Channel Surfing Blog 

Cara Sievers

Since Lightyear Network Solutions’ headquarters in Louisville, Ky., is not light years away from my home office in Memphis, Tenn., I took a short drive there recently to learn more about the company. The Lightyear team really rolled out the red carpet for me – quite unnecessarily, I might add – but I am still extremely appreciative of the warm, hospitable welcome I received.

As some might know, the notion of Lightyear was concocted on a Denny’s napkin and the company was founded in 1993 as UniDial. The name was changed later to get away from the connotation that everything was “dial”-oriented, i.e. switched long-distance and the like, as agents began to move upstream and data was on the rise. This reseller, which also owns its own facilities for VoIP, boasts a wide service offering and a virtually ubiquitous footprint.

Sam Tucker, senior director of national sales, regaled tales of founder, president and CEO, Sherm Henderson’s involvement in the development and pioneering of the agent channel as it looks today. The Lightyear Authorized Agent Program is known for stellar support, provided by a 24/7 Network Maintenance Center and more than a hundred back-office support team members. Lightyear generates more than $80 million annually through its independent national sales force of Lightyear agents and its independent representatives of Lightyear Alliance, its direct sales organization.

Tucker said it’s all about quality, not quantity, when it comes to onboarding agents. “We have about 210 active agents, and we don’t want 2,000,” said Tucker. “We want the group of agents that are going to produce the majority of our revenue. ... And we’ve always stayed pretty tight with our agents.” Sales operations are supported by Portal Plus, a sophisticated OSS that supports the back office, faces the clients and faces the carriers, and also provides commission-tracking info. LightSource, the online agent portal, provides quoting (including bulk or multilocation quotes) and ties back to Portal Plus.

I would like to thank the Lightyear team for an informative and fun visit! (See pics below!)

Lightyear’s home base is situated in a nice business park in Louisville.

A good looking group gathers in the Lightyear lobby: (L-R) Drew Allgeier, channel partner development; Kevin Shady, vice president, sales and operations; me; Steve Rush, marketing coordinator; Sherm Henderson, founder, president and CEO; and Sam Tucker, senior director of national sales.

Sherm Henderson was hard at work, but took some time to rap with me about the state of the channel. “I think the agent channel should be very aware of the educational stress they’re getting ready to go through,” he said. “I think to be able compete in the next five years, you better be very, very intelligent about a lot of the technology that’s coming out, whether that’s on the wireline or wireless side. You have to consider both, you have to understand where both are going and you have to play into both. So, when I see that and I see what a pioneer we’ve been, and how innovative we’ve been and how long we’ve been in business, there aren’t a lot of people out there who’ve been there.”

These are Lightyear's e-mail and voice mail servers, multiple redundancy Web servers, Unix and Windows operating systems, and backup storage servers.

Lightyear taught me how to “talk derby.” The company was definitely gearing up for the fastest two minutes in sports, with different areas of the building named after parts of the racetrack, i.e. the cashier, starting gate, etc.

Observe the strange penny collection that lurks around Lightyear. I’m told this began with a couple of pennies that were change from a fast food order. And as the order was repeated, so were the pennies, and a tradition was born.

The juice is loose! Lightyear now hawks highs with its new energy drink. Sherm said he wants to see if they can sell anything! Sherm’s son, Josh Henderson, who founded Lightyear Alliance in 2003 to target the residential market, is heading up the energy drink push. They saw the energy drink market taking off by leaps and bounds – hey, why not?

Steve Rush (left), Paul Dorfi (right), agent sales manager, and I grin in front of Fourth Street Live! The three of us, along with Kevin Shady and Drew Allgeier had just enjoyed an excellent dinner at Red Star Tavern on Fourth Street. It was a windy evening ... but we had a great time!