TAN Video Script 3/10/6
D - Thanks for tuning into Telecom Association's Telecom Agent News for Friday, March 10th, 2006.
D - I'm Dan Baldwin, the editor of Telecom Agent News.
N - And I'm Nancy Baldwin, the president of Telecom Association.
D - As promised, today's show is titled "Dan & Nan's Excellent Adventure in Vegas"
N - And we've come semi-prepared to share the cool things we experienced at last week's Channel Partners tradeshow produced by Virgo in Vegas this past March 1st through 3rd.
N - But before we do all that allow us to draw your attention to a very special matter - the fact that you're watching us instead of reading us
D - That's right Nancy, Telecom Association has broken the bonds of text and clipart. With this telecast we are entering into the new dimension of full video that encompasses both motion and sound. Cool, huh?
N - That's right Dan, we're here not to showcase ourselves but to showcase how you all out there in telecom agent land can revolutionize your own communications with your own audiences of customers and prospects.
D - If we can do it trust me, you can do it and over the next several weeks and months we're going to show you how! But first let us share with you the most important lesson there is to learn about Internet video. Ms. Baldwin, would you please do the honor?
N - With pleasure Mr. Baldwin. The most important thing to know about internet video is that "embedded video", what you're seeing now where we're in a crowded video frame that's packed onto a web page that's surrounded with other stuff is really cool but is really only used to get your attention. No one really wants to watch video longer than 30 seconds on a tiny little box. So the most important lesson to learn about internet video is to get your audience's attention with the little embedded video frame but then make them click a link that pops up a new page so they can watch the rest of the video on a bigger screen.
D - What a fabulous idea. Let's do that right now. Excuse me sir or ma'am. In the interest of preserving your eyesight and preventing carpel tunnel of the brain, would you be so kind as to click the link just below labeled "click here when Dan says"?
OK, I'm saying it now, "Dan says", click the Dan says link now.
N - To see the rest of the video you have to click the "Dan says link" because this video ends in 5 seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1 - bye now!
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D - OK! Now we're getting somewhere. Look at all this space! What's the darn point of having a 17 inch computer monitor to watch a 2 in video?.
N - That's right. And by clicking that link to get to our bigger video you've just taught yourself the second most important lesson of Internet video - clicking makes magic.
D - Right you are Madame President. Active communication requires active active participation. If you can't get your audience to click on something then let me assure you that you are not actively communication with your audience. What you're mostly doing is actively wasting your time.
N - Dan, aren't we going to talk about about the tradeshow.
D - Yes I think we should but first let's "actively communicate" with our audience by measuring their retention with a little quiz.
N - What if they don't pass the quiz?
D - If they don't pass the quiz then continuing with this show would be a waste of everyone's time.
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N - Congratulation on passing the quiz. As you guessed, quizzes are just one more way to get and keep your audience involved in your marketing communications
D - Just a few video housekeeping notes before we continue with our tradeshow review:
1. Throughout our show we'll be referring to links you can click to get more information. Those links can be found below. If you want to explore them right away just click the pause button on us and then click one of the buttons below.
2. You'll also notice that on most the longer videos we have on our site you'll see a scroll bar below or what look like chapter links to the left of the screen. Both allow you to skip forward on a video but you have to wait until the video fully loads before you can skip forward. You can actually see the progress of the video load just below the scroll bar. On a video that's more than 10 minutes long you may wish to wait a minute or two before you start viewing it. This brief wait will allow the whole movie to load so you can then skip around in the video to find what you're looking for.
3. Another item to note is that you don't want to play two videos at the same time as that can crash your browser windows.
4. Most internet video problems are pretty easy to overcome and certainly are worth your time. If you rund into a video problem you can't solve just email us your problem and we'll see what we can do. Just send the email to dan@baldwin.net.
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N - And now to the tradeshow review. Dan, question number on everyone's mind is "Was it worth going to?"
D - Absolutely without question. If you're any kind of telecom distributor you won't find another show on the planet that offers a more affordable way meet the exact technology and telecom vendors you want to talk to.
These folks can be hard to track down on the phone sometimes but when you go to the show they're all standing in 10 by 10 or 10 by 20 booths which makes it pretty easy to get any and all questions answered about any program or service.
Bottom line, if you're a telecom agent, channel partner or any sort of telecom or technology value added reseller or VAR you can't afford not to go to these shows. If your clients expect you to be on the cutting edge of new solutions you need to be where those solutions are being rolled out and getting on a first name basis with the vendors who can get the new services implemented for you and your customers.
N - So for the agents, partners & VARs it's a no-brainer. Go to the show to meet over a hundred vendors with the new cutting edge services that your clients and prospects are asking about.
But what about the vendors, is it worth it for them to show up & exhibit? Are they going to meet enough new agents at the show for them to retire their investment in having a booth at the show?
D - That's a tougher question but the answer is still yes. Getting business from agents is all about inspiring confidence in agents. If you're not exhibiting at the show the agents want to know why. Are you running out of money? Are you changing your business. Exhibiting at the trade show tells both your current and prospective agents that you're solid today and you'll still be around tomorrow.
Furthermore, if you don't exhibit at the show you're going to miss meeting the new generation of agents, the ones that sell hardware too, who are used to meeting technology hardware agents at the various technology hardware shows. There isn't another show that does a good job showcasing telecom & technology services. Channel Partners is the show and I think that vendors and distributors expect to find each other there.
The bottom line for vendors seems to be whether they think the quality of the show is trending up or trending down and the vendors I spoke to said the Channel Partners show is trending up and that they plan on exhibiting at the next show in Washington DC
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N - So the exhibit hall gets two thumbs up. Over a hundred vendors with cutting edge services. Everything a distributor could want. How about the educational seminars. How did they stack up.
D - What with all the meetings you're trying to take with vendors and agents it can be tough to even get to the seminars but I did personally attend both general sessions.
The first session featured keynote speaker & basketball great Charles Barkley and was sponsored by Voila IP. I filmed both sessions and our audience can watch them by clicking the links below labeled "VoilaIP/Charles Barkley" or "What Buyers Want".
As far as the quality of the sessions goes it probably depends on your expectations. We're all marketers of some form or another and the show is pretty much all about getting excited about selling telecom and technology. Well the content definitely showed up at the sessions but the delivery could probably be made a little more "salesy".
I mean hey, we're all about sales right? Now I don't necessarily need all the rah-rah you might find at a national Mary Kay sales seminar but when you go to see a future basketball hall of famer who has won a gold medal at the olympics you expect to get fired up - you shouldn't need to worry about your blood pressure dropping to the point that you might actually slip into a coma.
But hey, he did his job - he got people thinking about Viola IP and he warmed up quite a bit when he got to the question and answer part of his talk.
The last session, "What Buyers Want" was great - borderline genius. To get the people you want to sell to on a panel and hear what they honestly think about the way you prospect, sell and follow-up. You just can't ask for anything more out of an educational seminar.
What you can ask for is better sound quality. they had three tabletop microphones for six panelist but it was almost impossible to hear them. I'd highly recommend that all non-professional speakers who speak in the future be outfitted with a wireless lapel microphone so you can hear them no matter what.
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N - So in summary, if you just go for the exhibit hall the show is absolutely "worth it". And the seminars are worth it if you find something on the agenda that particularly appeals to what you're selling. so what are we leaving out?
D - Well while you can't touch it or point to it you can feel that the show had a very positive aura. Everyone seemed excited about both the show, the current state of the business and the prospects for a profitable future. It didn't seem that long ago when alot of people seemed to be wondering if any of us would still be around in a year or two to come to a show. The doom and gloom has been replaced with optimism and I think it's because the vendors have done their jobs by launching exciting new telecom and technology products and services that end-users want to buy and distributors want to sell.
N - Gee Dan, I'm all warm & fuzzy now, Thanks.
N - Well for all you parents out there you know that the only real reason to go to a trade show is to get cool things to bring home for the kids
here's what we got.