2014 Telecom Expo Reveals Smart Trends But Highly Biased Council
This week, I attended the 2014 Integra Telecom Tech Expo. Keynote was Mitel Vice President of Sales Engineering, Joshua Haslett talking about the new role of CIOs as the "front-edge source of product innovation and customer engagement for businesses." Speakers from Metaswitch, Polycom, ADTRAN and Ciena addressed topics, including networking for the hybrid cloud, network virtualization as it relates to Wi-Fi deployment, and security with hosted exchange. Happy to go into detail about any of these topics. If you're interested give me a call or leave a comment.
But here's what you really need to know about the latest trends in business telecom:
Information that comes from telecom carrier representatives is highly biased.
At the expo, if you listened to the cloud services representatives you might think the whole world is moving to the cloud and that you're crazy not to move to the cloud yourself. If you talked to the on-premises phone system dealer, his phone system is what everyone who is anyone is using to succeed. Cloud PBX reps claimed that cloud PBX is the only service worth your time. At one point, a wireless services rep got up and talked about how his company is going to replace the need for all wiring. Highly unlikely.
I'm all for genuine enthusiasm but the larger conversation of the expo was basically a series of sales scripts. And sales scripts are exactly what business customers get in spades when they go to the market for a tailored telecom solution.
That's why it's so important to seek out real-world, unbiased expertise when you shop for business phone and Internet services. And providing free, real-world, unbiased expertise is really the crux of Caisson.
We're independent industry experts with nearly 15 years of telecom experience and we help businesses buy telecom. As Caisson's consultant and broker, I've worked with over 500 businesses in the Washington and Oregon. I distribute services from over 40 telecom carriers in our region. I've seen many, many solutions go in, and I've witnessed how they work for real-people. With this background, I'm able to cut through all the noise in the marketplace to give businesses the solutions that will actually run their business, not just be in-line with trends. Read our testimonials.
Certainly, I understand where direct sales representatives are coming from when they preach the absolute adoption of a particular solution. They're under incredible pressure to sell, sell, sell. It's the result of an old-school sales model, which I explain in detail here. I know this to be true because I experienced it when I worked as a direct rep for a major phone and Internet carrier in Seattle years ago.
Of course, it's not just pressure, it's also a matter of perspective. If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But sometimes a hammer isn't the right tool. In that case, it's nice to have multiple tools and an understanding of which tool is appropriate for which job. As an independent broker, we have access to many different, competing tools.
In other words, helping businesses buy telecom is really about cutting through the noise and delivering solutions that actually fit the needs of the business. That, summed up is what Caisson does for you. Come check our our tool bench at www.caissontechnologies.com.