On Rad's Radar Archives - Page 55 of 376

A Word About Your Elevator Pitch

If I have to ask: Is it like this? You: No.

Is it like that? You: No.

Then you need to work on YOUR pitch some more.

Why?

Because it is not my job – or anyone’s really – to figure out what you do. It is your job to explain in a crystal clear way so that Grandma understands it.

If you can’t do that, well, then you are in trouble. Cuz unless you have the cure for cancer, it will be hard to sell.

Most stuff that is selling – iPhones, cable modems, Viagra – has demand. People want it. People ask for it. Then there is cloud services and thousands of other things that have no consumer demand. These things have to be sold. No order taking. Sold. Sold on benefits.

At a trade show, where the average bear is having 10-15 meetings while looking for honey, the bear doesn’t have time to figure out what you do, what you sell. If it isn’t clear, NEXT!

If you need help with that, Make an appointment with me.

Tags: marketing, sellecom
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March 22, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Game Over: Comcast and Amazon!

The game is over and cable wins.

Comcast may fear competition and bill people for services that they did not receive, but they do have a $6B CLEC business. Most carriers can’t say that.

Now the broadband game is changing. Amazon is a master agent now!

Nevermind GeoQuote or MasterStream! Amazon is now selling Comcast in its own cable store.

Many companies – XO, Cbeyond, Telovations, Microcorp, Fonality, Panterra and more – have tried to sell through a distributor – either Tech Data or Ingram Micro – to a zero result. You have no concept of how hard that is until you make the attempt. Smashing your head on a wall isn’t just an analogy; it is the reality!

If this is as frictionless as the usual 1-click shopping, look out T1 Slingers, because the paperwork alone is a hurdle.

Amazon is even offering their own customer service as an incentive to buy through Amazon, like agents do.

TD Mobility sells mobile devices, tablets, iPhones and cell service from the Big 4. It was never able to turn that into a really successful master agency that VARs used. Some of that is due to the hurdles in place to sell cell service and this ugly thing called charge backs (that cellular companies are infamous for).

You would think selling VoIP through a store would be easy. Pick the device(s), add service, add phone number, e-sig here and enter credit card. Oh, right! Only Panterra Networks uses e-signature. Birch likes to use a 19-page order form for a fax line. Progressive.

I will be watching this closely as it should change the way TV and broadband are bought.

This may turn out to be more like Google Fiber – a nice idea that scared the stuffing out of the Duopoly to roll out Gigabit everywhere despite only pulling in 110K subscribers.

Amazon Cable Store here.

Amazon is also doing VoIP Install!! (see here)

Tags: amazon, broadband, cable, cableco, comcast, master agency, sales, selling, tech data
Related tags: cable store, amazon, service, cable, comcast, store

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The Race to Gigabit is About Business – Apr 15, 2015

You Can’t Win on Price – Jul 24, 2012

Juniper is a Cable Pusher – Oct 06, 2015

The Cable Triumverate – Oct 04, 2015

What Do You Do When Gigabit is $70? – Jun 30, 2015

What’s With the MSO Consolidation? – Mar 26, 2015

Cable Will Win – Feb 16, 2015

Channel, Sales and a Chat with a Master Agent – Oct 15, 2014

VADs, VARs and Cable: How Does That Work? – Apr 02, 2014

Seriously? Comcast Wants TWC – Feb 13, 2014

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

March 21, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Channel Strategy: A Quick Look

Often I hear from channel execs that Agents aren’t the future because they aren’t moving to selling cloud and managed services fast enough. It is always the MSPs and VARs that will be the partners of the future.

Funny how different vendors are trying different things. Fonality is placing bets on both sides as they announced both a distribution deal with Ingram Micro and an exclusive deal with The (Agent) Alliance. So chasing VARs and masters at the same time.

One master agent is chasing MSPs with MITEL.

RingCentral hired an old Cbeyond exec to revamp the channel to – you guessed it – chase master agents!

This tells me a couple of things.

One is that no one has a magic bullet.

Two, the alignment of the product, the message, the customer target and the partner has not happened yet – except maybe for one provider.

Three, UCaaS just isn’t getting the traction every analyst has predicted. I have said before that selling Change is extremely challenging.

Lastly, every partner has a business plan that they are heads down scrambling to work. To switch gears to sell another service – to learn it, digest it, start selling it – is time and effort that they may not want to expend, especially when (1) the price of services is down, so the commissions collected are down. Partners have to sell twice as much to maintain. And (2) the price of the new services – 8×8 ARPU is $369 – is too little for too much effort. And why sell something that may jeopardize your relationship with the client? Also, no one has the deployment down to a science yet [see Dell survey], so that is another fumble waiting to happen. Too much risk, not enough reward.

Agree or Disagree?

Tags: channel partners, hosted pbx, master agency, msp, UC, VAR
Related tags: selling, channel, services

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The UC Install Opprtunity – May 19, 2014

Educating the Channel with Certifications – Feb 07, 2012

A Failure to Communicate – Apr 06, 2011

By the Numbers – Feb 10, 2016

Uh Oh, Microsoft is Closing the Gaps – Jan 15, 2016

The Monitoring Master Move – Nov 20, 2015

Everyone Wants You to be an MSP – Nov 05, 2015

A View of UC from Broadvoice – Sep 24, 2015

What Business Model Should the VAR Examine? – Mar 30, 2015

Peter’s View: The Channel Ecosystem – Sep 16, 2014

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

March 21, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Change or Die

Verizon’s VP Janet Schijns gave a presentation about Millennials and the Channel. A majority of the polled Millennials did not know what a Channel Partner was. Change or Die. (I thought when Tiffani Bova left Gartner, we would have heard the last of that message, but alas it is still the drum beating.)

It isn’t that most partners do NOT want to change. It is that most partners are heads down, entirely focused on survival!

The race to zero isn’t helping!

A combination of the cable growth and the bandwidth price compression have forced agents to sell more and more to make less and less. There just isn’t time to learn new services and shift gears. AND the SMB market IS consuming what they are selling – bandwidth, cheap voice, wireless.

That isn’t to say that partner don’t need to learn new services and sell them.

It also might mean that the message, training and collateral aren’t nearly hitting the mark the way that carriers think they are. After sitting through 14 meetings this week as well as walking the floor daily, the messaging to the partners is product focused, tired, repetitive, and frankly unappealing.

The job of the carrier is to grab the attention, wow! the partner enough that they go sell the services whether or not there is a spiff.

While every carrier tells me they meet with their partners and have business plan reviews, etc. Are they really listening? Do they actually hear what the partners are saying?

My message is to the carriers: Change or die on your story and marketing.

P.S.

The more that carriers say that VARs and MSPs are better partners – (All we hear is the charge to the VAR brigade) – the less agents will listen to you. #justsaying

PPS

When carrier employees have a vague understanding of the products, it is a challenge for partners to have a good understanding of those products. See UC, SD-WAN, NFV and other acronyms.

Tags: agents, channel partners, marketing, strategy
Related tags: partners, change, carriers, message, partner, carrier

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Verizon Invites the Channel Once More – Mar 20, 2015

Vendor Buys Its Platinum Partner – Jun 09, 2014

The New Channel Myth – Jun 21, 2012

Why You Should Get Certified – Nov 30, 2010

Personal Branding for Agents – Oct 05, 2009

Momentum Trolls Windstream (Going Up-Market) – Feb 02, 2016

Monday Morning Thoughts on Sales and Strategy – Feb 01, 2016

On the Channel Hamster Wheel with PlumUC – Jan 11, 2016

Data Center Outlook for 2016 – Jan 06, 2016

RAD Rant on Channel Marketing – Dec 01, 2015

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March 18, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

What Happens in Vegas

At the Channel Partners Expo in Vegas, rumors are running wild. Metaswitch-Genband being settled in patent court. Polycom-Mitel cuz money.

Another Broadsoft client gets bought. MagicJack (yes, magicjack) decides to over-bid in order to not be the bridesmaid again. MJ pays $42M for Broadsmart. That is more than three times revenue!

Unlike EC16 last week, no one is saying Slack or Spark or HCS. So the enterprise story doesn’t translate to channel? But providers want to move up-market …. via the channel? So should the messaging be similar?

More M&A: NETXUSA, a value added distributor that distributes a lot of Polycom, was bought by Ingram Micro. Ingram wanted to get into the space and NETXUSA has a nifty phone provisioning platform that Ingram wants (a la Parallels moves). Ingram is being bought by HNA in China.

This show has two themes: SD-WAN and UCaaS. Both terms everyone is already tiring of.

When talking to service providers, the single biggest problem seems to be messaging, which could translate into Branding or could be Differentiation. One person even said, “Do we really need another VoIP provider? When are they going to start consolidating?” It seems that way because most sound the same and chase the whole market. No wonder they say that partners just get 5 quotes and sell on price.

Tags: branding, broadsoft, differentiation, mergers, SDN, UC
Related tags: ingram, bought, channel

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