I am currently working on my new book, The ABCs of Channel Programs: Channel Sales Enablement. To help me flush out some content for the book, I decided to talk with some friends in the industry about what hurdles they see in the channel right now.

In the first part of the Channel Hurdles series of podcasts, my friend, Dany Bouchedid, joins us from COLOTRAQ. Dany and I met when we co-founded the telecom industry trade association, TCA, in 2008. I have also been on the board for COLOTRAQ and helped them with marketing. COLOTRAQ has made some upgrades to its platform software, DCITRAQ. Give it a try for sourcing colocation, data centers, network and cloud services from 400 vendors.

We talk about the commissions, MDF and SPIFFs that seems to be a worry now for most of the master agencies. How do master agencies differentiate in an era of VADs and masters looking similar?

We also discuss how different the channel is today as compared to five years ago. Give it a listen and let me know your thoughts at peter at rad-info.net

At SkySwitch Vectors, the panel this morning I spoke on discussed selling results or outcomes. I posited that the main thing an MSP does is to provide technology to customers for outcomes while making the tech invisible. (Remember this!)

Millenials and Gen X & Y are all thought to be tech savvy, but they are app savvy. They can’t fix a TV or a computer (even change a video card) because they grew up with the iPhone. These folks need technology provided as a service that makes the tech just simply work. We are talking about User Experience!

Baby Boomers who are retiring or building new businesses also need a great User (Customer) Experience (UX/CX).

At Vonage’s event today, the tweet from Elka Popova shows that communications should be about customer and employees experiences. Vonage goes on to explain that “business communications are not optimized for business success“. Data silos and other problems get in the way with business success.

Another issue in the space is that we sell from the inside. In other words, we don’t start with the customer experience and work in. We “save money” by helping eliminate redundant jobs – in the contact center and in the office. We talk about phones and lines, but not about who is calling and what do they need.

About seven years ago a few providers were in a new space called Rich Communications. One had intelligence about who was calling and who they talked to – and offered the caller a short cut to resume that conversation. It is this type of data use for user experience that needs to be employed for market penetration.

We have lots of conferencing platforms but all are the same – dial a number put in a PIN. It’s 2019, why doesn’t it just know the Caller ID and put them in the correct meeting? Why can’t the platform just dial everyone that accepted the invite? So many ways to differentiate that are technologically in our means but not applied.

In two other posts – HERE (Obstacles) and HERE (3 things) – I discussed problems the UC providers face. This could be viewed as post #3 in that series. Phones get in the way of sales. What models? Lease or buy or HaaS? Why are we still stumbling over phones? In the last 15 years, we have sold it this way. It hasn’t been that successful. Why not try another way?

Lastly, at Vonage they have finally worked through their Value Proposition HERE. Vonage makes it easier for orgs to have conversations with customers they love. Vonage sells building blocks that allow customers to tailor and evolve customer experiences.

We sell technology. Unfortunately, we sell products, not solutions. We need to sell outcomes, results, employee experiences and customer experiences. It isn’t about the phone system; it is about conversations and results. And it doesn’t matter which AAS you are talking about – CPaaS, UCaaS or CCaaS. Take the tech out – managed services are about taking the tech out of the user’s hair. Let’s try that in sales too!

Want help with sales? Bye my book in Kindle or paperbook. Or hire RAD-INFO Inc to help you with sales via training or strategy or messaging.

The market for UCaaS is crowded with providers (2000+) but not so crowded with buyer demand. It is still a slog to sell UC to buyers. Here are the top 3 things I would tell any UC provider today (and that I will be telling the audience at SkySwitch Vectors 2019 today).

One: Pick a target. Whether that is a niche or a vertical or a piece of the marketplace, pick a target! The sweet spot is 25-99 seats – and the competition targeting that market is small.

If you target them, the message resonates better; the message is clearer. This is important because 1-1000 seats is actually 7 segments which means at least 7 buyer personas. It means the generic message will not resonate with your whole target (1-1000 employees).

Two: Take Friction out of the sale. Phones and phone choices slow up the sale. Lease or buy? Which model? Blah, blah, blah. Take the friction out oif this. HaaS: hardware as a service or leases or sell them – pick one.

Three: Package better!!! Products that are packaged well, branded and launched win. (Ask Jeff Walker!) I am not talking about Bronze, Gold, Platinum. I am talking about Managed IT with phone or a Managed Office Bundle or Microsoft Teams with phone. Figure out how to bundle it so it is very appealing to your target audience. Otherwise it is a price war and not that attractive – or profitable!

see you at the show!

Here’s what is happening in Q4 2019 in the cloud comms space of CPaaS and UCaaS (and maybe some cloud contact center (CCC) mentions too).

Zoom is going deep into the hardware space (see HERE). Zoom also made at investment in Neat to get more into hardware – a sound bar and a interactive whiteboard. Besides Neat, Zoom has partnerships with Dell, Logitech, Poly and DTEN.

Zoom is also moving into telephony space (Yamaha speakerphones), but they are doing it in stages. “GTT and Voxbone have joined the Zoom Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) program, which allows Zoom Phone customers to keep their current PSTN service provider.” Smart move.

RingCentral and Avaya have been all over the socials, blogs, and analysts’ reports. Mainly the winner is RC for buying the customer list. The losers are Avaya customers and partners. Avaya will focus on the cloud contact center piece of their business. The IX-CC will soon be on Azure. And there was a deal with IBM Cloud.

There has been a bunch of activity this year in Cloud Contact Center (CCC). TalkDesk did a deal with Mitel to sit on top of its CPaaS. TalkDesk originally was built on twilio, but twilio launched its own CCC called Flex. Amazon also launched a CCC called Amazon Connect (in 2017). So TalkDesk had to diversify.

Twilio also launched a book on how to build your own IVR. This will disrupt some companies.

Telax was acquired by Intermedia.net. Good news for my client, Telax.

Ex-Polycom CEO Mary McDowell took over at Mitel.

Vonage made the “2019 IDC MarketScape for cloud communications platforms. Vonage earned this distinction based on its API Platform and its One Vonage single, micro-services architecture, as well as its status as the only company that can integrate across three of the fastest-growing enterprise segments today communications APIs, unified communications and contact centre (CPaaS, UCaaS, and CCaaS).” That is no longer accurate. 8×8 acquired a CPaaS platform earlier this year. Mitel has all 3 parts.

Panterra Networks also has all 3 parts now. This week they launched CPaaS, which can be integrated with their other elements: cloud storage (Smartbox), UCaaS (Streams), collab (Teams) or CCC solutions. Panterra is HIPAA Secure and encrypted. Not many other providers can say all of that.

Zoho this week launched Catalyst, a secure, high-performing platform that helps you build world-class solutions at scale. It seems more and more of communications is just software that users can build on. That’s great but most software projects fail. And how many businesses have an in-house devops team?

Slack launches Workflow Builder: the simple way to streamline tasks in Slack. As NYU Prof. Galloway says, Slack directly competes with Microsoft, so has to find ways to be different. This might be one way.

Last thought on the RC-Avaya deal. Q Advisors notes ” While RingCentral defines Mid-Market as customers generating between $25,000 and $100,000 in Annualized Recurring Revenue (“ARR”) and defines Enterprise as customers generating greater than $100,000 in ARR, the Company’s ARPU, approximately $400 / month, is significantly lower than that of Avaya. The question still remains if a provider can truly serve the Enterprise segment without a broadband offering and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). ” It isn’t just RC that claims the Enterprise & mid-market space but has $400 ARPU.

I still think Cisco and MS will take most of the Enterprise.

Bandwidth.com has made the IDC MarketScape for CPaaS. I don’t know much about their offering. Intelepeer, kandy and VoIP Innovations offered pre-built functions for customers like chatbots with AI and more. Not certain if that many businesses want to build their own – chatbots, IVR, contact center, etc. But there might be a business around building it for them and managing it

Final note on BroadWorks. From a client, ” at an event in Antwerp last week and Cisco addressed the retirement of Broadworks.  The line was Broadworks will always be available for call control. The conferencing, collaboration, and contact center will be moved into the cloud and will play well with BroadCloud.  However, as the guy was running through his slides call control moved to the cloud in 2021!”

In Unified Communications there are 3 obstacles that have kept UC from hitting more than 20% of the marketplace.

The first issue with UC is that it does solve a specific problem. It isn’t really a replacement for anything. It tried being IP Centrex. It tried being Hosted PBX. Then it tried being Unified Comms and cloud comms and UC&C and so on and so forth. UC has always struggled to explain exactly what it’s best use was. It always wanted to be everything to everybody.

Point 1: There is already an AT&T. You need to try to be something else.

For many companies moving from a Key system to UC was painful (and more expensive). For other sectors of the market, it required a forklift upgrade – not unlike servers to AWS, which doesn’t always smell like success when the project is marked done.

Point 2: Treat it like it is: a software migration (as painful as those two words are).

The next biggest issue in the UC space is the lack of focus. The focus is always on revenue – any revenue. The focus should be on customer experience and service delivery. One hole in the system is the role played by inter-connects in the heady days of PBXs. There was a time when the inter-connects did most of the pre-sale and post-sale work (for a fee). The telephony piece was separate but usually managed (and billed for) by the inter-connect. In UCaaS this is the huge hole in service delivery and thus customer experience. Hasn’t anyone realized this yet? Or created a PMO department to fix it?

Point 3: Focus on the customer, not on revenue.

I touched on the third issue above: we-will-take-any-revenue-we-can mentality is just stupid. In the early days (and it is coming back around now), UC providers were retail and wholesale – just anyone sell a seat, puh-lease! We are back there again. In the 15 years that UCaaS has been around in its many forms, it still is a short sighted game. It doesn’t matter if you burn the customer or the partner, you need to book revenue. That mentality is just dumb.

Point 4: The sweet spot is, well, sweet.

I moderated a panel of UC VPs at ITEXPO. They blamed most deployment issues on sales. It turns out that when you sell to your target audience that the customer experience is better. When you sell/deploy outside your target, it is poor. What should that tell you?

Point 4: You can’t provide value at every segment of the marketplace; focus on where you can and target that.