Blog Archives - Page 118 of 786

Why Upsell

Why do they ask if you want fries with that? “Elmer Wheeler was a sales trainer nearly a century ago. He got hired by a chain of drugstores to increase sales at the soda fountain. In those days, a meal might consist of just an ice cream soda for a nickel. But for an extra penny or two, you could add a raw egg (protein!). Obviously, if more people added an egg, profits would go up. Wheeler taught the jerks (isn’t that a great job title?) to ask anyone who ordered a soda, “One egg or two?” Sales of the egg add-on skyrocketed.” From who else but Seth Godin.

If 10% of the people buy the add-on, your ARPU increases, revenue goes up and profits should increase (unless you sell underwater).

____ Peter Radizeski is a telecommunications consultant and analyst with RAD-INFO INC. Service Providers have called on RAD-INFO INC for assistance improving sales, managing online marketing efforts, channel sales enablement and overall company strategy. Contact RAD-INFO INC at 813-963-5884 or https://rad-info.net

November 28, 2016 , NSP Strategist

Thanksgiving Tidbits

“A federal judge in Texas has issued a nationwide injunction blocking President Obama’s overtime pay rule. The executive action, which was due to take effect December 1st, would require employers to pay overtime to workers earning less than $47,476 a year.” WSJ reports. Original post.

Oracle bought the managed DNS provider that suffered a DDoS attack recently, DYN.

“You can do better. Especially if you have happy customers and product-market fit. That’s the hardest part today. Too many vendors, too many products….. disruption means there absolutely, positively, are another 50-100 customers out there for every single one you have today. There is no chance you have maxxed our your market. There isn’t.” [saas sales]

SaaS Founders take on PR (Public Relations/Publicity).

IN the midst of the Polycom acquisition saga and VTECH buying snom, quietly, Frost & Sullivan honored Grandstream with Global Enterprise IP Endpoints Market Company of the Year Award, which I never heard of.

Windstream filed to discontinue SMB DSL service in CLEC territories due to the equipment is no longer supported (and they only have 300 customers using it!)

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for reading.

Now register for the Goal Setting webinar.

November 23, 2016 , NSP Strategist

The Next Two Revenue Streams

AT&T is buying TimeWarner.
Verizon bought AOL and is buying Yahoo.
Comcast invested $200M in BuzzFeed.
AT&T and DISH are “partnering to acquire INVIDI Technologies. Ad agency WPP is also part of the deal, which gives AT&T a controlling interest in the addressable advertising technology firm.“

Content and ad money is the only area of growth for the Duopoly.

An analyst is projected that Cable companies will be the Incumbent Phone company in 2017 due to the number of cable phone lines sold compared to telco. The RBOCs have been trying to get out of the incumbent label for years, much to the chagrin of their ILEC brethren like Frontier, Windstream, CenturyLink and Fairpoint, who wish that the RBOCs would shut up.

The RBOCs have cellular, voice, data, broadband, big pipe, managed services, data centers and cloud in the catalog but the cash cow was the consumer triple play. Much like EarthLink and AOL floated on dial-up revenues for years, ILECs float on wireline revenues. Unfortunately, cable is eating their lunch in the broadband market.

Easier to dump a billion or four into a company that will provide some top line revenue than spend $24 billion on fiber to the home, where Verizon lost money.

Telco has pension and union liabilities that cable does not. These liabilities are now mainly under the RLEC umbrella in the form of CenturyLink, Fairpoint and Frontier, who purchased assets from many other ILECs and RBOCs, including the pension liabilities. It is quite the financial burden.

Content is the next revenue stream for the telco, following in the footsteps of cable, who have owned TV stations and content for years.

No idea how the telcos arrived at advertising as a viable revenue stream (maybe they are following Google’s model). Yet “AT&T reports $1.5 billion and growing in annual revenue for its AT&T AdWorks division. That unit aggregates 14 million households and 35 million set-top-boxes nationwide, managing ad inventory across national ad-supported cable networks. AT&T claims it’s the largest addressable advertising network in the industry, thanks in large part to its acquisition of DIRECTV.” [telecomp]

It looks like we will soon be back in the days of AOL and Prodigy, where your ecosystem will be defined by your cell phone operating system (Android or Apple) and cell provider and broadband provider. The cellcos are providing free bandwidth for staying inside the ecosystem, making it tough for companies like DISH/Sling, Netflix and Layer3. Captured users, eyeballs, viewer habits, buying habits, ads, etc. will result in big money per user. It is a similar model that Amazon uses with Prime and Kindle. Users of a Kindle device buy Prime and spend more than 3x what a non-Prime member spends. And we keep it in the ecosystem. Google, Apple, Amazon, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast all competing for you.

Tags: advertising, aol, broadband, cellular, competition, content, dish, ilec, mergers, numbers, privacy, rlec
Related tags: revenue stream, centurylink fairpoint, addressable advertising, cable, revenue, rbocs

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

Musings on Ma Bell – Oct 26, 2016

ILEC News – Feb 16, 2011

10 Years of Telco Hubris – Nov 18, 2016

Telecom Tidbits (Part 2433) – Apr 25, 2016

Are the Telcos in Deep Trouble? – Jan 06, 2016

News Tidbits Part 2923 – Nov 30, 2015

The Broadband Competition Problem – Sep 23, 2015

Merger Noise in June – Jun 09, 2015

AOL Gets a Surprise from Verizon – May 12, 2015

News Tidbits Part 2917 – Apr 27, 2015

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: The Next Two Revenue Streams

November 23, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don’t think Ican write one better than I did 2 years ago, so here’s a link to that piece.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Take a moment to reflect on the glass half full and the life fully lived while you’re reaching for the stuffing.

Tags: thanks
Related tags: happy thanksgiving

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

A Grateful Holiday Break – Nov 25, 2014

Thanks – Nov 25, 2008

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | On Rad’s Radar? Home | Permalink: Happy Thanksgiving!

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

November 23, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Sales KPIs

If you manage a sales team, direct or indirect, do you have any key performance indicators that you track?

Usually the only KPI we look at is Quota.

Yet we know that daily activity is the most important factor for success. That includes number of contacts per day via email, social media, phone calls.

The speed at which we follow up from an inbound lead is directly related to success. “Since Harvard’s study on response outcomes showed that sales reps that contacted leads within 1 hour were seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker, other studies have affirmed the findings.” [source: salesforce]

Are you tracking new logos (new accounts) that are opened? Yes, we need to retain and grow current accounts (and that is another KPI to measure). In some sales organizations, different reps have different responsibilities: like retention and account growth would be different than a hunter looking for new business (new logos, new accounts).

Sales math helps to break down the daily activity needed. If it takes 1000 dials to contact 30 people, you need to make 1000 dials a month. If it takes 30 contacts to get 3 sales, you understand what the numbers mean.

“A new study from AG Salesworks & BridgeGroup estimates that reps should be generating roughly 32 opportunities per 1,000 outbound calls. Keep in mind that those numbers were for outbound prospecting, a term that tends to include many calls that are relatively cold. So keep an eye on those call logs.” [source: salesforce]

“Persistence pays off. A National Sales Executive Association survey found that 48% of sales agents never follow up with leads a second time. This is significant since 10% of sales are closed on the fourth contact, and 80% are made on the fifth to 12th contact.” Can you track follow up?

How about Contacts added to a drop campaign or monthly newsletter?

Of course, we have Sales Target, Closing ratios, quota, average sales size, and sales cycle to measure as well. We can also measure by product. What are they selling and to who, which will provide data for follow up contacts. For example, a follow up email can say that we have sold to 310 banks and most of them have bought not just bandwidth but also our managed security product. This is food for thought for prospects plus productive follow up email content.

What you measure you can manage is what Peter Drucker said. If you are spending the money on Salesforce CRM, you might as well get the most of it.

Tags: crm, management, sales, sellecom, selling
Related tags: source salesforce, daily activity, sales, follow, contacts, measure