Going to the big national agents shows are good
for master agents and carriers needing to meet
with one another but often "run of the mill"
sub-agents like myself wander from seminar to
seminar feeling "second best". Not so at the
private annual events put on by the individual
master agents like
MicroCorp's "One-on-One".
At these invitation only shows, the agents that
help the master agents put up the big numbers
with the carriers get their own time to mix with
their peers and meet "One-on-One" with the big
carriers.
As I indicated in my initial review of
MicroCorp's "One-on-One" event last month, over
110 agents attended to learn from each other and
the 24 vendors that came to help put the party
on as well as MicroCorp's two dozen staff
members. Following is what I learned, as an
agent, talking to MicroCorp's agents at this
year's event.
Click here to view photos and video from the
event.
Top 10 Agent Take-a-Ways from MicroCorp's
One-on-One
1. The carrier path to the VAR volume goes
through master agents
- Whenever agents feel comfortable among their
peers, as they do at these private master agent
shows, they naturally seem to start talking
about the big deals they've recently won or
lost. My constant question in these
conversations is, "How'd you get that lead?"
(I'm always trying to learn if anyone's actually
doing any marketing any more.) Invariably the
answer is, "My VAR subs." When I ask what
percentage of a productive sub-agent's lead come
from VARs, many look at me kind of funny and
say, "All of them."
When I asked the
carrier reps at the MicroCorp event if they were
having any luck signing up computer equipment
VAR's ("value added resellers") or network
systems integrators as direct agents, many
agreed that they were having some luck but that
they weren't getting any kind of serious or
consistent sales volume out of them. All the
"VAR volume" was coming through the
relationships the master agent's subs had with
their VAR lead partners.
2.
You don’t need to understand data to sell it but
you can’t be scared of it
- There were people at the event that insisted
agents who did not become much more technically
savvy were not going to make it over the next
several years. I disagree. Agents who can't
learn the tech sales lingo are certainly at a
disadvantage against their sales engineering
peers but all successful agents really need to
learn is a little more than they know now when
it comes to selling tech.
Adam
Shapiro, the very well received
CustomerCentric Selling guru that MicroCorp
brought in for a 60-minute session titled, "Cross-Selling
Conversations" really brought this home for
the attendees. He quickly had all the attendees
writing "plausible emergencies" and
"conversational success stories" as a quick and
easy way to screen almost any business client or
prospect for almost any technical solution or
service.
I quickly decided
that for me to do a better job of selling
technical solutions I barely understand, all I
really need to do is get together with my
vendors and memorize a "plausible emergency" and
a "conversational success story" for each of the
high-margin solutions they keep wishing I'd sell
more of.
(TA is actually
going to try and work out a deal to get Adam to
work with TA's vendors to do just that.)
3. Competition from carrier direct sales people
continue to be an agent's worst "sales killer"
- As most agents will admit, getting leads from
VARs is great but it's not perfect. The biggest
obvious problem with VAR leads is the agent
doesn't "own the sales relationship" which means
the prospect often feels free to shop the
agent's price out - even to the direct sales
side of a carrier the agent's already proposed.
Sure, most good agents can sell through this
using "value" and "single point of contact" on
bigger deals but this unpleasant customer
practice still tends to compress profit margins.
Direct sales people
are an even bigger threat when it comes to
larger VARs with their own carrier sales
divisions. The owner of the VAR can dictate that
his or her VAR equipment salespeople screen
every equipment deal through the VAR's own
carrier sales division but this does not seem to
be happening. VAR equipment sales people peddle
their network service leads first to anyone that
will feed them more equipment leads (like direct
carrier sales people) no matter what their
bosses say.
4. Agents look to focus 2011 sales efforts on
conferencing, retention, colocation/hosting &
TEM/WEM
-
The best part of any
agent gathering is picking the brains of peers
to find out what they're sales focus will be in
the next 12 to 18 months. fFor the agents and
subs I met at MicroCorp's "One-on-One" that
seemed to be:
a.
Conferencing
- Screen any and all customer bases for audio
and web conferencing opportunities
b.
Retention
-
Every MicroCorp
staffer had a button that said, "Ask me about
'Retention'". Enough said.
c.
Private Colocation/Hosting
- As most agents I know shy away from anything
close to resale
(they mostly want to
represent multiple third party vendors) I was
somewhat surprised to learn at least one very
successful agent was very interested in
colocation and hosting in a "private cloud"
configuration. If his customers want the the
cloud to protect their servers then he was eager
to take them there - as long as it was a cloud (colo/hosting
facility) that the agent controlled.
d.
Telecom & Wireless Expense Management
-
While I list this
last, TEM/WEM seemed to be the area many
"classic agents" were happiest about getting
into especially for mid-market accounts in
multi-location, multi-carrier environments.
Where confusion rules, people who can read a
phone bill easily shine.
5. Hosted applications vendors and agents are
specifically networking with Avaya & Cisco
partners
- Telecom equipment vendors do not seem too
threatened by backup and disaster recovery
("B/DR") solutions in the cloud. Many agents see
B/DR as a natural icebreaker to get them in with
telecom equipment partners - and it's selling
very well.
6. The only marketing many agents are doing is
to all their local equipment VARs
- While many VARs seem to bemoan the constant
assault by telecom agents and vendor wanting to
partner with them, most seem to be OK partnering
with someone.
As most telecom agents are fairly poor
marketers, it seems to me that it would not take
too strong an effort to displace a VAR's current
telecom partner by simply being more
professional and staying in better touch.
7. "Clouds" rule high-end conversations but SMBs
are just buying "a phone system"
- While the cloud vendors are right that the
mid-level & enterprise decision makers all want
to talk about their "cloud strategies", many
end-users still are not totally sure what they
even need to buy to “have the cloud”. Agents
calling on larger accounts need to know what
products in their bag represent the “cloud” and
need to be able to describe affordable
strategies their clients can use to "migrate to
the cloud" over a reasonable time period.
SMB clients though
still just need their office phones to work at
the least possible cost. Cloud? Prem? Two cans
and a string? They don't really care. SMB agents
need to know what products in their bag comprise
both inexpensive phone solutions their customers
can use now AND migrate them to useful cloud
applications now or later.
8. Cloud discussions need to be framed around
the customer's critical applications and
infrastructure
- At some point in the airy fairy conversation
about "taking your customers to the clouds" your
customers they will notice the big price tag.
They will immediately sober up and compare that
price to whatever it costs them to run their
apps and infrastructure now and in the near
future without any change. Simply
talking about "the cloud" for the sake of the
cloud doesn't sell anything to anyone.
Within a minute of
anyone saying the word "cloud", agents need to
understand what are the mission critical
applications (inventory, payroll, CRM, etc.) for
the business and on what servers and
infrastructure do these applications now depend?
How much does it cost to maintain, grow, move
all that IT infrastructure? What are all the
"non-cloud" options the business is looking at
to protect their apps? Knowing the "anti-cloud"
options makes selling the cloud a lot easier.
9. Selling too
much "cloud" puts VAR lead partners out of work
- Agents need to understand that most VARs and
integrators pay their mortgage by selling
servers and software licenses and then
maintaining both - on the customer's premises.
Pushing the servers and the software into the
cloud seems like a great idea to agents and a
lousy idea to VARs.
Before trying to get
VAR lead partners too excited about joint
selling the cloud, agents need to really
understand what the VARs are selling their
customers and how cloud and SaaS ("software as a
service") solutions threaten the way they're
currently making money.
(To help agents
better understand the VAR and integrator world,
TA is attending VAR tradeshows and watching VAR
webinars. Through 2011 it's TA's vision to know
as much about the VAR world as we know the
telecom world - and pass that information on to
all of TA's members and vendors.)
10. Agents need turn key marketing
- It really amazes me how little effective
marketing telecom agents do. It's a good thing
most agents are naturally fearless sales people.
VARs on the other hand do much more marketing
than most telecom agents and there's lots of
marketing vendors like
Robin Robins and
Kutenda selling them "MSP marketing" to help
them. (Which is a good thing because most VARs
are not that great at sales.)
When I go to agent events like MicroCorp's and
ask what kind of marketing successful agents are
doing, the response is usually, "word of mouth".
When I ask them what kind of marketing they want
to do, it's everything from email marketing to
search engine optimization to social media.
If TA had more time
and resources I'd put together a
Robin Robins or
Kutenda program just for telecom agents. Add
good marketing to naturally gifted salespeople?
They sky's the limit.
MicroCorp Top 10 Conclusion
I'm pretty sure
agents go to national shows to be seen but to
the private master agent shows to learn. I've
been to several of the private master agent
shows over the last year and a half and
MicroCorp's was one of the best for the quality
of the 110 agents in attendance and the amount
of new, useful "take-a-ways" I learned that will
help me next year in my own agent business.
Top
10 Agent Take-a-Ways from MicroCorp's