: marketing, politics
Related tags: education campaign, message, years, education, marketing, election

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