By Marko Spremo, Vice President of Sales and Co-Founder,

Telapprise LLC

Would you build a house without a blueprint? Most likely not. 

However, many organizations, for reasons unknown, are building their networks without a long-term strategy or understanding of their current infrastructure. More importantly, many of these organizations dont see what telecom agents provide as strategic. As a telecom agent, carrier representative, or systems integrator/VAR, it is our job to help clients develop this blueprint by providing our knowledge and expertise. Unfortunately, most clients  ranging from Fortune 500 to SMB  have a very limited visibility into what services they are utilizing and what they are paying for. The list of reasons why organizations dont have this information is nearly endless, but the one that comes up almost every single time is: We just dont have the time and/or resources.” Without this visibility, how can we help clients make strategic and business impacting decisions?

As technology advances and the number of applications, devices and services individual employees are using increases, the more imperative it becomes to have visibility into what is currently being used and what is under contract with which terms and conditions. The fact of the matter is that most organizations from a planning standpoint have a very high-level overview of what they currently have, but do not have the specifics. Additionally, the larger an organization, the more specialized the knowledge and management of certain services. This leads to limited visibility and many assumptions, which ultimately leads to delay, expense and frustration by all parties. However, as the network starts to converge, it becomes more important that the knowledge of all the services and spend is known. How many times have you gone into a client environment and asked for a summary of services and associated expense and received a clear, exact and precise answer? Its almost never. They can speak to it at a very high level, but dont know the specifics.

As clients want to move to the cloud, migrate to SIP, introduce tablets and put more applications on the network, the lack of knowledge of existing services presents a problem for both the client and the agent/carrier representative. How can we provide a recommendation without understanding the existing applications, environment and services being utilized? Additionally, what are the business drivers that are pushing the requirements for new applications and services? Are these truly understood? In todays corporate environment, the networks performance is absolutely mission-critical to day-to-day business. If the network is down or limited in its function, productivity is, in many cases, completely lost. 

In the past couple of months we have been introduced to several potential clients that were struggling to implement or migrate to new technologies. In one case, the client had spoken to a combination of a dozen telecom agents/carriers and the other had spoken to a total of four.  While their businesses and requirements were completely different, they had the same struggle:  They did not know what carrier and associated services would best fit their requirements and were under a strict deadline to implement new applications. They were frustrated at the amount of time being spent and the lack of clarity of a common solution. The common theme was to throw more bandwidth at the problem and hope that the problems resolved themselves.

The potential clients referenced above that were struggling with this issue were told by every single agent/carrier that their solution would save them both time and money. Unfortunately, in both cases, no one took the time to properly understand their business requirements, existing inventory of services, contractual situation, and applications being used.  In one case, the solution they were leaning toward, after additional research of existing inventory and applications, would not work and would ultimately fail. In another example, the reason for looking at migrating to new services was a perception that the carriers network was not performing as promised. However, after further research it was found that there were applications that were running on the network that were never discussed or identified. The problem would have continued regardless of carrier or speed. The existing network just wasnt properly configured and made both the carrier and agent who sold the network look bad and more importantly took time away from selling. Looking back on the original design, the agent and carrier both stated that they were not given the information about the additional applications. However, after further research, it was also discovered that agent and carrier did not do any discovery, only responded based on a pricing request from a design another carrier had provided the client.

Many have the perception that our industry and the services we sell have become a commodity.  From a pricing perspective, this may be true; however, there are just too many moving parts that are being integrated together that the services we sell cant be treated as a commodity. Most potential clients are being reactive versus proactive in their approach to their network and at that point, there is little value that you can provide. As with most clients, the potential clients referenced above were being reactive versus proactive in their approach and did not have enough information to develop a proper strategy and make an educated decision. This ultimately cost everyone time, money and a significant amount of frustration.

In order to truly provide a solution and long-term assistance to a client, make sure you have all the facts and understanding of what a client has and is trying to do. If not, where is the value to the client and why wouldnt they think the services we are selling are a commodity? As an agent or someone selling carrier services, it is impossible to add value without truly knowing a clients environment. If we dont understand the requirements and become more strategic, we are just another salesperson selling on price. As more and more services start to converge onto the network, we as telecom agents, have to not only take the time to educate ourselves about the clients environment, but the services we sell as well. Maybe the reason that we as an industry hear clients complain about the lack of support and view our services as a commodity is that we are one of the few industries that doesn’t require any type of certifications to sell these services.

Take the time to develop the blueprint for a client and you will become the trusted advisor that so many of us aspire to be to our clients.

Marko Spremo is vice president of sales and a co-founder of

Telapprise LLC

. As a 15-year veteran in networking and telecom, Spremo has helped Telapprise grow from its founding in 2002 as a telecom audit firm to a full-service telecom agency, offering telecom expense management, consulting and carrier services. Previously, he was a regional sales manager for a national VAR selling networking hardware and services. Spremo holds a bachelors degree in international business and an masters degree in business administration from San Jose State University.  He also is a member of the

2011-12 Channel Partners Advisory Board

.