Video Week-in-Review 11/23/9

This is Dan Baldwin, Telecom Association Executive Director and this is your Week-in-Review video blog for Monday, November 23rd 2009.

It's a short three day week, but TA's working all three of them and here's what we're doing for our vendors and members this week.

As many of you know, TA's spent the past couple weeks learning what there is to know about managed services providers or "MSPs".

What's an MSP? MSP's are the guys that our customers call on to keep their computers working but instead of charging by the hour for "break fix" work they now charge a flat monthly rate - a residual revenue stream - sound familiar? Why do we care about MSPs?  Because they're the "computer guys" that our customers call on to see if our VoIP phone proposals and broadband data proposals make any sense.

If the MSPs like our customer proposals, great - we get to sell our stuff. If the MSPs don't like our customers proposals - they are in a position to shoot them down. MSP's can be great friends to telecom agents if we gain their trust and big deal killers if we don't gain their trust.

TA has officially taken up the cause of figuring out just exactly what we have to do to gain their trust. How are we doing that?

Well, the week before last we went out to Las Vegas for the "MSP World" event which is the semi-annual get-together for the MSP Alliance, a 10-year old membership organization for 8,000+ MSPs. TA was actually a media sponsor of the event thanks to Mike Burns of A+ Conferencing, Jerry Tedino of PAETEC and Patrick Oborn of Telarus.

Then last week we were in Los Angeles at a "MSP Business Simulation Experience" sponsored by CompTIA & MSPSN.

What have we learned about MSPs so far? Mostly that this doesn't work - waving cash in their faces.

Ever since telecom agents figured out that our customer's computer consultants can be a friend or an enemy we've been waiving cash at them. While it may work on some IT VARs, the vast majority of MSPs are simply put off by it - it makes them think that carrier sales guys don't really care about the customer - just the cash.

This cash brochure by the way was inserted into the MSP World show bag by a telecom master agent. Not a TA master agent.

Here's what we put in the bag on behalf of our three sponsoring vendors. This is TA's brand new monthly MSP newsletter. You can download & print a copy of it from TA's new MSP website at www.MSPTEL.com.

On the back you see the Telarus ad - "Add a carrier specialist to your sales staff".

Here's the PAETEC ad - it tells about their new "IP Simple" solution that shows MSPs how they can practically get a new free phone system for their IT clients.

Here a page that show's how A+ Conferencing can help the MSP's easily profit from the one-third of their customers that are buying conferencing from someone else.

On the cover of the newsletter you can see how TA is soft-selling telecom carrier services through our "3 Quick Questions". I won't read it all to you as you can go to www.MSPTEL.com and read it for yourself. If you want to get in front of TA's new MSP audience by sponsoring our MSPTEL.com monthly newsletter be sure and give me a call.

This week, TA's following up with many of the MSP friends we've made over the past several weeks to learn what it really takes to partner with MSPs and IT VARs in a serious way in 2010. We think we've got it half figured out but we're going to be testing our theories to be sure.

Next week we'll tell you where we are with all our MSP meetings and let you know how TA members and vendors will be able to finally get in good with their local MSPs and IT VARs to make 2010 our best year ever.

So anyway, it is Thanksgiving week and while it's been a tough year with the recession and all we've still got an awful lot to be thankful for. We're all still in business and the continued convergence of business technology puts us in high demand with business owners so long as we stay on the cutting edge of technology.

While I think 2010 will be better than 2009 it still won't be easy by any stretch - for us or our customers. Fortunately, by getting to know and by earning the trust of our MSP brothers we'll be positioned in 2010 to offer even better technology solutions to our customers and continue to earn an honest living - by helping our customers.

That's it for me. Be sure and check out all the TA vendor email blast headlines, there's lots of great information that will help you out.

And have a great Thanksgiving with your family!

Attend MSP World with TA to Meet 200+ Managed Service Providers

Join TA at the MSP World show in Las Vegas Nov. 12 - 13th to meet hot managed services providers who could be your best carrier services partners in 2010. more...

If you're looking for carrier service agents and partners who are not looking to beat you down on every last dime then you need to check out this hot mix and mingle opportunity just posted at TA's MSP Blog.

MSPs Large and Small Selling Carrier Services

This important blog post was just published at TA's MSP blog.

Click here to see examples of three managed services providers selling carrier services.

Click here to read why carrier services agents, partners and providers need to care.

More...

TT (Telecom Tidbits) - TBI and Adtran, Telarus all-in-one Marketing, Atomic8ball Websites, PAETEC / MegaPath Awards

The following "telecom tidbits" ("TTs")  caught my interest lately so I thought I'd pass them on. 

Agents and Equipment

TBI's Adtran Blog Post   I really like this blog post. It showcases a classic master agency (TBI) that is taking on the challenge of related telecom equipment.  It's one thing to be able to quote bandwidth - it's quite another to be able to discuss the equipment options necessary to make the bandwidth work. Click here to check the blog post out...


Agent Marketing

Need a Marketing Facelift? Telarus introduces "all-in-one" marketing package. Telarus has worked out a special deal for its agents to get a marketing overhaul, including a new logo, web site (with XML plug-in), business cards, and fliers (including printing). All for under $2000.

Click the following links for more info: http://airvae.com/telarus_agents.html    http://airvae.com/telarus_agents_websites.html


Need a Telecom Website, Email Newsletters and Lead Management?  Check out and compare the services of Atomic8ball.  I put this together for TA members after seeing what these folks do for other TA agent members I know.


Vendor Awards

PAETEC Ranks in the Deloitte 2009 Technology Fast 500™ List  The Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ recognizes 500 of the fastest growing technology, media telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America based on percentage of fiscal year revenue growth over five years. In 2003 and 2004, PAETEC also ranked on the list at #2 and #154 respectively.

MegaPath Named to Deloitte Technology Fast 500 List - Company Recognized for the Third Time as One of the Fastest Growing Companies in North America. MegaPath Inc., the leading provider of managed IP data, voice, and security services in North America, today announced it has been ranked 364 on the 2009 Deloitte Technology Fast 500. The list ranks the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America based on percentage revenue growth over a five-year period.


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Dan's First "Everything" Post

My name is Dan Baldwin and I think about the sales and marketing of telecom, data and related IT solutions and applications to business customers almost all the time.

Sometimes it's a problem, especially when I think about it in the evenings, on the weekends or while I'm on vacation (when I'm supposed to be fulfilling the role of good husband and father.)

For almost 15 years I've been dumping out all my thoughts on my business website at www.TelecomAssociation.com (or one of the previous versions). I've likely written a thousand articles or more since 1995 but very little of it is properly archived as all our old web sites were written in Microsoft Frontpage which does not really lend itself to easy archiving.

For the past year I've been looking at all the new fangled  "content management solution" ("CMS") websites like Joomla and WordPress trying to figure out where to park all my thoughts moving forward. Well I'm sure there are people who can just look at Joomla or WordPress and say, "Oh, I get it!" - but not me. I tried.

One thing I do get is Blogger blogs. I've been publishing different personal blogs on Blogger for a year or so and I've almost never had to think about "How to Publish" I just "write and publish". So now that's what I'm doing with my business blogs. I figure I can keep wasting time thinking about the best way to publish or just publish. I've chosen the latter.

Who do I publish for? The 3,800 members and vendors of Telecom Association. They're mostly all interested in the same things I'm interested in. I've put together a nice little business sharing with TA members all my thoughts on sales and marketing of telecom and related services and helping TA's members share their thoughts with each other.

The biggest problem all TA's articles have is getting sorted out properly so TA members can find content they're looking for weeks, months or years after the original article was published. The problem with most blogs and articles on the Internet is everything is published in chronological order. If you don't see and save content you like the the second it's published it's quickly swallowed up by the Internet - never to be found again - unless it's properly indexed such that a Google search will recover it.

But why so much searching? Can't we organize content better from the start so one's audience can find what they're looking for without so much lost time searching? My aim with this blog and all the related TA blogs I'm publishing is to properly sort everything that needs to be sorted without going deep into debt hiring a staff of web programmers.

For those of you who want to check just one blog for everything, this is your blog. My goal is to publish everything here AND in the proper sub blog. Let me know how I'm doing by posting a comment from time to time.

If you're in telecom and you want to Link up in LinkedIn, please sent me an invitation.

How can I help you? Contact me at Dan@TelecomAssociation.com or call 951-251-5155.