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M icrosoft and Zoom were big winners in the pandemic. Zoom has hit one million phones in just 24 months. Microsoft’s daily users of Teams surpassed 100 million in October. How did they win? Zoom was primarily focused with video, similar to Slack is with messag- ing. Many UCaaS platforms have a video function but didn’t emphasize it or make it as easy to use. Zoom is as easy to use as Facetime, which is what people are looking for. It was frictionless on the signup process, install, and use. Zoom also was able to find and utilize webcams and micro - phones, something other notable video conferencing players are stuck on. Selling one million users on phones was certainly aided by the pandemic. Honestly, the $10 price point has something to do with the gains, but do not neglect the flywheel effect of people already Zooming who needed a cloud phone (even via a softphone for the laptop) and got hit with an offer for phones for $10. It is the SaaS dream to move users from the free offer to the paid offering to the premium service (video plus phone). Microsoft started the pandemic with 40 million users of its SaaS service offering, pushing less than 500 million minutes of meetings per day. By April, it was 2.7 billion minutes of meetings per day from 75 million daily users. Microsoft was in place in many organi- zations, ready to be the platform they needed for employees to communicate by chat or video or voice or email or other messaging paltforms Consider that employees are famil- iar with Microsoft Office for documents and Outlook for email. Combine that with presence, messaging, calling (video or voice), and conferencing for meetings (video or audio), and it was exactly what was needed. Most UCaaS bundles contain all these functions as well, but they weren’t salient, and they weren’t readily avail- able to the IT departments similar to how Microsoft was. Microsoft is a known quantity; its products are well known – that isn’t really the case of any UCaaS offering. Gold, Silver, Bronze doesn’t lend itself to the self- selection that Microsoft bundles do. Having a trusted brand with certi- fied support staff is a leg up that only Cisco can come close to. The certifica - tion program puts brand ambassadors inside organizations. These certified professionals have spent their own money on training and testing and want to showcase that talent and usefulness to the organization. These factors get overlooked at the competitor’s expense. There were two thousand service providers pushing the rock of unified communications up the market hill for 15 years. The pandemic was the opportunity for a hearty land grab, yet most of the shares went to Zoom and Microsoft. Salience means top of mind. When the executive order hit at the end of February, businesses scrambled to put technology in place to communicate with employees first, customers second, and then vendors and partners. The first calls when to current vendors, which in most orgs included Microsoft. Then a Google search probably happened. If the business was smart (and had a relationship with a channel partner), the channel partner was called next. Brand and salience won the day, but ease of sale was equally impor- tant. Having secret-shopped the UCaaS and CCaaS space over the years, frictionless is not how anyone describes doing business in telecom- munications – cloud or otherwise. In fact, in 21 years of being an agent, I’ve seen customers put telecom decisions on the bottom of the pile every time – unless their PBX is smoldering. Our industry has never been good at marketing or making the sale easy. (What providers have e-signature?) Since we are not out of the pandemic weeds yet, secret shop your own business. Find ways to remove obstacles and points of friction from the sales process. Make it easier for customers to say ‘Yes’ and buy your service. Amazon wins because of 1-Click and free two-day shipping. How are you like Amazon? How are you not like Amazon? o Peter Radizeski is president of RAD-INFO INC., a telecom strategy and marketing consulting agency. He is a sales trainer, writer, consultant, and speaker. He is available to speak at your events on channel, marketing, strategy, or sales. By Peter Radizeski CHANNEL MANAGEMENT Ways toWin More Business 44 CHANNEL V ISION | January - February, 2021