Isn’t it about time we say something positive about the industry we have chosen? Is it time for us to say “thank you” to the carriers we partner with for their support and the opportunity they offer for us to build an extraordinary lifestyle? Is it time for us to say “thank you” to all the customer service staff, the channel managers and network sales engineers that provide us everything we need from start to finish in this industry and help us attain excellence and achieve success?
Unfortunately, we usually hear more about the one bad thing a carrier did versus the 10 good things they continuously do. A few recent blogs have used this public forum to rip specific carriers regarding their lack of customer service or continuous commission problems. I was always taught to praise in public and criticize in private.
So here is my big “Thank You” to the individuals and carriers that do it well, do it right, and do it better than the others ...
1. Event. The Q.Marketplace convention hosted by Qwest every January is second to none as an industry leading agent centered event. Qwest provides exceptional technical training, back-office support, marketing advice and resources, food and entertainment, plus hours of relationship-building activities with its staff. And I mean its entire staff – everyone from network engineers to provisioners, to sales support, marketing and customer service, all the way up to the directors of the channel. It is invaluable for us agents to get to know the top people in each department of the carriers we partner with. Now, I’m not a huge Qwest agent, but Sandy Spencer and all the people at this event make every agent feel like an irreplaceable part of their team and their success. Thank you, Qwest!
2. Carrier. I believe ACC Business is extraordinary in all areas of telecom. It takes only the top products and services from AT&T; makes them simple to sell, implement and manage; then it adds a personal touch and hands-on approach. Its staff really listens to us and takes the time to understand the agents needs, then works hard to meet those needs as the industry continues to evolve. J.D. Baker, Sandy Butler Buchanon and their entire staff understand the value of building a very personal, long-term relationship with each individual agent. ACC is responsive with proactive customer service, reliable and timely provisioning, as well as accurate, competitive commissions and generous bonuses. Everyone at ACC works hard to meet the needs of agents’ customers and is ultimately focused on the success of their agents. Making sure the agent has all the tools, support and knowledge necessary to build a successful business. Thank you, ACC!
3. Individuals (to name just a few).
Dan Reinbold, PAETEC sales manager. Dan is an excellent sales trainer with a great system for continuous telecom sales success. Thanks, Dan!
Doreen Mazzacchi, ACC commission manager. Doreen gets them done correct and gets them out on time, every month. Thanks, Doreen!
Dane Boat, Qwest sales engineer. Dane is a great source of technical knowledge and always willing to get involved and help close any deal. Thanks, Dane!
There is a difference between ordinary and extraordinary, and I think it’s time we recognize the people and companies in our industry that do the extra little things to help make our companies extraordinary.
Please tell us who you think does it well, does it right and does it better than the others.
James Lockhart is president and CEO of Telecom Management Inc. (TMi), a solution-based telecom consulting firm, which he has grown from a one-man operation to a small master agency with voice, network and conferencing divisions. He serves on the ACC Advisory Board and TMi is an ACC Presidents Club winner. Lockhart also is a member of the 2008-09 PHONE+ Channel Partners Advisory Board.
I have a good friend named Lisa who is an exceptionally intelligent doctor. She studied at top schools, did her residency at Harvard Medical School, and can execute the intricate procedures of her specialty with aplomb. However, faced with a flat tire, balancing her checkbook, or talking to her lawn guy, she turns into an incompetent fool. By all accounts she is a genius, but she has absolutely no common sense or social grace. She’s book smart, but street dumb.
We all know people like this. Folks that do well staying within the lines, but who can’t improvise or deal with the curveballs that life throws. After a mind-numbing e-mail exchange with a customer service representative from Telcordia, I realized today that our beloved telecommunications industry is a “Lisa.”
Telecom excels within its structured boundaries. Almost without exception, anyone in this country can get access to the PSTN and make a call to anyone else with no issues whatsoever. Our data network is getting faster and more efficient. Prices are going down at an astounding rate. All these facts are especially impressive when you consider that, as the first country to adopt these new technologies, our underlying infrastructure is one of the oldest in the world. Simply put, we’re not too bad at the technical part of telecom.
Despite that technical power and ability, our industry is almost embarrassingly street dumb. Part of this is no doubt the residue of the monopoly mindset from the days before deregulation. That mindset, still prevalent in most of the ILECs and many of the IXCs, favors adherence to the system rather than to customer satisfaction or actual outcome. Another factor is the industrywide tendency to hide behind protocol, as if it were some mythical, carved-in-stone set of commandments and not just some ideas that humans easily came up with and can just as easily change. The bottom line is that telecommunications as an industry simply lacks common sense.
Take my Telcordia experience – I needed to get pricing for a specific data subscription, so I naturally sent in an inquiry via their Web site. The response I received from the “Customer Care Consultant” did not provide me much care, but then again I’m not yet a customer. I was advised that the requested data is only available to those customers with a license on a monthly basis. If I was interested (did I change my mind since my inquiry?), I could fill out the order form that wasn’t attached to the e-mail.
I replied acknowledging that only customers could get products and indicating that my point was to communicate my interest in becoming a customer. I just needed a price quote, please. The response came back – no mention of a price, but this time the order form was attached. This order form was essentially a blank invoice inviting me to include payment information and to fill in the items I wanted, with item number and price.
Oh boy. I replied and explained that I couldn’t fill out the form since I didn’t know what the item number was or what the price was. I also communicated my discomfort filling out and signing a document entitled “Order Form” when I wasn’t yet prepared to commit to an order. I asked if I couldn’t simply get a price quote for the product.
Two days later, we are still locked in a battle of wills. I refuse to provide payment information, and Telcordia essentially says that they won’t quote a price until they have an order. They even said that they can’t determine the licensing fee until they know more about my company (selective pricing?). I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.
This experience and a few others like it over the past few weeks got me thinking. The indirect channel is absolutely vital to the industry for one simple reason – we are outsourced common sense. There are no more shrewd street-smart businesspeople in the industry than in the indirect channel. Especially today, with cutbacks happening at nearly every carrier, the value of the common sense we can offer is indispensable. I wonder if we might incorporate this concept in our sales processes for some value. I could probably sit with any business owner and listen to stories of sheer stupidity committed by this company or that. At the end, the pitch would be simple – I’ll be the guy who injects common sense into these transactions. I’m starting to think that’s an offer no sane businessperson could refuse.
Wow, whatever happened to the telecom business? The excitement sure is not what it once was. The pool of talented people just does not come knocking on the doors as they once did. There was a time not too long ago when the best and the brightest were doing whatever they could to be “in telecom.” Word got around and once they got in, they told their friends and their friends wanted in too. Now, not so much ...
So what do you reckon happened to make it that way? Well, some of the reasons are controllable and others just are not. For example, word got around, and today’s tech and telecom salespeople look to the big names with cache’ like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco as “THE” place to work. They make great products, are exciting, and the media hypes these companies. That is not something you can do much about – so this is an “uncontrollable.”
Telecom people once were respected for their knowledge and professionalism. Come to think of it, they still are ... and that is controllable. If clients respect your people and their professionalism and knowledge, they will tell their friends and word will get around. Therefore, when hiring new people into the business, be sure they are professional in their work ethic, appearance, and have good writing and verbal skills. Then train them to be as knowledgeable as they can be. Start training them from the first day they arrive and never stop training them. Training is a great way to invest in your business and provides a high ROI if the money is invested it the right people Yes, clients like smart people who save them money and make their business operate better. Word gets around.
Other controllable items are paying your people well right from the start and keep on paying them well (and on time). While you are at it give them a fair benefit package that respects and values work/life balance and demonstrates respect for the individual. You see, that will help retain them too. They tell their friends and word gets around.
Bill Taylor is president of Corporate Ladders, a management, sales and business development consulting and coaching firm specializing in technology, telecom, Internet, health care and financial services companies. He is the PHONE+ Channel Coach and a member of the 2008-09 PHONE+ Channel Partners Advisory Board.
News reports today named Ed Whitacre Jr., the former chairman of AT&T Inc., as the new chairman of the “new GM.”
Ed ran AT&T from the time it was Southwestern Bell through the mergers to become SBC, gobbling up Pacific Telesis, Comcast Cellular (Cingular), SNET, Ameritech and AT&T whose moniker it took.
Under his watch, AT&T went through regular gyrations, slashing staff, cutting service levels, leading the industry with indecipherable contracts. Whitacre also was questioned by the Senate AntiTrust Committee in 2006 about leaking customer information to the National Security Agency.
But here’s the scary part: BusinessWeek, in an interview with Whitacre in 1999, reported that he did not use e-mail or have a computer in his office. I quote: “Whitacre doesn't have a computer in his office. He prefers to write notes by hand or have letters typed by his secretary. He said, ‘I'm not computer illiterate, but I'm close. If two people are sitting 20 feet from each other and sending each other e-mails, I think that's ridiculous.’”
Leadership comes in many forms. But choosing an exec who eschews modern communications technology to lead a company like GM, which has a history of building technology dinosaurs – well, it sends an interesting message.
For the sake of our economy, taxpayers and job creation – let’s hope Ed has changed his tune on being connected. Why? Because the folks with the new ideas we need to bring innovation to transportation sure aren’t having their secretaries write their blogs, create their PowerPoints or update their wikis.
Recently, it seems like many of our business partners are operating from outer space. What do I mean? Their remaining staff and resources are spread so thin, they can’t perform the functions we rely on them to do ... and when there is a problem, they don’t have the resources to recover gracefully.
In telecom (as many industries), we get used to the culture of “s*** happens, deal with it!” And when technology or humans are involved, that’s going to be the environment – at least sometimes.
But we’re noticing a pervasive trend – a move to “a lick and a promise” approach at some of our Fortune 500 business partners that has really got me worried. I want YOU to worry a bit too ... and if you see this going on, raise your voice and let the vendor know what your limits are ... or write a blog comment!
Here are three recent examples:
Recently, we discovered that our 401(k)/profit-sharing plan management firm, “See No Mice” (the folks with the mutual funds, Web sites and databases) had made an unauthorized loan to one of our staff. The purpose was fine (medical bills). But they kinda forgot to do the paperwork, get our approval in advance, or bother to tell the payroll folks that there was a loan deduction to be made. Fiduciary responsibility? Ha! They just sent out a four-figure check on the strength of a phone call from the employee – without even a signature. So ... I called to find out what was going on. That’s when the real fun began. Waffling, whiffling, then admitting they made a bad mistake. Promises to put the funds back, and make a side loan to the employee. Hours of conference calls. Then ... oops ... they sent dunning letters to the employee instead. Round and round. Six hours of my time later, $2K was back in the right place.
We order servers and workstations from an American manufacturer, “Quell,” with a strong interest in maintaining channel partners. This month, we waited three weeks to get a server configuration corrected ... calling and e-mailing at least a dozen times. In the midst of it, our dedicated rep was laid off, with zero warning to us. An auto-reply to yet-another e-mail asking when we’d have the proper config revealing this personnel change. Finally, my cage-rattling at the exec offices produced no fewer than five mid-level execs who wanted to help. Fortunately, the server opportunity hadn’t gone away. But ... the storage subsystem we needed to add was now so backordered that the manufacturer wouldn’t even accept an order including it. I wonder if they were out of stock three weeks ago when I tried to order it initially?
And don’t even get me started on our seven-month odyssey with wireless carrier “Her-Guy’s-Gone.” It sold us very crashable, “not ready for prime time” touchscreen smartphones and overestimated the performance of a tethered smartphone vs. USB modem for laptops by 500 percent. They offered four months of credit on the “now-paying for it twice (USB modem and smartphone) data plans,” then announced four months later: “Because your account is still active, we can’t issue the credits as promised. Can we send you the latest smartphone model when it comes out this summer instead?” Honestly, I think I’m done being a beta tester for them. Alice, just give the Queen of Hearts a call. Oops, her smartphone is dead. Sorry about that!
Large companies are trimming out the “folks in the middle” who either knew how to get things done, or how to train and guide inexperienced staff. Or, the wily barons of commerce are inventing “Mobius Strip” policies, keeping the customer on a never-ending virtual treadmill to problem resolution.
Be like Hansel and Gretel! Drop breadcrumbs along the trail. If you pass your own crumbs more than once ... you know you’re in trouble!
What can we learn other then Zen patience? As you contemplate how you allocate your company’s resources, resist any temptation to emulate these Moguls of Mediocrity! Your customers will thank you – and they’ll know the difference!
I heard this famous Led Zeppelin song recently and it made me think about what is going on in our business and in our society in general. Lately it seems to me that everyone has forgotten how to communicate. I think this just might be one more thing we can blame on the economy right now.
It sure seems that almost everyone is scared of losing their jobs these days, customers are scared of making the wrong decision, and people are leery of long-term contracts. However, all this really does is make things more difficult in the “real world.”
If you don’t know me already, you will find that I am someone who hits people right between the eyes with the truth. I have been told in the past that I need to filter it a little. But, lately I say, “The hell with that, let’s all just remove our damn filters.”
If we say we are going to do something by a certain time or date, let’s get it done by that time/date. Whatever happened to under-committing and over-performing? I have been noticing a trend in almost every aspect of our daily lives that people will just tell you what they think you want to hear – the hell with the truth. All this accomplishes is very short-term highs followed by massive lows and disappointments. This is a trend we all need to break out of, or help people break out of by calling them out.
Vendors, when you commit to delivering a quote of information, don’t commit to the date I want, commit to the date you can actually get me that information.
Agents, quit making promises to vendors you can’t control, and certainly don’t make promises to customers you can’t back up.
Customers, if you need help internally don’t be afraid to ask for it, and show your value by standing out and making changes that are good for the company.
Why does it have to be so difficult? I think we should make the next week, National Be Honest and Follow Up On Your Commitments Week. I would like to have everyone make a special effort each day this week to be brutally honest with someone every day. Think of it as a kind of “Pay It Forward” thing. Throw caution to the wind and remove your filter. I think you will like it and in the end I am confident almost everyone around you will appreciate it.
To make this whole thing entertaining – come back to the blog and post a comment regarding your “Pay It Forward” moments – I am sure everyone will like to hear other people’s stories.
To some of us, it seems all we need is yet another thing to keep track of these days. We are doing more with fewer resources; we have more time into securing sales, but at least we have our residual commissions coming in.
Wait ... where are these coming from? You need to keep an eye on the news and the financial networks to ensure your residual commission provider is not on the bankruptcy steps because that could drastically impact your cash flow.
Several years ago this happened to someone I know well. First the carrier went in to Chapter 11 and during the proceedings that turned into Chapter 7.
The Chapter 7 took 25 percent of his monthly income and wiped it out without recourse. The network and customer assets of the provider were sold to another carrier, but it still left the agent without that residual.
Another example is the hosted VoIP provider in New York that recently shut down with very little to no warning even to the customers they served.
Make sure the residual base you receive is on solid ground while you navigate through this economy.
Does your contract have performance clauses the carrier can enforce to cut its expenses? Almost all of us that have been in the business for several years know someone that got caught in that. Then you hear things like, “They never enforced it in the past.” Well, the past looked different. Economic pressures change the operating parameters for most companies, so do not count on business as usual.
Also take another look at your agreements and the language they use when it comes to assigning ability. In the near future, it is very likely that we will see several mergers and acquisitions as companies assess their balance sheets and future prospects.
Be aware that publicly traded companies have reporting and disclosure requirements and, at the same time, get a little more familiar with your current partners. It may save you a surprise or two.
James Lockhart, President and CEO, 
Josh Anderson, Founder and CEO, 
By Bill Taylor, President, 
