Will Landing on the Cloud Stop Our Hard Fall?
Remember the day when a smokin’ deal on long-distance was 28 cents/minute and 56 kbps was considered high bandwidth? What about when an Internet T1 was $1,500/mo? Heck … what about when a 10mbps circuit was $1,500/mo? In today’s market, you and I both know the average prices are 3 cents/minute for long-distance, $300 for a T1, and $800 for 10 mbps. Believe it or not, I recently saw a 10mbps pipe for $499. Wow!
When I see prices like that, I think, “Fantastic for the customer!” But at the same time I think “not so hot” for those of us making a living off of residual income. How many more sales or new customers does it take to achieve the same revenue we once made? How many more customers do we need to get in front of to achieve our numbers? Do we need more people? Do we need better lead generating or customer acquisition tools? How do we overcome this race to zero which seems to be speeding up?
Whether you come from selling telecom services, phone equipment, networking equipment or IT services, the landscape is very similar. There are more solutions and choices for customers to choose from, and the prices for those solutions keep coming down. Therefore, we need a better way to continue doing what we’re so good at doing, continue getting the sales we’ve been getting and also find a new revenue stream that allows us to sell in the same space we’re already selling in, work with the same customers we’re already working with and drastically increase our revenue stream. Thankfully, there is an answer: cloud. While overused and somewhat ambiguous, it is still the answer.
Now I understand learning new things is intimidating. I wasn’t born in telco and I certainly wasn’t born in the cloud. My first job out of school was selling disposable paper goods, asking customers if they wanted their logo printed on recycled paper or non-. Several sales jobs later I found telecom. My guess is my story is not much different than many of yours. Still somehow we all managed to learn about the dedicated circuit, phone service, frame relay, ATM, VPN, Web/audio conference, MPLS, colocation, fiber, VPLS, TDM, IP, Ethernet, phone systems, routers, servers … and the list goes on and on.
Not only did we learn the technologies and the products surrounding it, we also learned who the best providers were and how to approach our prospects and customers with these new technologies. With that, we built a thriving business! It all started with asking the right questions and leaning on the people smarter than us that could help us become the experts we are today. Making the pivot to cloud is no different than what we’ve been doing our entire careers: making the pivot from one new technology to the next.
The nice thing about being able to have cloud discussions is that it enables us to talk about the things IT professionals are excited to talk about. Most of them face similar objectives: reduce capex spending, do more with less and make sure the business is secure, scalable and has a solid disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Thankfully, all of these can be solved with one form of cloud solution or another. You’ll also find that when you talk about the things important to the IT professionals today, you also end up talking about the connectivity, voice and other items associated with their network and/or IT challenges. Therefore, we continuing doing what we do best and we open up a brand new recurring revenue stream for our businesses!
Great, so how do you get started?
- Learn about the services that make up the cloud offerings available to the types of customers you already work with.
- Learn the key terms and lingo of those services. Even if you don’t really understand what they mean or do, act as if you do — you will over time.
- Learn the right questions to ask.
- Understand who the providers are that will support you in selling those services.
It’s no different than how you may work with the channel managers today, or how you might work with a master agency. Soon you’ll be running cloud sales calls on your own.
Here’s a list of private and public cloud services that are most popular:
- Hosted PBX (UCaaS)
- Hosted mail platforms
- Storage
- Backup and recovery/business continuity
- Infrastructure – servers – physical/virtual
- Virtual desktops
- Security
- Monitoring and management
- Collaboration
Here are a few questions I recommend you ask on every sales call:
- What are your current or upcoming cloud initiatives?
- What is your disaster recovery plan?
- Do you need to refresh any equipment or technology within the next 12 months?
- How do you currently monitor and manage all of the devices within your network?
Don’t panic about not necessarily understanding what the customer tells you in their response. Just take good notes, let the prospect know you’ll source out the right providers for their needed solution, and that you’ll schedule follow-up calls with the providers you’ve selected.
You are now on your way doing what you’ve always been doing. But more importantly, you will find that landing on the cloud WILL stop your hard fall and help you create a new flourishing revenue stream. Good luck!
Gary Jacobs is the vice president of channel sales in southern California for Bridgepointe Technologies, a master agency headquartered in northern California. He is building the southern California marketplace for Bridgepointe by helping sales agents develop growth strategies that increase their residual revenue streams through the sales of telecom and cloud services. Jacobs has more than 18 years of experience in telecom and has held leadership positions for LCI International and Qwest, and most recently served as a director within TelePacific’s telepartner channel. He is also a member of the 2013-14 Channel Partners Advisory Board.
