January 7, 2010

3 Min Read
Bisnoff Back as TelePacific Channel Chief

By Khali Henderson

TelePacific Communications, a CLEC operating in California and Nevada, announced Thursday changes to its TelePartner program, including the return of Ken Bisnoff as its channel chief, changes to its support staff and new onboarding and training programs.

Bisnoff, senior vice president of strategic opportunities, launched TelePacific’s Telepartner Channel Program in 2002 and oversaw it until April 2008.At that time, Justin Chris-Tensen, vice president and general manager of Telepartner Sales & Marketing, became the program lead. Chris-Tensen resigned from his post, effective Jan. 8, to pursue another opportunity.

Bisnoff said TelePacific does not have immediate plans to replace Chris-Tensen, but said they will move forward with the existing channel team with one addition. TelePacific has named Gary Jacobs as channel director for Southern California, filling a post left vacant by Mickey Chappatte in fall 2009. Hilary Gadda remains channel director for Northern California. Jacobs is new to the channel though he has been with TelePacific since 2004, most recently as the general manager of Orange County sales where he had achieved President’s Club success.

While Bisnoff is returning to the channel, his title will not change and he also brings with him management of retail sales, HR and marketing communications.

“One of the reasons we made the decision is to put me back in the channel, obviously, is that it would be the most seamless,” Bisnoff said. “My familiarity with the agents, the channel in general and the team, enables me to go from a standing start to running at a full sprint, which the channel is always running in.”

Bisnoff said he will be speaking with agents over the next month and meeting with them at the Agent Appreciation cocktail networking events scheduled for Los Angeles/Orange County on Jan. 19, La Jolla/San Diego on Jan. 21 and Oakland on Feb. 3.

TelePacific also is launching two new programs – Agent On Boarding and Brown Bag training and development. The On Boarding program is a weekly series of training and communication designed to get new agents producing and generating revenue as quickly as possible. TelePacific spokesperson Rebecca Rosen explained that the program starts with basics and adds more information on a need-to-know basis so agents aren’t overwhelmed but can continually improve their skills and revenue potential.

The Brown Bag program is a monthly series of “lunch time” Web-based trainings that will focus on TelePacific’s products and services as well as sales topics, such as social media marketing. The training is free and open to all agents whether or not they are TelePartner participants, Rosen said. She added that a training calendar will be published later this month.

Rosen said TelePacific also is working on a few new products, including an extension of its Ethernet product set, a managed WAN service and mobility products. The product development is underway with Ethernet expected to come out at the end of first quarter and the others in late summer.

To support these launches, the CLEC has added two members to ts product development team. Teri Lingley has joined TelePacific as a senior product manager to support value-added services. She will focus on TelePacific’s expansion into managed services and be responsible for developing both managed WAN and LAN services. In addition, Rich Powers has joined TelePacific as a senior product manager to build the company’s mobile strategy. He is currently working to launch wireless cards and mobile phones, and will also work to develop an overarching wireless strategy to include wireless transport.

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