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Direct
Feed
The partner app includes features
such as forms, pricing and promo-
tional materials, marketing materials,
coverage maps, news and social me-
dia, as well as contact information. It
is available for download through the
App Store or the Google Play Store
and was developed by Mousetrap
Mobile in Royal Oak, Mich.
TeleApp also is linked to
Telegration’s Convey Platform,
TelePortal, which provides access
to marketing materials, events and
product knowledge from each of
Telegration’s supplier partners.
Agents are able to check their
monthly commission statements
and submit quote requests through
the mobile interface.
“All of our service and pre-sales
support requests can be submitted
real-time 24x7 to better serve our
customers and agents,” said Denis
Raue, Telegration president. “We
look forward to future enhance-
ments and the successful adaption
of our mobility application to in-
crease our ability to have the latest
and most current content on all of
our providers including promotions
and agent spiffs.”
Elsewhere, Telegration also intro-
duced its new Tele IP private brand-
ed hosted PBX services. As part of
the offering, Telegration certified
sales engineers and project manag-
ers work with its agents to design
a hosted solution that meets the
needs of customers and the agent’s
desire for customized rate plans,
leading edge equipment options and
feature benefits, says Telegration.
Tele IP also comes with the Tele IP
portal, allowing agents to manage
and change their customers’ hosted
design. Telegration agents also can
determine pricing and margin.
“We help our customer compare
pricing and solutions from other lead-
ing providers, such as Star2Star,
Fonality and Vonage, to meet the
most basic or complex customer so-
lutions,” said Raue.
At its annual sales partner confab in Utah this summer, master agen-
cy CarrierSales highlighted some of its top successes for the year and
gave the floor to top suppliers to discuss what’s driving the market for
channel partners.
“Customers appreciate a high-touch sales team,” said Richard Murray,
CarrierSales president. “Businesses want someone local in the area but
also someone who knows the business that you’re in. That sets us apart.”
Murray also showcased some top metrics, including a 98 percent customer
retention rate.
Speaking to attendees, Dan
Burkland, senior vice president of
sales and business development
at Five9, said that its own market
approach complements that of Car-
rierSales: “We enable our partners
to fill that role, with specific people
in every region for channel support.
We’re also small enough to get cre-
ative and can work through what-
ever anomalies crop up in a specific
account. Our average is 90 days
from close to ramp.”
He added that the master agent’s
support model is geared to help
sales partners differentiate them-
selves with tailored solutions. One
agent, for instance, sold a 160-seat
contact center opportunity that included
chat, email, workforce optimization,
multiscreen capability and voice record-
ing. Even with a high level of personal-
ization, the deal closed in under 120 days.
Meanwhile, for Electric Lightwave, CarrierSales is its No. 1 master
agent, selling enterprise multiservice and multi-location solutions. Its offer-
ings include 10G and 100G capacity, spectrum and dark fiber. It now has
12,000 route miles in 23 metro markets, with about 3,000 on-net buildings.
It has a $4,750 average ARPPU and has seen 34 percent growth in the ap-
plications space in the last year.
Dan Stoll, president at Electric Lightwave, took the stage to lay out
what’s driving success for today’s channel partners.
“What’s driving the growth? Internet of things. Private and public con-
nectivity. Convergence of services on a common platform,” he said. “From
Microsoft and Google to small dynamic companies that are enabling the
CarrierSales Event
Showcases Partner
Trends, Advice
Education and opportunities found
at CarrierSales partner event; photo
courtesy Kiley Fisher Photography
(Continued on page 14)
12
Channel
Vision
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September - October, 2016