TA
Tours Telecom in the Pacific Northwest Netstar, CTG3,XO, New Edge, Integra and
balmy weather welcome TA
by Dan
Baldwin, TA Founder & Executive Director
Over 200 years ago the famous American explorers Lewis & Clark traveled
through the Pacific Northwest
in search of an easy
passage to the Pacific. This past week I passed the explorers' footsteps on
a quest of my own - to visit the intrepid telecom explorers of Seattle and
Portland - CTG3, Netstar, XO, New Edge and Integra.
Here's what I learned...
Netstar & CTG3
Netstar and
CTG3 are two related telecom
master agencies owned by
Dave Laskowski with his partner
Tony Cheng. Netstar is a hands on telecom
expense management ("TEM") company with a knack for getting
free press in newspapers, TV and radio
via their in-house marketing expert
Annie Cheng. Click the link below to watch a TV
story on how Netstar helps businesses save money. Contact Tony Cheng at
425-865-9811 if you'd like Netstar's help in getting a similar PR boost
for your own TEM marketing efforts.
Local Seattle TV news story about Netstar's TEM service
CTG3 is a primarily Qwest master agency that also enjoys the ability to
sell Qwest residential services which they do very well via independent
Internet service providers ("ISPs") throughout the local Qwest footprint
that take advantage of Dave's
Bandwidth Builders
website. To
hook up with CTG3 or Bandwidth Builders, contact Dave Laskowski at
425-458-4070.
We'll have more about Netstar, CTG3 & Bandwidth Builders after we finish
producing the video we shot at Dave & Tony's office.
XO Communications
Beating the local players on their own turf – that’s all XO is working on.
I met Tom
Gorey, XO’s Channel VP and the local XO channel team at the XO office in Seattle and learned
something I didn’t expect – how XO is
positioning itself as a local player in every US market so XO can beat the
local CLECs at their own game – on their own turf.
How do they do it? First, they put a local team in every market. Second,
they support the local channel partners as hard as they support the local
direct XO reps. Does this work for telecom agents and channel partners? It
must because all the master agents I speak to these days suggest that XO
has done what they've needed to do over the last several years to be the
"local CLEC to beat".
TA will have more on XO's local CLEC strategy over the next several weeks
after we publish the video we shot at the XO Seattle office. To get XO on
your team today contact
Dave Sambrook at 678-433-5742.
New Edge Networks
While some carriers and agents want to do everything for every class of
customer,
New Edge Networks wants to focus on their sweet spot.
I met with New Edge's Sales & Marketing VP
Greg Griffiths and his channel partner team at their Vancouver,
Washington headquarters.
The perfect New Edge prospect? The nationwide multi-location business
putting an MPLS network together. New Edge is especially popular among
multi-location retailers and is focused on owning that market.
Many agents are upgrading their prospecting to only consider business
customers with three locations or more. These agents need to get to know
New Edge. Why? The last thing an agent wants to see is their nationwide
multi-location prospect considering a New Edge proposal that they did not
produce.
The other sweet spot for New Edge? Existing multi-location customers that
are trying to save money. New Edge has a solution that allows multi-site
customers to prioritize their critical business applications without
requiring that every location have a synchronous T1 pipe or better. Want
to save your prospect or customers money by converting their T1s to
business-class DSL? Call New Edge Networks. Want to know who you don’t
want to see competing against you? Think New Edge Networks.
TA will have more on the New Edge multi-location strategy over the next
several weeks after we publish the video we shot at the New Edge office.
To get New Edge working on your multi-location deals today contact
Stephanie
Senner at 877-689-5755.
Look for the great video TA shot at New Edge's office in the next week or
so.
Integra Telecom
In their downtown Portland corporate headquarters I met with Trent
Anderson , VP of Marketing for Integra
Telecom, a CLEC that serves 11 states that roughly match the Qwest
local footprint.
I first ran into Integra a couple years ago as a CLEC competitor in a deal
I was working on. They came up big for me again last month when they gave
an impressive presentation at
Vince Bradley's
WTG "Tee & Sea" event.
Whenever I run into a CLEC that looks to be a serious competitor in my
deals, like most of you, I make it my business to find both their sweet
spot and their weak spots so I can either lead with their solutions or
know how to compete against them.
Integra likely has many sweet spots that I hope to learn about but the one
that sticks out the most is the phone
system equipment solutions they bring to the table. In addition to
providing both local dial tone & wide area data and Internet connectivity
solutions, Integra also provides phone
systems .
This phone, dial tone & data/Internet combo makes Integra a triple threat
in the areas they compete. To start distributing Integra Telecom's
solutions today, contact their master agent WTG at
310-456-2200 x2.
Balmy Weather
This past week makes the third time I've been to Portland and Seattle and still
no rain. The weather was unseasonably warm but most remarkable was all the
exceptionally pleasant people I met (a warm Spring after a cold winter?)
In any event I was quite struck by this water fountain I walked past in downtown
Portland since I'm from water-starved southern California.
Free flowing water fountains and public transportation? Is this
Shangri-La? Both Portland and Seattle are strikingly beautiful cities. If
you're looking for a place to visit I'd strongly recommend either. I'm
already looking for a reason to return myself.
Michael G. McLelan
Senior Vice President, Business Markets
PowerNet Global
Michael:
PowerNet Global was our very first carrier partner and much of our
agreement was predicated by sheer honesty and trust. We told you we'd be
big, and you believed us - no questions asked.
6
years later - we're still very honored to be a PNG master agent.
You've never missed a commission payment, always been on time with your
reports, and responsive to issues that pop up from time to time.
(TA Editor's Note: Received a testimonial that
you want to show off? Send it to TA so we can let everyone know how great
your program is.)
Salt Lake City & Denver - Meet with TA in June the Week of the 22nd
After a two week rest (so we can
produce and publish all the video we've collected) TA is completing its
"West of the Mississippi" Spring road show with a visit to Salt Lake City
and Denver. We'll be in SLC on Monday, June 22nd and then in Denver on the
23rd, 24th & 25th.
"We
were surprised by
the accuracy of TA's prospect list
service. The contact names & phone numbers were over
90% correct -
much better than other lists
we've tried." Brett
Stauffer,
Capital Bandwidth
Vegas Trade Show Videos
We had initially uploaded all these videos to TA's YouTube sites
here
or here but it seems that firewalls or other problems prevent our members
from viewing YouTube videos so We're rehosting all the videos to a new
server and presenting them here.
Devi
Jaspal,
Intelisys'
Senior Director of Operations
on their the Audex suite of
products which includes telecom expense and asset management ("TEM") and
customer relationship management ("CRM") tools for full end-to-end
lifecycle management capabilities.
Eugene Gutman,
CEO of
Vocal IP a
nationwide Internet telephony service provider ("ITSP") of hosted VoIP,
IP-PBX & SIP trunks on an overlaying MPLS network. Founded by engineers,
VocalIP specializes in design, on-site installation & training of business
VoIP solutions competing with XO, Qwest, Level(3) & Global Crossing.
Greg
Griffiths, New Edge
Networks'
Marketing VP on their private MPLS over DSL solution that offers
multilocation businesses the lowest possible costs for the best private
data network solutions blending both T1 and DSL circuits
Chuck Piazza,
Smoothstone IP
Communications'
Senior Vice-President on their managed IP communication solutions for 100+ users
in the enterprise space including hosted VoIP, SIP trunking and wide area
networks (WANs)
"Members
Choice" Award Winners With great fanfare and a 21-gun salute, TA announced the winners of TA's
4th annual "Members Choice" Awards. All 3,200 TA members were invited to
cast votes and 322 ballots were accepted and counted. What resulted from
over four months of nominating, voting and counting was the selection of
the Top 10 vendors in 20 fresh industry categories. Click the image below
to view a printable image of all the winners. As previously announced, for
the next year, TA's vendor directory will first list these award winners
in "vote count order" for the directory's 20 industry categories.
About This is Telecom Association's (TA) weekly email newsletter for Complimentary
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