This is both a preview of my talk at FISPA Live 2019 next week in Nashville AND a checklist for the chief executives at service providers everywhere.

The slides reflect my appreciation of Seth Godin, Hugh MacLeod and Peter Drucker. I fit in a slide from Tony Robbins, but couldn’t fit in Tom Peters.

When you compete against the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Comcast or RingCentral, you better have your marketing elements nailed down.

RingCentral spends more than 40 cents of every dollar in revenue on sales and marketing, compared to Verizon who spends 23. How much are you spending on sales and marketing?

• What is your Value Proposition?
• Who are you selling to?
• Why would they buy from you?
• How will you find them?

In every piece of marketing, there are important components.

1. Headline
2. Offer
3. List
4. Call to Action
5. Repetition
6. What is the purpose of this piece of marketing?

I wrote about how telecom is like the potato chip aisle in the grocery store last week. This is why your marketing has to be on point. This is why as the chief executive you have to know your value proposition, your target, the Why.

I also wrote about my frustration with telecom.  We live in a world of Instagram and YouTube celebrities, who make their riches in niches.

We live in a world where we know – hear it every day – that no one gets fired for buying AT&T or Verizon, yet ignore this by not having a very good answer to the question: Why should I buy from you instead of them?

This industry has watched two UC providers – 8×8 and Ring – grow business by becoming sales and marketing machines.  Two others – Fuze and Evolve IP – have done it by identifying a segment of the market that they can serve well and selling directly to it.

This is the Age of Information as well as the Connection Economy yet execs ignore the info available about launch plans, LinkedIn sales success, and an active referral program.

It boggles my mind.

One thing that is clear about telecom is that it has plateaued. Just look at the earnings statements.

This has always been a me-too industry – since dial-up to the Integrated T1. Now it is UC and SD-WAN.

I was explaining to a friend today that telecom is like the potato chip aisle. Quick make another BBQ favored chip. That’s what the market is clamoring for!

No they aren’t.

They don’t need another laundry detergent in the Tide aisle either!

Although Budweiser outsells every beer in the aisle; there is always another one. (Also, retail versus restaurant/bar sales are different.)

I often use a picture of the pain relief aisle (NSAID) since many people stare at that aisle trying to figure out what to buy.

In either aisle, there are 8 to 12 feet of space taken up by the commodity – beer, NSAIDs, laundry detergent or chips. How do you Differentiate? How do you get the buyer to pick yours?

In retail you can pay for placement in the aisle. Notice where Tide is in the grocery store. You can pay for placement in analyst reports and in master agencies.

It still begs the question:  Why do some buy store brand and others pick the name brand?

According to Bud, it is for almost everyone. The problem in marketing is that EVERYONE thinks they should appeal to everyone. That’s not how it works!

There can only be one (maybe 2) mass market winner – Bud, Tide, Bayer, AT&T.

Everyone else has to figure out why US instead of the mass market choice.

Another way to put it: know what kind of car you are. If you are a Chevy Malibu, don’t pretend to be a Maserati.

Every car model has to differentiate using factors such as price point or car type (SUV, crossover, sporty) or safety or gadgets or fun. It is an exercise in Marketing. JS talks about it here, but you don’t have to spend $20K on the exercise. But you do need to do the exercise – what is your Positioning, your Value Proposition. Why you and not them?  This is a significant piece of the puzzle.

So if you aren’t Bud or Bayer or Tide or AT&T, recognize it. Market to those that will listen and tell them why you are the better choice. Tell them the story of why YOU and not them.  Why Bud and not a mead.

Yesterday I had a couple of meetings with CEOs of VoIP providers. Each had a list of the cool stuff that their company was doing. Patented technology. Cool dashboards. Etc. On the one hand, employees of a service provider have to drink the kool-aid. They have to be big cheerleaders for their service and company. That is a requirement for success. People who work for Coca-Cola, only drink Coke.

Yet the biggest blind spot in this industry is the navel gazing. Hardly anyone has any idea what is available in the marketplace. They don’t know much about the competition. They don’t do secret shopping or competitive analysis. It means they don’t know that what they just built is readily available already.

Also, they build (or buy) features upon features without any market validation.

Apparently they have forgotten the Microsoft Office rule: it was too complicated for most users!

This flies in the face of Henry Ford saying that if he asked his customers what they wanted they would have said faster horses. But Mercedes-Benz had built the first car in Germany 11 years before Ford! Ransom Olds opened the first automobile factory in Detroit in 1900 and produced 425 cars in 1901. The Model T from Ford rolled out of the factory in 1908. Ford was more about production and delivery than invention.

From my lens, I’m not awe-struck by much in this business anymore. After you have worked with 60+ service providers, there isn’t much new left. I am just plain frustrated that this industry has done such a poor job of sales and marketing. It is constantly about saving money, while also being a real hassle to get deployed.

There are 2 beliefs that just are not correct:

• Build it and they will come.
• The best tech wins.