I think that some companies just don't get the channel value. And they never will. (You all know who I am talking about). There have been some changes lately in a few channel programs that have not been to the benefit of agents. (Shocked, right?) But as I am reading PAETEC's 10-K, I see that some companies DO understand the importance of a body of independent business people who market and sell their services.
If PAETEC does not retain its senior management and continue to attract and retain qualified personnel and independent sales agents, PAETEC might not be able to execute its business plan.
As we head into the "recession", it will be agents who experience the most scrutiny in credit apps. (Personally, I have seen how AE's have much more leeway in getting past credit checks.)
As companies cut staff, the channel will be the hunters. Most account teams are in place to nurture the big relationships. Everyone fights for Fortune 500, multilocation enterprise, and government accounts. Medium (100 to 250 employees) and small business (under 100) are the bread and butter of channel agents. (Not just for telecom either; VAR's sell IT into this space as well.)
With the Co-Lo Agent Consortium announcement, it might be the right time to form an agent association. Who promotes agents? Who advocates for agents? Where do we get research that agents bring in X per cent of the business or that we reduce churn? What do you think?
BTW, Microsoft and Cisco have a huge channel. All those certified folks pushing product for the two big boys, who will now be pushing services against our channel. (But that's a session for Boston.)
6. XOHM, WiMax, and the VC money to build it from Intel, et al.
On the other hand, how does T-Mobile gain by buying a CDMA and iDen mixed signaling company? The systems aren't compatible - and that is why Sprint is crippled. Handsets don't come with chipsets for more than one signaling code.
Big reason not to: Sprint just lost its largest cellular customer - Qwest.
Why would DT want this mess? Sprint just lost an appeal of an FCC order to move off the spectrum that Nextel shares with public safety by mid-June.
There were rumors months ago that DT wanted to sell T-Mobile. I guess it was a case of go-big or go-home. (The only other GSM carrier in the United States is AT&T - and DT won't be buying that.)
I'm surprised that the cable coalition (Pivot, maybe) has not thrown the money in to buy Sprint. It would give them a wireless component, VoIP patents and a voice termination network. It would also give cable a Top 10 IP network. I guess cable is saving its pennies for that DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade that analysts expect to cost another $100 billion. (It cost about that to upgrade to DOCSIS 2.)
Verizon Wireless can't buy Sprint because even this crazy FCC and those fine folks at Anti-Trust would have a hard time right now passing that merger.
That leaves Alltel, a fellow CDMA carrier that went private last year. I doubt they could scrounge the money up.
My last guess would be Craig McCaw. If anyone could raise the capital to buy Sprint, he could. But we all know that he would just be flipping it. Paint it. Plant some flowers. Then re-sell it. That wouldn't be good for the employees, the channel or the customers.
Agents would probably benefit since Sprint and T-Mobile are the most agent friendly of the cellcos.
One last point is that Sprint isn't the only company in our space that is messed up. (Some just hide it from the press better than others.) It seems to be a sign of the times. Or it could just be greed. If you just focus on the customers, everything else is details.
It’s sad to say, but I have told my father on more than one occasion the only difference between telecom and the car business is we wear nicer suits. It wasn’t always that way. I recall a time when someone said they would do something for you ... it happened. When you gave a gift to someone they said ... thank you. When a channel manager or VP left one carrier they called and stayed in touch instead of trying to steal client and agent lists.
When you have been doing this for more than 20 years, I can honestly say I have seen it all happen more than once and it never ceases to amaze me. The only silver lining is you can almost always count on:
A) They’ll be fired soon or leave their current employer
B) They’ll end up in jail
C) They’ll set up accounts on the side and then leave the carrier to become an agent
D) They leave the industry
E) They’ll call on you again with a new program which is ALWAYS better than what they were selling before
The people we are the most successful with today (vendors and agents) are the ones we have strong personal relationships with that have been built on mutual respect and trust. This comes from doing the common things uncommonly well:
A) Returning calls in a timely manner
B) Responding to e-mail
C) Being professional
D) Showing concern for you and your business
E) Going the extra mile to help regardless of the time of day
F) Showing appreciation for your business
G) Being creative to resolve issues
H) Creating win-win scenarios
I) Paying us in a timely manner (had to throw that one in!)
The entire industry has been stretched very thin. Everyone works on tight schedules, tight budgets and struggles managing their workload. However, if you just remember to embrace some of the endearing qualities our parents hopefully taught us ... your income, quotas, job satisfaction, blood pressure and happiness will take care of itself.
Slow down and call someone to say “thank you.” Return that call you’ve been putting off. Respond to that e-mail in your inbox you’ve ignored. Help someone solve a problem.
You can’t place a value on doing this. It doesn’t cost you anything but your time and as MasterCard likes to put it’s “priceless.”
Ted Schuman is founder and CEO of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based PlanetOne Communications. PlanetOne currently represents more than 20 providers and supports more than 1,000 agents with three offices around the nation. Schuman has more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience in the telecom industry and more than 15 years experience in indirect channel management.
Last month, Sprint hosted its 2008 partner convention at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn. This was the largest Spring indirect meeting to date.
The event kicked off with an introduction by Dan Hesse, Sprint’s newly appointed CEO. Dan lived up to his reputation as being a straight shooter by candidly addressing some of the challenges the company faced in 2007 along with the key components Sprint will be focusing on in 2008. He outlined his plan, which was focused on improving the customer experience as it relates to care issues and network performance. Dan is reviewing overall strategies and assessing how to the increase the value of Sprint Nextel, Based on his experience, the consensus is that he’s the right man for the job.
As you would have guessed, much of the conference was focused on Wireless. There were many different break-out sessions focusing on topics from retail store products to the new cutting edge Xohm technology. Xohm is the branding behind Sprint’s wireless broadband strategy. Xohm is going to offer incredible speeds through WiMAX in most of the major cities. Sprint did not share a roll-out time frame or any details on how their BSP’s were going to particpate in this technology.
This year, Sprint’s exhibition hall was filled with more sponsors than ever, a positive indication of the growth in this segment. Some of the big names included Motorola, Samsung, Sanyo, Palm, RIM, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sierra Wireless and many others ...
The Sprint BSP kickoff session was hosted by Steve Rowley, channel vice president. Steve reinforced the importance of the channel to Sprint’s success. He shared his 2008 strategy, focusing on a closer alignment of the channel to the overall business. Steve believes the channel’s ability to be flexible is a key attribute, allowing Sprint to provide true valued-added solutions to the end-customers. He also highlighted the channel’s low churn numbers and how important this will be in 2008. Steve closed by commending the channel on its incredible growth and pledged to support his partners in achieving the same success this year.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse opened the meeting.
Sprint’s director of indirect channels, Steve Rowley, adresses the gathering.
Sprint’s vice president of distribution channels, Mark Krantz.
Agents spin the wheel of fortune in the exhibit hall.
Some of you have been selling SAAS for a while. It's called Web conferencing. The next generation will be Tele-Presence - that combination of instant messaging, scheduling, conferencing and talking.
Tele-Presence is supposed to be a time saver because you will know how to contact someone - IM, mobile, e-mail, or desk phone. This will work well in Fortune 500 environments where meetings are the way you spend your day and where no project can move forward without the input (and approval) of others.
Time saver. Productivity booster. Cost savings.
Cost savings arrives in the form of less travel. As someone commuting to Chicago weekly, it is a money saver and a people saver. ATA went bankrupt last week. United has planes tied up. Oil is up. Spring break is ending. TSA is still doing stupid things. (Google TSA pliers). All this makes for one lousy environment for the traveler.
Hence, why SaaS is a people saver.
(Another way that SAAS is a people and money saver is that you outsource the IT function to the application service provider.)
Then add in the carbon footprint story. That's right. Save your carbon footprint by using conferencing instead of travel - even car travel. So start selling the Green solution - Web conferencing.
Much has been written and discussed lately about Software as a Service (SaaS). I agree with the notion that the market for SaaS will eventually catch up to the hype. Customers typically dictate how quickly some of these new technologies emerge. By that, I mean, if the customers are calling for it, then the agents/consultants will quickly learn how to deliver it.
On the flip-side, if the agents can be early adopters, then they can help educate their customers on the benefits of SaaS and help them understand why they need to implement it on some level. We try to stay ahead of the curve, so therefore we usually take the latter approach.
Our M.O. at ATC is that one of the best ways for us to learn and understand a product, service and/or technology is to use it ourselves. We’ve done it with Treo, BlackBerry, audio/Web conferencing, VoIP and now SaaS. We recently partnered with 19 Marketplace to migrate to their Hosted Exchange, BlackBerry Enterprise Server and anti-virus services. We also added increasingly important backup capabilities. Lastly, we will soon be migrating our company fileserver over to SharePoint. The services are relatively easy to provision and manage using the Workplace2go online portal.
The BlackBerry Enterprise Server and backup utilities were easy to implement. The migration to Hosted Exchange was a bit more time consuming, but that all comes down to how much data is in your e-mail file, bandwidth limitations and overall PC computing horsepower. Their anti-virus solution has gotten rid of 30-50 unwanted emails per person each day.
Overall, the migration to a SaaS environment reminds me of a quote by Abraham Lincoln. He said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” The point is (no pun intended), it’s important to spend time developing a good migration plan and understanding all of the steps along the way. This makes the process much smoother and helps to reduce the number of hiccups along the way.
The fact that we do not have the resources in-house to manage these services, combined with the appeal of having all services with one provider, on one bill, made this an attractive option for our company. These, and others, are the same reasons that SaaS would be an attractive solution for an existing and/or prospective customer, especially in the SMB space where (time and money) resources are much more limited.
David Goodwin co-founded Advanced Technology Consulting Inc. (ATC) in 1999 to introduce a new approach to selecting, managing and optimizing telecommunications services. He leveraged more than a decade of experience at Cable & Wireless where he learned all aspects of the telecom industry and earned national awards for his performance.
By Charles Cary, vice president of small business services, XO Communications
We have been selling Software as a Service (SaaS) at XO for about six months now. As expected, developing the funnel and ramping sales has taken time. What was not expected was the amount of education required, especially for smaller businesses. Also, the mix between direct and channel sales is tilted more in favor of direct than channel than expected.
With respect to the length of the close cycle, we've learned that while most in the industry have a pretty good idea of what SaaS, or Software on Demand, is all about, much of the outside world does not. They, logically enough, are focused on their everyday business.
They need tools to run that business but don't care much about the delivery mechanism. So, call closes are rare as most prospects need to learn and get comfortable with this new approach. In our experience, concerns about control and security are not as prevalent as some articles would have you believe, especially at the low end. Rather, the biggest concerns are the usual ones: cost and price. "Show me how you can provide me the tools I need at a compelling cost and price." Cost in terms of ease of implementation and operation. Price that is 15 percent and less than what I pay today. Otherwise, it's not worth it.
Why has channel uptake been slower than we'd hoped? A large reason is because SaaS is different from what a lot of channel partners have focused on in the past. Software is the bread and butter for many in the channel. But not necessarily using an online delivery mechanism. Many partners have done quite well with minimal or no software in their portfolios. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
Anytime you suggest altering business models you are going to face challenges. While the monthly recurring revenue model is familiar, the services or support model may not be. At XO, we began with services that we felt would be easy for our sales channels and prospects to grasp: Hosted Exchange, BlackBerry, Backup and Recovery, Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam, etc. While these are understood for the most part by the channel and market at large, they have not been in the portfolios of most channel partners. Adding VPNs, data, and wireless to partners' portfolios has taken time. In many cases, so will SaaS.
Like so many things in telecom, the technology and hype are often way ahead of adoption. But we believe the market will look for service providers and channel partners to offer these services. The value is there. Over the long term, markets are rational. They will get there.
Charles Cary is a seasoned executive with expertise in telecom, IT, enterprise software, and internet industries, both domestic and international. Currently, he is vice president of small business services at XO Communications. In addition to running marketing organizations, Cary has significant finance, sales, and general management experience. Other companies where Cary has worked include Nortel Networks, AT&T Inc., PSINet, and CGI AMS. Cary has an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan.
