Best Practices Standard Agent/Master Agent Interview

1. How did you come to start your telecom agency and what's your background that got you into the industry?

2. What's your customer target market & solution/product/service offering? (What do you sell & who wants to buy it?)

3. How do you sell? (Yourself, sub-gents, equipment referral partners, direct W-2 salespeople, telemarketing, customer add-on & referral, other?)

4. What is your customer/project management support structure? (Number of support/non-sales staff? Do you do in-house provisioning, project management and after sale customer service or do you "let the carriers do all non-sales stuff"?)

5 How do you market or advertise? (Google, yellow-pages, direct mail, telemarketing, other?)

6. What makes your agency & offerings a better deal for end-user business customers than your competitors? (What are your top three key competitive advantages?)

7. What are the top three vendors that are providing your agency the best value & why?

8. What changes do you see in the way you're doing business over the next two years?

9. What products, services or solutions will you be adding or dropping & why?

10. What's your agency exit strategy? (Sell out, give it to your kids, etc.?)

11. What are your greatest "lessons learned"? (What do you know now that you wished you'd known when you started?)

12. Any words of wisdom for agents trying to replicate your success?

13. What are your thoughts on selling: conferencing, hosted VoIP, wireless/cellular, IP-PBX, MPLS, etc.

14. Other questions.

Questions about this? Contact Dan Baldwin at 951-251-5155 or Dan@TelecomAssociation.com.