The Telecom Service SMBs Really Want: Better Marketing

Let's face it - telecom sales in today's war-weary economy isn't that much fun. Sure there's quite a bit of buzz within the channel about hosted & equipment based VoIP sales finally picking up with small & medium-sized businesses (SMBs). But it's not like business owners are getting our numbers out of the yellow pages & inviting us to lunch to hear all about it. The last really fun telecom service I think I sold was flat-rate audio conference calling. Now there was a service that changed the way a lot of small businesses did business. But even that thrill was quickly extinguished by the wet rags that insisted on giving away audio conferencing for free. (Isn't that always the way things go?)

So what's a bored telecom distributor to do that wants to sell something to SMBs that is both high margin & not embarrassingly boring. "Hi my name's Dan. Need a new phone system that rings your desk phone, your cell phone & your home office phone at once and sends your voicemail messages to your email?" Yes, I know I'm supposed to be excited about selling VoIP and I promise I will muster up the requisite enthusiasm at least four days a week, but can't I have at least one day a week where I sell something fun?  Re-enter "marketing" as a high-margin telecom service for businesses.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Dan, you crazy middle-aged fool, we know where you're going here - but we promised after the 'phone card fiasco' that we'd never venture down that 'marketing as a telecom service' path again". Really, never again, never ever? C'mon. This time it'll be funner and a lot more profitable. I promise.

Marketing as a Telecom Service - A Quick History (as best as I can remember anyway)

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the the telephone & becomes rich
1877 - Someone else invents the "Yellow Pages" & becomes filthy, stinking rich
1994 - Promotional phone cards are invented & sold to small businesses as a "sure fire way" to get new customers
1995 - Promotional phone card idea doesn't work. The guy who said it would is sent to prison
2000 - Someone invents "pay per click (PPC)" as the "Yellow Pages killer"
2001 - Google turns PPC into the real deal and gets half of all the money on the planet
2005 - Phone card guy gets paroled. Supports himself with Google's PPC "Adwords" program
2006 - SMBs burn out on PPC & Adword type Yellow Page replacement programs. Looks for better SMB marketing
2007 - ________ gets filthy, stinking rich showing SMBs telecom services that improve SMB marketing

Five Top "Marketing as Telecom Services" Services

To better understand this list you need to allow for the proper definition of telecom, as in, "systems used in transmitting messages over a distance electronically" - sounds like marketing to me.

1. Fixed, Flat-Rate Audio Conferencing - The only reason every business in the US doesn't use the free audio conferencing every day is that the dial-in number & PINs with free conferencing usually change with every call. Any business in the US though would likely subscribe to a flat-rate audio conference service for their weekly sales meetings alone if the dial-in number & PINs were the same every week (so the people couldn't say, 'Oh, I didn't get this week's call-in information). Margin opportunity: Buy the PINs for a flat monthly rate, mark them up 100% and they're still affordable to the SMB.

2. SPAM Compliant Email Newsletter Services - Consider the four audiences that every business in the US is constantly trying to communicate with: their customers; their prospects; their employees & their vendors. Sure, it's fun to jack up their phone bills by making them try to call each member of each group individually but there's decent money to be made in selling SPAM compliant email newsletter services so the SMB can instantly & legally communicate with all audiences via email. Margin opportunity: The service is usually a flat rate monthly service that can be bought wholesale at 5 cents per email address stored monthly and retailed at 10 cents per month.

3. Video & Audio Capture & Distribution Services - Many small business owners follow sports on the web as much as through TV broadcasts or newspapers so they know that audio & video are taking over every sports website that wants to retain traffic. How long will it be until they're looking for the technology partners that will help them add audio & video to their own websites? Except for the video of the guy getting stung by the sting ray, the cost of storing and distributing most video clips is as close to flat rate as you can get through a variety of online services. Most business owners still believe doing their own Internet TV commercial is cost prohibitive. It's not. Margin opportunity: A savvy telecom agent can deliver all the voice & video content service his or her top 20 business clients can use for less than $100 a month and then resell the services at ten times that much or just charge top dollar for the "commodity" telecom services the client is ordering.

4. Web Hosting Services - Before attempting to sell small business owners on how cool it is to have their phone ring simultaneously in three places or gush about the benefits of voicemail messages in an email box, check the web site that the business owner is using for his or her business. The "Internet web site" was supposed to both centralize & unify communications. So why do many small business owners use their web site like a glorified but static business card with color?  Want to show a small business owner how much they can do with VoIP? Show them first what you'll do for them (for almost free) with their web site. Ninety-five percent of what most businesses need to be done with their business web site can be done by a 10th grade high-school student - but the majority of small businesses have yet to achieve even this reachable vision of centralized & unified communications. Margin opportunity: Same as three above.

5. Lead Capture Services - Just as many telecom companies sold off their Yellow Pages divisions back when profits were fat across all product lines, the same telecom companies will get back into the 2006 version of the telecom Yellow Pages service, pay-per-click & Internet-lead-capture, as soon as they realize that it's high margin and it's basically the same as Yellow Pages (only without the involvement of so many dead trees). How to do it? Open up any local yellow pages. Make a list of those professions spending the most on yellow pages ads. Call the owner of one of those dentist offices (just as if you were working for the phone company selling yellow page ads) and say, "Would you give me half of what you spend on yellow page ads each month if I can get you twice the business as all your yellow pages?" At the appointment, show the dentist how a direct mail piece that drives targeted prospects to a web video and an 800 number both costs less than yellow pages, drives in more revenue and is easier to track.  Margin opportunity: The cost of driving in quality dentist leads this way is miniscule in comparison to what one set of full teenager's braces costs a teenage parent.

The Bottom Line?

T1s and DS3s are boring. Video and Internet marketing is interesting. Tell your prospects and customers you'll provide for and show them how to use highly effective "marketing as telecom service" tools at next to no cost if they'll pay the "normal" (high-margin) rate on their telecom network services that they order through you.

Dan Baldwin is an advanced user and distributor of many "marketing as telecom services" services. When he's not fooling around with video he's the President of Telecom Association, Inc. Learn more or contact Dan by visiting www.TelecomAssociation.com or calling 951-251-5155.