There are too many VoIP and UCaaS providers. Consolidation is required in this space. I think UCaaS has to shift into Voice/Dial-tone (POTS replacement or SIP Trunking with some features) and some collaboration platform. The way it is now – replacing an on-premise PBX with a hosted one – isn’t selling very well. CAGR from 8×8’s latest numbers show service revenue grew 23% year over year. My estimate is that UC/VoIP growth is 17-23% for the bigger companies, bu many of the 2000+ are not seeing even 15%. And the buyers are shifting on it.

In UC&C (and most software) “CIOs will be buying into the customer experience and not the technology,” writes RingCentral’s Sahil Rekhi.”In 2017, CIOs will be buying communication solutions with a focus on experiences rather than technology; removing distinctions between communication, collaboration and productivity. Workplace communication and collaboration tools in the cloud will be made to create a unified and consistent experience across multiple devices, moving businesses away from a siloed approach to communications.” Most ITSPs are not set up for the complete mobile experience yet, let alone a full UC&C CX (customer experience).

There are providers still trying to add analytics to call logs. Because we are still stuck on replacement instead of impact, outcome or experience. (One reason that Slack took off: UX!)

GOOD READS:

Fred Wilson’s frank look at what will happen in 2017.

Start the new year with better sales meetings HERE.

PR trends in 2017. Content versus Attention versus Influencers = Viewers running away to the “Dark Social”, “the amount of communication which occurs behind closed doors and messaging apps and private groups.”

Sales Hacker’s Top 10 Trends & Predictions Heading Into 2017.

This is a twofer: 5 lessons from the book LinkedIn’s head of recruiting recommends to all new managers is a summary of Ryan Holiday’s book.

Are you hiring? Good read on what to look for. I always say Attitude first, but this CEO says have a meal with the candidate and look for Gratitude and excitement.

MEDIA PAIN

Medium has laid off one-third its staff. Medium is a blogging/media platform founded by the same guy who founded Blogger, Odeo and twitter. He is having an issue with business models as the world of the Internet is based on free. No idea why he didn’t try charging $9.99 per year per reader or some other nominal amount. It isn’t a volume shop like Huffington or Buzzfeed. It has a targeted audience. But that is the problem: everyone uses the model that they see, not one designed specifically for their product.

As Seth Godin pointed out, “Newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn’t want to hear. We’ve responded by not buying newspapers any more.” That is why we have click-bait, fake news, struggling newspapers and uneducated voters. It is all about the pageview, even in this content marketing world. Go figure!

RETAIL SUFFERS!

Sears is closing 150 more stores. Macys is closing stores. Retail had a bad holiday season – and the stock market is unforgiving. American Apparel is BK (and Amazon is trying to buy it.) Retail has to change. Big time. Also, malls have to re-think what they are to consumers.

Fast food is hiring robots and self-serve kiosks; retail is tanking. What will teenagers do for employment? What will many others do for employment in place of managers, buyers, maintenance, etc.

Ford is staying. Carrier is staying but they got tax breaks and other bonuses to do so. And they are going to automate those jobs out of existence. AI is replacing some fund managers. If you can’t fix or code a robot, what will you do for a job?

Tags: content, hiring, hosted pbx, jobs, marketing, news, retail, robotics, social media, UC, voip
Related tags: customer experience, closing stores, communication collaboration, experience, retail, communication

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Wired has two articles about Amazon becoming an ISP; and <a href="Put it all together and you can see a day when you're watching content that Google produced disseminated via infrastructure that Google owns on a phone that Google made using wireless service Google brokered.”>Google and Facebook taking over for telcos.

“Put it all together and you can see a day when you’re watching content that Google produced disseminated via infrastructure that Google owns on a phone that Google made using wireless service Google brokered.” True, but the cellcos/RBOCs don’t want to be dumb pipes. That’s why Comcast owns NBCU; AT&T is buying TimeWarner; and Verizon owns AOL and is buying Yahoo. They want to own the whole OSI stack – Layer 1 to 7 – the walled garden that was AOL.

Facebook wants the same thing. Amazon, Microsoft and Google, too. Live in their ecosystem, where they collect as much data as possible to target you better to sell you more.

Amazon is selling ISP service, just as a retail channel for Comcast and Frontier, not as a virtual network operator.

Meanwhile, a bunch of articles over the last two weeks talked about the ILECs lack of investment in broadband. Cable Will Keep Ruling US Broadband.

LightReading states, “All seven of the top MSOs registered broadband subs gains in the summer quarter. Over the past year, the cable companies have added more than 3.5 million data customers. Once again in contrast, five of the seven leading telcos lost broadband subscribers overall in the third quarter as they focused mainly on upgrading their DSL customers to fiber lines, not bringing on new customers.” Once again telcos are late to the game – in TV and in competing against DOCSIS. Telcos were even late to get in the DSL game, afraid of losing T1 business. They have always had short term thinking.

“More than 80 service providers have opted out of participation in the Lifeline broadband program for at least part of their territories,” writes Telecompetitor. Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Windstream, Charter, CenturyLink, FairPoint and Frontier have all opted out to the FCC. Part of it is “rural carrier stand-alone broadband pricing”; and part is the 10MB x 1MB requirement which DSL can’t meet.

Meanwhile, telcos have to re-think their TV strategy in the wake of OTT video. A consortium of them should buy DISH Network and its Sling TV.

After Google Fiber’s debacle in 2016, all providers will re-evaluate fixed wireless instead of a wired strategy.

Maybe g.fast makes its way past some trials in 2017.

Will Comcast, Charter or Google become the number 4 cellular provider in 2017 after AT&T, VZW and a combo of T-Mobile+Sprint.

FiberLight, LUMOS, Sprint wireline, Fatbeam, Wilcon, Towerstream, and some others will likely be part of some M&A this year. No one saw Fairpoint getting picked off by Consolidated – or the pending Level3+CenturyLink disaster.

Another year of turmoil coming at you! With a new FCC.

One thing all this says: we don’t know what will disrupt in 2017.

Tags: amazon, cellular, disrupt, FCC, google, isp, telco, telco tv, usf
Related tags: customers again, google, broadband, telcos, comcast, amazon

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Hope to see you at ITEXPO in Ft Lauderdale on Feb 8-10! Let’s meet for coffee.

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Pharmaceutical sales (drug sales) are similar to telecom. Drug reps sell to the hospitals, fighting to get their drug in the formulary. The formulary is theup-to-date list of approved pharmaceuticals that doctors can prescribe. (If it isn’t in the formulary, it can’t get billed or fulfilled.)

In any line of business – antibiotics, cardiac, anti-viral – it is rare that there is just one drug. So the drug companies fight to get on a formulary and stay there. The formulary is like making the provider list at a master agency or a VAD (like Tech Data). It is a win to be listed. Champagne is poured, but then the real work begins.

Reps then have to educate the doctors on their drug, its uses and effects. It is the doctors writing the orders, much like it is the agents and VARs presenting the quotes.

It is a lot of work to get your drug to the top of mind of a prescribing doctor. Lunch and Learns, leave behinds, studies and more are required for the doctor to trust the medicine. Then the doctor will get samples in order to test and measure.

It is no different for a carrier and the channel manager. The big difference is that for any drug there are clear indications for use.

“In medical terminology, an “indication” for a drug refers to the use of that drug for treating a particular disease. For example, diabetes is an indication for insulin. Another way of stating this relationship is that insulin is indicated for the treatment of diabetes.” [medicinenet]

We don’t have that in telecom. The indication of use is often vague, broad and unclear. It is probably why 2016 was the year where vendors had to start putting out case studies, which more often that not didn’t make it any clearer.

The first thing in sales is to find the Pain. Then give the prognosis and provide a band-aid. Telecom doesn’t really explain what pain they solve, what indicators should signal what service.

I was recently on a cloud webinar where the presenter listed every cloud service the company offered. Quickly but without ever clearly stating who would buy it and why.

DRAAS? Awesome another acronym!!! I’d rather be selling cyber-security/hacking insurance. I could sell more.

In 2017, try to talk about the pain and the indicators instead of the acronym, the fancy technology, the opportunity, the possible riches for selling some nebulous cloud service. We still have to go to the customer, explain this stuff, identify the pain, explain the solution. WE have to do that. So it would help if you would be a drug rep and provide the education, the sample, the studies. Thanks.

Tags: pharma, sales, sellecom, selling, usp, value
Related tags: cloud service, formulary, sales, doctor, explain, doctors

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The Limited is just the latest retail chain to go bankrupt. Sports Authority closed earlier this year. Many others are on the slide down into BK.

There is a lesson or two to be learned from retail.

Marketing is very important to getting traffic which may or may not result in customers. Whether your store is online or in a mall, it is your job to get Attention and traffic.

The Limited started with one store in 1963. Sun Capital Partners acquired the Limited in 2007. That marked its decline. Expansion and Brand dilution worked against it.

Growth for the sake of growth is irrelevant without profit. I see this in the startup world all the time (Uber). Getting bigger as if that is the answer.

In telecom, the alternative provider has about 50K billing accounts. (By the way, doctors need about 5000 patients to have a practice.) It isn’t about being as big as Comcast or AT&T (22M accounts each thereabouts.) A wireless ISP can have a thriving business with 2000 accounts – as long as each tower is profitable. Adding towers just to grow will eventually sink your boat. Each tower has to have return on investment. The same as each brick and mortar store.

VoIP is now over 13 years old. The Telecom Act is 20 years old. Retail is older, but the same trend is happening in all 3 areas: shrinkage.

Retail moved online – and malls have to readjust their thinking about what they are to the consumer (think destination attractions). VoIP went from computer to computer to cellphone. No one even thinks about the 500 features that come with the fancy softswitch or PBX anymore. It is more about dial-tone and call quality – and price.

The Limited, JCPenneys, Sears, et al – what was the difference between stores? Not much other than the name on the store credit card. Nordstram, Anne Taylor, The Limited and other chains all opened outlet stores and additional concept stores. This diluted the brand.

A lot of chains are known for coupons, sales and discounting so that a customer would hardly ever pay full price. As jewelry is up for negotiation / discount so to are cars and VoIP. No one wants to pay the first quote. It’s commodity, like all but the best designer names. And why are they designer? Because they built up a Brand.

A Brand is a Promise, Expectations, Persona, Value and Unique. It is the difference between commodity and value; commodity and unique.

Don’t be like retail. Don’t be a store for things. Build a strong message around your service/product, your company, your promise. Brand around that. Or end up like The Limited, JCP, Sears or Sports Authority.

To be fair: a lot of these chains were over-leveraged like Avaya or the ILECs currently. That’s fine for expansion in a growth market, but what growth markets are left? Voice? Broadband? TV? SD-WAN?

So too much debt, shrinking markets, no coherent brand led to BK. Hmmm, what does that sound like to you?

Tags: BK, branding, marketing, retail
Related tags: difference between, sports authority, limited, retail, brand, store

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