At Long Last I'm an
Agent Again - 7/2/7 Those who have known the association from the beginning (TA sent its first member email blast in the mid 1990s) know that I was a fairly successful telecom agent when I founded TA. In fact the primary reason I started TA was to try and show my agent peers how spending so much time and energy selling on price alone is not the best way to sell. (I was still signing businesses up at 15 cents a minute when it seemed the whole agent world was suddenly pushing 10 cents a minute.) Unfortunately though, as soon as I started the association, an organization designed to bridge communications between agents and vendors (the "swoosh" in the TA logo is actually supposed to represent a bridge) I started to become seduced by "corporate telecom". But now I'm better because I'm an agent again - well mostly I have partnered with one of my oldest friends in the industry, Andrew Cohen of ATEL Communications. ATEL was founded over 22 years ago by Steve Handelman and is one of the most successful independent interconnects in San Diego. Five years ago Andrew and Steve became one of the first in the nation to create a telecom master agency within the corporate structure of a classic interconnect, a company that sells phone systems to businesses. While the telecom agency Andrew built within ATEL is an entity independent of the equipment side of the house, offering telecom & data network services to ATEL's embedded equipment customer base of several thousand businesses was the first order of business five years ago. My role with ATEL is to help them now take their network service business to the next level by selling directly to targeted business markets and to help ATEL's many lead partners close their networks service opportunities. So I'm mostly an agent in that I'm selling directly to businesses but I'm helping out the sub-agents that are a good fit for ATEL. So why the "Agent Confidential" TA Blog? To take TA back to its roots As I stated above, I started TA by "thinking out loud" and publicly asking, "Why sell 10 cents a minute when we can still sell 15 cents and make more money?" My position (some would say cliche) from the beginning was "let's sell value over price." By throwing my thoughts out for public consumption I elicited what I wanted - the other side of the argument. I was never so happy as when Jeremy Katz of Saetec took issue with my thoughts and thought to correct me by pointing out, "Dan, lowering the customer's phone bill is the greatest VALUE we can provide!" Hey, I think we're both right. There's a place for saving people money but there's also a place for showing businesses new and synergistic ways to reallocate the money they're spending on telecom. For too many years I've been locked away in the TA "ivory tower" speculating on how telecom and data should be sold. But before just a couple months ago I hadn't sold anything to anyone for over five years. Now I'm back where the rubber meets the road - feeding my family on 100% commission. I'm back and I'm legit. The only thing that hasn't changed is that I continue to think out loud - and will continue to do so in ... "Agent Confidential". Dan Baldwin is Director of Sales for ATEL Communications, Inc. and Founder & Editor-at-Large of TelecomAssociation Want to respond or add to this blog? Send printable replies to Dan@TelecomAssociation.com An Auditor's View of Value Response by George Emmons - 7/3/7
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