Economy’s Effects on Agents Varied

that the economy will be static and possibly miss opportunities. A proper scenario-based strategy process involves constant calibration."

Agent anecdotes mesh with that view – and telecom salespeople are adjusting differently to the souring times.

Vince Bradley, president of master agency World Telecom Group, said subagents are starting to ask for more of a client’s business, rather than just some. That means they’re now requesting to handle wireless, equipment and professional services in addition to the standard local, long-distance and data. The problem Bradley sees is the return of price as the main factor in what companies decide to buy. “I’m not trying to say that I think customers will bail on solutions-oriented decisions over price, but price will be increasingly more important,” Bradley said.

Bill Power, CEO of the Agent Alliance, agreed that customers are “watching their pennies.” But that also opens the door to helping clients save money and view agents as outsourcing resources, he said. Opportunities expand as companies cut staff, yet need more and more bandwidth, said Power.

Dan Bommer, president of partnerTEL, told a similar story. He actually expects to hire more people because clients are requesting expense management, inventory auditing and help with wireless contracts.

In the current economic climate, services such as telecom expense management (TEM) might seem like a luxury, but the opposite might be true. Businesses, especially large enterprises, are unlikely to cancel their TEM or managed services contracts, said Scott Levy, director of North American inside sales for TEM specialists Evotem LLC. Those services do cost companies, of course, but there aren’t enough staff, or people with the right skills internally, “to effectively take the burden of whatever has been outsourced back on,” Levy said.

“In the bad times we reduce customer expenses; in the good times, they expand their network services,” said Jan DeRobertis, vice president of NBC Solutions Corp. However, the economy has impacted the New York company’s sales “horribly” so far this year, she said, noting lengthening sales cycles. Instead of one visit to close a deal, it now takes multiple visits, DeRobertis said. “We will survive,” DeRobertis added, “but with very little growth.”

Yes, customers are tightening their belts, research firm Gartner Inc. said in early April, and that is manifesting itself in cautious responses to sales pitches. And yet, businesses aren’t slashing expenses altogether.

For Communication Planning Resources’ Bernstein, it’s critical to embrace a pragmatic approach to the changing environment. “You have two choices in a down economy: one, you have to go into your savings and ride it out and just reduce expenses, or work twice as hard for the same money.”

-- Cara Sievers contributed to this article

For more detailed analysis on the relationship between the economic slowdown and telecom sales, read Selling in a Slowdown: Industry Leaders and Analysts Debate the Impact of an Economic Downturn on Telecom.