TA's "Member Numbers" Page

Who is "Telecom Association"?

Updated 11/1/2010 by Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director
While I founded TA, I was not the first member. The first member was another agent who responded to an eighth-page classified ad I placed in Phone+ magazine for $300 back in November 1995. I think the ad headline read, "Join the Association for Agents". The benefit statement was something like, "Get free sales training guides that teach you how to sell value over price". The call to action I think was, "Call this number and leave a message to join other agents to prevent price erosion".

About 87 agents and 6 vendors left a message that first month 15 years ago wanting to join. Since then over 60,000 individuals have "joined" TA by subscribing to our email newsletter. In the late 1990's we had over 6,000 members and about 65 vendors. After the "telecom crash" of 2000 TA was down to around 2,400 members and 35 vendors. Today we're at 3,710 members and 60 vendors.

But who are the members behind the numbers? Because of the historically high turnover of people who call themselves a "telecom agent", meaningful statistics are hard to come by.  Over the past several years though the turnover of the agent community has slowed as has the growth of "new agents". With a more stable population it's now time to start "measuring ourselves".

While this "member numbers" exercise is certainly important for TA's vendors, it's even more important for TA's members as it's TA's members who give up the real value - their experiences to be shared with fellow members by taking the time to vote on vendor performance as well as share sales and marketing "lessons learned". Before sharing their "secret sauce" TA members want to know they're sharing with their true peers.

So bookmark this page and visit once a month as TA attempts to answer the question, "Who is Telecom Association?"