'Solution Design Assistance' Important When Choosing a Master Agency  
June 30, 2008

by Dan  Baldwin, TA Founder

I received a call the other day from an IT consultant who wanted help choosing a master agency to team up with to help him sell network service to his base of equipment clients.  I told the fellow I thought there were several key differentiators to consider when choosing a master agency to work with but none more important to an IT consultant than providing something close to "guaranteed solution design assistance".

Does the Master Agency have a "Solution Design" Team? 

Selling network service used to be all about commodity pricing. The dial tone, long distance and Internet T1 pricing you proposed was either higher or lower than what the customer already had. No more. Fortunately, "convergence" (the merging of voice, data & equipment onto MPLS-like networks) has made selling network service fun again. No longer are we simply fighting over a couple pennies here or there to win a customer. Now the converged "network service design" you propose to a customer has to work, solve the customer's problem and be better than the design the competitors are proposing.

As more of the lucrative multi-location customers look to migrate to MPLS networks that converge their voice, data and Internet into one pipe, making sure the recommended solution works efficiently is critical to winning the business - or messing up the customer's business. IT consultants looking to profit from bringing these converged network service solutions to their clients need to choose a master agency that has a solution design team that produces solutions "guaranteed to work" if the IT consultant does not have the network service design experience to guarantee the proposed design him or herself.

How Does One Judge the Quality of a Master Agency's Design Team?

A master agency ("MA") will do their own design work in house or they will simply have their sub agents work with a sales engineer ("SE") at one of their favored carriers. While working directly with a carrier's SE to design a customer solution certainly reduces the strain on the MA's resources, it may not lead to the "guaranteed to work" solution an IT consultant is hoping for because SE delivered solutions tend to be somewhat "in-the-box" generic solutions designed to work the "carrier way".

The best master agency design team is an in house design team headed by the owner of the master agency itself. The reason the in house team is the best is because it answers the obvious customer question, "Why am I doing business with you?"  When a MA simply proposes a design designed by the carrier SE the design generally comes with countless caveats and assumptions. It's kind of like having the master agency say, "I haven't really looked into this personally but the guy that pays me the most money suggests you should try this out."

Questions to Ask...

Different carriers and providers have different ways of delivering similar multi location solution designs. Some designs lean heavily towards a "hosted services" design while others lean towards an "equipment centered" or "hybrid-hosted" design.  The value master agencies bring to the table is finding the right carriers to provide the right solutions. Because the job of the IT consultant is to answer the customer question, "Why is this network solution design you're proposing the best for my business?", it's the job of the IT consultant or any sub agent to make sure the solution designers have the customer's best interest at heart and are not just leading with what's in the carrier's best interest. Questions an IT consultant should ask the master agency should include the following.

1. Is your "converged" solution design work done "in house" or do you defer to your carrier sales engineers?

2. How many different providers or carriers do you use for your converged MPLS-like solution designs?

3. How do you decide which carriers or providers to use for which designs?

4. What percentage of your converged designs go to which carriers (do you have an automatic favorite provider)?

5. Can I speak with one or two of your sub agents who have recently sold a design your team proposed?

6. Does your master agency specialize in solution design work or is it more of a low price T1 "turn & burn" shop?

Do you agree or disagree? Forward printable comments to Dan@TelecomAssociation.com