Telecom Reseller / Technology Reseller News

John Croce, CEO of NVT Phybridge, didn’t start his career in the tech industry. He spent the first half of his career building a successful investment company. However, after working in tech for over 10 years now and evaluating the trends and behaviors with fresh eyes, John is ready to share his unique perspective on telecommunications, networking, and modernizing from analog to IP.

In this six-episode podcast series, John Croce and Doug Green discuss everything from deep-rooted industry paradigms, the Modern LAN, Cloud-enablement, and the future of IP voice and Power over Ethernet (PoE) solutions.

“The market opportunity is tremendous,” says Kyle Oursler, Vendor Business Manager at 888VoIP. In this podcast Oursler outlines the scope of the opportunity as customers migrate from SIP/ Skype for Business to Teams. Observing that end users have moved beyond the testing stage to making real and large-scale Teams deployments, Oursler discusses how 888VoIP offers products and programs to match the moment. We learn about how 888VoIP can help partners jumpstart Teams deployment through a combined offering from Ribbon and Yealink. Oursler also note that Yealink’s products have stepped up their game, with video as an option, available on more devices so that the migration to Teams can also be an upgrade experience for commercial customers. 888VoIP is currently offering free SBC registration licenses from Ribbon and a discount on Yealink phones when qualifying Yealink phones and Ribbon SBCs are purchased.

Visit https://www.888voip.com/

John Bell, SVP of Product Management for Bandwidth talks "happy porting" with Telecom Reseller, and the enhancements to its market-learning phone number porting solutions at the Cloud Comms Summit in Washington, DC. John explains that Bandwidth is making a "super hard" process much happier with new enhancements to Bandwidth's service. These enhancements stand to transform the process of moving phone numbers from carrier to carrier, speeding time to market for its 1,400+ enterprise customers and significantly reducing support tickets in the process. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and RingCentral use Bandwidth’s APIs to easily embed voice, messaging and 9-1-1 access into software and applications. Bandwidth is the first and only CPaaS provider offering a robust selection of communications APIs built around their own nationwide IP voice network. Learn more at www.bandwidth.com.

With a modern, clear design, Fanvil X7 is a high-end enterprise IP phone for business users who need immediate access to all of their important information. In addition to a 7-inch capacitive touch screen for up to 127 DSS key entries, the telephone also features 20 SIP lines, HD audio with Opus support, Built-in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connectivity and more!

How many desktop business phones can boast a luxury feature such as Harman Kardon HD sound? According to Tommy Lee, Harman Kardon among the many special touches, appointments and features, Fanvil delivers in its lineup of commercial products. “This is not another cloned phone,” says Lee. In this podcast we learn about the Fanvil product lines and some of the below and above skin features that set them apart. Lee, who is among a group of business leaders who helped pioneer the modern commercial instrument business in the age of SIP and cloud communications, believes Fanvil offers a critical level of product differentiation for service providers, channel partners and other companies, looking to set themselves apart in a crowded cloud communications environment. Lee discusses the various lines of products Fanvil has, applications to specific industries such as healthcare, office and other applications and environments, that include situations where a site may include office, warehouse and possibly outdoor sites.

Lee also discusses a special program that allows the reseller to logo the Fanvil phones they are offering their business customers. In many cases, workers sometimes think that the phone label also indicates the provider name, so that the logo program connects the dots between the channel and the product they are physically introducing. While Fanvil is a global company, Lee is building a US sales team that focuses on personalized, customized service. Lee invites readers to call him directly to meet customer needs.

Visit www.fanvil.com

According to Keenan, the price crises in UC might not have been caused by the commodification of UC and UCaaS services but because the channel is commodifying the customer. In this thought-provoking podcast, Keenan suggests that UC salespeople are selling products and services looking for solutions rather than the other way around. In the run up to his presentation at the Vectors 2019, Keenan suggests that the remedy is to listen, understand the challenges the customer has and sell solutions to those problems. Keenan calls this gap selling, a technique we get an introduction to in this podcast.

Keenan is the CEO (and likes to describe himself as "Chief Antagonist") of A Sales Guy. He has authored "Not Taught" and "Gap Selling". Keenan offers sales training, recruiting, consulting and speaking services. He has been recognized as one of the top 30 social salespeople in the world by Forbes.  He was also named one of the Top 50 Most Influential Sales and Marketing People by Top Sales World Magazine every year running, since 2012.

Visit www.vectors2019.com

“When you realize their world has been changed pretty dramatically by Cisco, by BroadSoft and by quite frankly moving a lot of the future functionality to a cloud that is essentially operated by Cisco and provided wholesale to their partners, and that this is essentially a different model than the BroadSoft model that existed that was a perpetual license model,” says Phil Edholm, President and Founder of PKE Consulting and a featured speaker at the Cloud Comms Summit in Orlando. In this podcast, Edholm argues that service providers face critical challenges and choices in the near and medium terms. They now operate in an a “margin challenged” environment, with price erosion and significant competition. Edholm says that they can escape those challenges by building their own platform but places a big caution: only one, two or three platforms will survive and prevail. Instead, Edholm suggests going to market with an existing platform and then surrounding it with other services in a unique way. “If we think about communications platforms, it’s not just the technology, it’s the surround, it’s the ecosystem, it’s the STKs, it’s the developer programs,” observes Edholm.

Visit https://www.bcstrategies.com/content/phil-edholm

by Gary Audin

Of course contact agents need high quality headsets. But so do brokers, advisors, counselors, and subject matter experts. They all have to overcome the challenges of noise, disruptions, and finding the right information fast. These challenges can increase cost of calls 38% and extend the call lengths by 40%. Did you know that 80% customer service organizations believe they satisfy their customers but the same customers are only satisfied 8% of the time?

Adam Robertson, Senior Marketing Manager, Product Marketing, North America at Jabra and Marlene Kouba, Channel Marketing Manager Distribution, North America at Jabra speak with Gary Audin to discuss the increasing need for excellent sounding headsets that can work in noisy and disruptive environments. This EDUcast was sponsored by Fontel (www.fontel.com) and Jabra (www.jabra.com).

Adam covers subjects including:

Key drivers in customer satisfaction

Expanding delivery channels

Challenges to effective delivery

The customer journey

The customer service paradox

Disconnect between the contact center and customer satisfaction

Marlene covers:

Marketing and sales toolkits for Jabra products

Driving demand

Video assets

Lead generation

Fontel https://www.fontel.com/ is a Specialty Wholesale Distributor of voice and data communication equipment including BlueParrott products. Since incorporation, Fontel has realized consistent annual growth by meeting the channel to market needs of the manufacturers we distribute products for, as well as, meeting the needs of our customers. Fontel Inc. has become a leading distributor of voice and data communication products and services for major manufacturers around the world.

Jabra www.jabra.com is a leader in engineering communications and sound solutions – innovating to empower both consumers and businesses. Jabra is committed to letting people hear more, do more, and be more than they ever thought possible. Through sound, we help transform lives. Jabra engineering excellence leads the way, building on 150 years of pioneering work. This allows us to create integrated headsets and communications tools that help professionals work more productively; and wireless headphones and earbuds that let consumers better enjoy calls, music, and media. Become an authorized Jabra partner today at https://onezone.jabra.com.

See the Engage Series in action in this short video.

“We differentiate ourselves with features,” says Brian Tompkins, Vice President of Sales at snom. “We give something to our end users something, primarily, that our competitors don’t offer.” Recorded live at last week’s Cloud Comms Summit, Tompkins outlines how his company creates a vital competitive edge for the service provider community.

In this podcast, we learn how snom uses DECT technology to deliver a “phone in a box” solution where the base station talks to the desksets, handsets, or conference phone. The powerless wireless technology, in this case, is used to make installation simple and inexpensive. The phones are provisioned before they are shipped. The M18 KLE SIP DECT 4-Line Deskset offers a familiar 4-line format, a familiar desktop feel, and no Ethernet drop required. When paired with the M100 KLE SIP DECT 4-Line Base Station, each deskset can have its own extension and unique phone number.

“We can’t make the mistake of thinking customers always know what they want, all the time,” says Tompkins. According to Tompkins, customers experience a “wow moment” when they learn there’s a solution to a challenge, they may have thought not addressable based on their product knowledge or experience.

Visit https://www.snomamericas.com/

“We can help customers to grow,” says Mehmet Hussein, Senior Solutions Architect, Voxbone. Recorded live at last week’s Cloud Comms Summit, this podcast outlines Voxbone as a cloud communications provider, delivering voice and messaging services in 65 plus countries, covering over 93% of global GDP. Mehmet discusses how companies achieve instant, compliant scale for their communications with enterprise-ready voice and SMS on elastic SIP trunks and access to local phone numbers resources come together to help businesses. “We’re cloud native and cloud first,” says Mehmet, “… and that means (to the service provider) the time to get up and running can be fifteen minutes or less.” By leveraging Voxbone’s work on cloud and on nation by nation offerings, what can take months can be telescoped to minutes. Mehmet tells us how companies attending Cloud Comms Summit benefit from Voxbone’s services and invites listeners to learn more. Voxbone has customers from other communications platforms, and direct enterprise clients including Zoom, Uber, Aircall, Orange Business Services, and NICE.

More at www.voxbone.com

“Quality, availability and visibility, QAV,” says Wes Rogers Chief Operating Officer and Founder of nexVortex. “We think those are the key attributes business consumers are looking for in their cloud communications, and the other one is ‘uncommon’ which is the basis for nexVortex: we deliver uncommon service. Knowhow, commitment and innovation.”

In this podcast, Rogers discusses the company’s announcement of a new service offering called Managed Connect. Rogers outlines how Managed Connect differs from other SD-WAN offerings in the market. Rogers outlines the new offering and relates it to nexVortex’s on-going commitment to bring innovative technology to the SMB market space.

Visit www.nexvortex.com