The sector of the channel affectionately known as the traditional telecom agent (or agents or sub-agents) sprang up in the heady days of long distance. Calling cards, which is still a thing by the way, led to long distance, where the agents would offer savings to switch carriers. That is literally the same deal as switching prepaid carriers on the 10-10 programs.
This was transactional. This was based on replacement sales and saving money. It was ink daily.
Along comes T1s and the LD Slingers had another product to sell – in the same manner. Replace that BellSouth T1 for a CLEC T1. Or even better replace those LEC POTS lines with a CLEC POTS line or the Integrated T1 – and save money.
Fast forward to 2018, zipping past the period when VoIP was sold as a POTS replacement to save money. We can see that broadband has replaced T1s; cable displaced DSL; DSL had previously displaced T1; Ethernet is available most places so we don’t even think about T3/DS3 anymore.
Now the sector is slinging SD-WAN to replace MPLS to save the customer money.
On a side note: this is why the industry is in a tail-spin: lowering bills means overall revenue declines. Certainly, a new CLEC is happy as they acquire LEC customers and move 80% of the LEC revenue billed to their coffers. However, they then had to pay the LEC for the underlying services. Then cable came along and ate everyone’s lunch.
Back to the T1 Slingers. They sling a different product now, but the sales process is the same. They still save the customer money. It is still transactional. And the agents in this sector are still doing it for a few reasons. One, they are motivated by ink. So happy to ink a deal a day – even a $200 cable deal. Ink, ink, ink! Happy, happy, happy.
Two, selling replacement services are a simple transaction without too many nuts and bolts. UCaaS and any cloud sale has too many moving parts. Back in the hey day of LD and Integrated T1, there was the porting headache but the carrier pretty much handled it. In a UCaaS deal, there isn’t an inter-connect to handle all the minutiae – and the provider isn’t either.
These are the two main reasons that the T1 Slingers in essence is still around and has not graduated to selling cloud – simplicity and motivation.
To move to a Solution Sale involves skills such as follow up and relationship building that are not present in a transactional sale. The sales cycle extends from a day or a week to months. You have to educate the customer and perform surveys (cloud readiness, PBX mapping, etc.) It gets complicated.
There is a final reason: the products just aren’t as stable as network. Period. There is certainty in network. Plug it in and it will work most of the time. But cloud sales involve a good amount of trust in the Ether. There are call quality issues with UCaaS; it is why SD-WAN is now pitched with UCaaS. This uncertainty is underlying. Mix that with the compensation – even 25% of a $300 bill isn’t enough for the headache.
To sum it up, the traditional agents (formerly T1 Slingers) have not migrated to selling cloud because, most importantly, they are motivated to get ink daily. Without motivation, not doing it. The other factors are simplicity, stability, ease and familiarity, plus a tiny dose of missing the skills of following up with extended sales cycles. These Agents are at the tail end of their career. They don’t want to change. And that is why they are still slinging network despite a thousand new vendors and hundreds of analyst pundits telling them to. They just aren’t motivated for it.