Thursday, January 27, 2011

Still Selling Telecom

Yesterday a client asked me who a good prospect was for me. Since 1999, when I started in telecom as a BellSouth agent selling Wholesale DSL to ISP's, my best prospect is a service provider - ISP, WISP, ITSP, CLEC, cable or VoIP company. (I even have a couple of Hosting companies and MSP's as clients.)

What do I sell them?

I still rep for 20+ carriers, including Level3 and VoIP Innovations. I also get paid by IKANO to move service providers to the Google Apps platform. Data centers like Atlanta NAP and COLOTRAQ also pay me for referrals. So I still sell telecom.

I used to sell a lot more telecom, spending all day provisioning circuits, getting quotes and doing paperwork. The wholesale agreements have boxed me out of that. Most carriers won't pay me for wholesale deals and many of my clients are volume buyers from Ma Bell (through the FISPA contracts).

This is what January looked like. My last 5 projects:

  1. I began the year launching my new book and all that entails. Everyone who bought a copy in December and January received a bonus: free webinar yesterday where I went over the book in detail. They also get a copy of the Audio book when it is complete.
  2. I spoke at a cable company's national sales event as a keynote and in break out sessions as a sales trainer. $$
  3. Provisioned a Level3 pipe for a client in Infomart. $
  4. Quoted out bandwidth for rural Kansas and rural KY for a WISP and a cable company, respectively. Trying to find a fiber provider in these locations.
  5. Working on 2 panel presentations as moderator for ITEXPO about VoIP as well as a solo talk about Being a Net-Head at CVX (on the ITEXPO exhibit hall floor on Thursday, 2/3/11 at 3:15 PM) and a seminar on How to Sell Hosted PBX on Friday in Miami Beach. In addition, setting up a bunch of meetings for the 4 days I am in Miami Beach. This doesn't directly get me money but it's a big part of my marketing.
  6. Working on the Service Provider Summit in March in Orlando (you know it as the FISPA-WISPA Show but I don't like that name).

In Tampa, I am organizing for a bunch of events: a seminar for solopreneurs on how to run a business; Blog Camp Tampa Bay with Microsoft; the 4th Annual BarCampTampaBay, the 1st IGNITE Tampa Bay, and a Tampa Telecom Networking group for agents and VAR's to share knowledge.

Last year, much of my revenue came from telecom commissions and consulting (sales training, marketing, product launches, strategy). I think 2011 will be much of the same.

I still work almost exclusively with service providers, just some of them are bigger.

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