On Rad's Radar Archives - Page 17 of 376

2 Lessons from Politics

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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The Cost of Attention (Advertising) – Sep 30, 2014

What I Read Over the Weekend – Jun 23, 2014

What You Can Learn From Romney’s Campaign – Nov 20, 2012

Tidbits #2444 (Telecom and Otherwise) – Jan 04, 2017

More Retail Stores Going Broke – Dec 28, 2016

Who is Your Target Audience? – Dec 21, 2016

Is SD-WAN the new UC? – Dec 19, 2016

It is All Distribution Now – Dec 13, 2016

The Channel Marketing Dilemma – Nov 30, 2016

Marketing Lesson from the Election – Nov 09, 2016

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January 13, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

Normalcy Bias

One of my favorite authors is Marcus Wynne, who is CEO of a cognitive neuroscience firm. On his blog, he espoused: “There’s this thing from psychology … which is
called, I think, “normalcy bias.” In sum it’s the thinking that goes like this: “It hasn’t happened to me, therefore it cannot happen.” It’s a presupposition which provides an unconscious (as in you don’t even know you know/believe it) foundation for action and planning. The cure for it generally is a
harsh one, when reality sticks it’s sometimes ugly nose in and says, “Hey Sweet Cheeks? Today’s the day you get screwed.”

I think about this in terms of cyber-security and disaster planning. No one wants to spend on it. (They don’t like buying insurance either.) But when (not if anymore) disaster strikes in the form of outages, hacks, breaches, malware/ransomware, severe weather, floods, tornadoes, etc. many businesses are unprepared and fail.

Personally I don’t know how to change someone’s bias. It’s like the worldview that on-premise hardware is better than cloud.

Tags: disaster recovery, security
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Business Continuity is a Conversation – Jul 19, 2016

There Were Some Bright Spots – Dec 26, 2014

Hacking and Identity Theft – Dec 20, 2016

A Look Back at 2016 News – Dec 14, 2016

Channel Outlook in a Mega-Merger World – Nov 07, 2016

As the Telecom World Spins – Nov 04, 2016

The InterWebs are Down! – Oct 21, 2016

Tidbits #2440 – Oct 06, 2016

Are Outages the New Normal? – Oct 05, 2016

Tidbits #2439 – Oct 03, 2016

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January 9, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

Disruption Everywhere

Two articles demonstrate that no field is free from disruption. The first is about the Big Consulting business practice that is changing fast. The legal professional is also being disrupted and used as an example of why the consulting world will soon fall fate as well.

“Management consulting’s fundamental business model has not changed in more than 100 years. At traditional strategy-consulting firms, the share of work that is classic strategy is now about 20%–down from 60% to 70% some 30 years ago.”

Former Big Three employees now work for companies like general counsel. They reduce professional services costs. They reduce scope of work and thus the price tag. Just another example of a high-profit business being annihilated, only Amazon didn’t do it this time.

“Clients rely on brand, reputation, and “social proof”–that is, the professionals’ educational pedigrees, eloquence, and demeanor–as substitutes for measurable results.” That is a problem in consulting. The measurable part. I think that some companies hire ideas/strategy but forget that it is all about execution. I don’t know if you can disrupt execution yet. Knowledge certainly. And I think we have spent a good amount of time just copying strategy from competitors. That isn’t working out well either. Like in law and medicine, the general practice firm is giving way to specialists.

The second article is about voice first technology disrupting the search ad revenue model.

“”…one thing that we are all clear about is the days of three top text ads followed by ten organic results is a thing of the past in the voice first world”– Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior VP of advertising and commerce @ Google, November 29, 2016.”

“Just like this generation now no longer has CDs, DVDs, tapes or records, the next generation will expect voice interaction, not with pages of search results but AI assisted, ontology, and taxonomy perfect answers, most particularly one answer.”

“The writing is on the wall.”

Medium.com just laid off one-third their staff as the traditional ad based business model was NOT working for them.

Retail isn’t working for Sears/KMart, Kohls, Macys, Sports Authority and so much more. Have you been to a mall lately? Anyone holding a shopping bag from a store in that mall?

New drug will regenerate teeth, so where does that leave dentists?

A large hedge fund will replace managers with artificial intelligence!

What does this have to do with YOU? Well, anyone can be displaced or replaced. The number of displaced workers is growing. Either you are growing or you are dying. Either you are learning new skills or someone/something will leapfrog you.

Hugh MacLeod writes, “To innovate, you don’t have to reinvent the whole thing. Innovation is taking what exists and making it better. It’s grown-up copying.”

Tags: analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, disrupt, innovation
Related tags: business model, consulting, business, strategy, either, voice

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A Look Back at 2016 News – Dec 14, 2016

Tidbits #2438 – Jun 07, 2016

Telecom Disruption – Jan 24, 2016

Mobile Phones are Hyperlinks – Apr 21, 2015

Sales Math and Measuring What Matters – Feb 18, 2015

News Tidbits Part 2915 – Feb 09, 2015

Two New VoIP Offerings – Jan 05, 2017

The Beginning of 2017 – Jan 03, 2017

The Channel Marketing Dilemma – Nov 30, 2016

Big Data Comes to Bosses with Prodoscore – Sep 06, 2016

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

January 9, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

Two New VoIP Offerings

IDT is an international LD company doing about a billion bucks globally. Last year, it finally entered the Hosted VoIP world through its Net2Phone brand. Net2Phone launched in the channel. Net2Phone also launched an inbound service (like Google Voice or Citrix’s Grasshopper) called PicUp. Those terms are interesting.

TOS: “If you provide Feedback to Net2Phone, then you grant Net2Phone a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up right to publicly display, broadcast, transmit and distribute the Feedback (and derivative works thereof), including but not limited to Your name and company name for attribution purposes. During the beta trial period, You will receive 1000 free inbound minutes per month calculated from the date of sign-up; provided that, if You do not use a minimum of 25 minutes per month, then Net2Phone reserves the right to close Your Account. Once Your free minutes have been used during a month, Services will be suspended until the next month begins. Net2Phone may terminate your beta trial service for any reason or no reason without prior notice. Once the beta trial period ends, Your free 1000 minute per month plan will automatically convert into the then-commercially available 100 minute free plan.”

It looks like they are just lab testing. A 100 minute inbound plan seems like it would be for a very small business. That’s less than 2 hours per month. Oh, well.

They did buy some functionality via the acquisition of LiveNinja. “Net2phone will combine LiveNinja’s customer messaging and live chat service with PicuP, which gives small/mid-size businesses a self-service platform to deal with inbound calls, including auto-attendants, customized welcomes and voicemail to e-mail.”

“LiveNinja offers a messaging application that facilitates companies and their customers having seamless conversations across multiple messaging and chat channels including live chat, SMS and Facebook Messenger,” according to SeekingAlpha. Riddle me this: why would Google Voice service with 100 inbound free minutes need multi-platform chat integration? It seems that this should have been integrated into Net2Phone’s Hosted VoIP offering instead of the stripped down PicUp service. It is a crowded space. Not sure they have product-market fit yet.

A similar service to PicUp launched from 3 VoIP veterans. David Walsh and Evin Hunt (from Shango); and Jason Tapolci (from VoIP Innovations) just soft launched their hosted VoIP service that is a mobile app only called Vocaly.

Launching an offering isn’t cheap but it isn’t that expensive either. There needs to be more experimentation in the space. A bunch of failures before we get some new, fresh ideas that work.

I give Verizon credit there because One Talk is an experiment with their Broadsoft platform that is powering other traditional offerings. We need IDT, Verizon and start-ups like Vocaly and Fone.do to experiment and see what happens.

Tags: hosted pbx, innovation, smb, startup, UC, voip
Related tags: phone launched, google voice, trial period, service picup, phone, service

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What the Studies About UC Say – Aug 25, 2015

2000 Players Have Less Than 40% of Market – Jul 21, 2015

Tidbits #2444 (Telecom and Otherwise) – Jan 04, 2017

UCaaS Round-Up (Tidbits 2443) – Nov 16, 2016

Marketing Lesson from the Election – Nov 09, 2016

Is UCaaS Growing? – Oct 31, 2016

What Pain Does UCaaS Solve? – Aug 22, 2016

UC Tidbits #2441 – Jul 05, 2016

The Telecom Long Tails – Jun 07, 2016

Why Do You Look at an iPhone That Way? – Apr 07, 2016

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January 5, 2017 , On Rad's Radar

MSP EXPO Panel on Differentiation

MSP EXPO is collocated at ITEXPO in February in Fort Lauderdale. I will be moderating one panel: “How to Differentiate Your Telecom, Managed, Hosted, and Cloud Services for Revenue Growth”. The panelists will be Jim DeBald of CoreDial; Eric Hernaez of SkySwitch; and Joshua Feinberg of SP HomeRun. The panel will be 1 pm ET on Wednesday, 02/08/17. Join us.

The premise for the panel is as follows: “The way telecom, managed services, cloud, and hosting purchasing decisions are made is changing. Today, because IT influencers and decision makers are doing so much upfront research, often 70 percent or more of their decisions have already been made before you’re even looped into the conversation. This can put you at a huge disadvantage if you haven’t drawn their attention through market differentiation. Likewise, for those MSPs that have, this change in decision-making theory presents an opportunity to earn a seat at the table as a highly-differentiated trusted advisor. This session will detail how to ensure you get found early enough in the buyer’s journey to matter, stand out from the crowd, command premium pricing, and attract world-class clients and talent.”

As I have often written here, positioning, differentiation and USP are the key to value and standing out. We will discuss this during the session.

The IDEA Showcase Startup Event is Thursday at 4.

Tags: cvx, differentiation, itexpo, msp, startup, usp, value
Related tags: telecom managed, panel, differentiation

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