What Keeps You Up at Night?
02/23/2010 09:29
As the countdown begins toward the spring 2010 Channel Partners Conference & Expo, March 1-3, in Las Vegas, I am spending a fair amount of time with the conference speakers discussing their presentations and the takeaways. One of those conversations was with Ted Schuman, CEO of PlanetOne Communications, about his role as the moderator for the program’s finale – a roundtable on channel transformation, featuring channel partners that are or have taken the plunge. This discussion anchors the agenda by providing practical advice for incorporating new products and services and business models learned over the previous two days. Among the questions he plans to ask are some of the same ones that we asked channel partners for the cover story in our March issue. But he added one: What keeps you up at night? I told him I thought it was vague in this context where agents, I surmised, would be looking mainly for tactical information about transforming their businesses. But he said this is a critical question in that it informs the next steps that the channel might take. And, he further added, that by sharing them with the community, there might be validation of those concerns or the suggestion of one that others have not considered. Either way, it’s an important part of the ongoing transformation process. The answers from the panelists should be interesting. Meanwhile, I asked a few agents this question. Aside from the two new-fathers-turned-comedians – Cameron Larson and Dan Vidal – who said their babies, here are their answers: - Credit concerns for us and our clients
- Cash flow
- New customer marketing
- Growing our baseline
- Our positioning in the marketplace
- Our legacy mindset which might inhibit our ability to explore non-traditional revenue streams
- Partnering with the “right” service providers
- Copper retirement
- Commoditization of bandwidth and commissions
- Carriers going bankrupt and shedding agents
- Google taking over the world
- Carrier’s financials and their willingness and/or ability to pay
- Finding ways to stay connected to customers
- Settling on a vertical market focus
As a channel community, we have an opportunity to come together to discuss and address these concerns through education, networking and information sharing both at the Peer-to-Peer Networking Mixer PHONE+ is co-hosting with PlanetOne at the upcoming Channel Partners Conference & Expo or on the Channel Partners Network on LinkedIn. Please join us, so we can all get some rest!
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