ChannelVision Magazine

or mission-critical that the business wants to maintain total control over the servers. In fact, if you look at the growth of the data center space dur- ing the last three years, colocation is still a growth business. Where do you think all that cloud resides? Inside a data center in a colocation space. Are partners asking what business- es use the ever-increasing internet bandwidth for? Salesforce, Office365, Hootsuite, Dropbox, Slack and so many more applications are common place and consumed daily. There are also a number of industry-specific soft- ware programs that businesses rely on. Where does that software sit? If you know what software a busi- ness relies on, you will know more about the traffic on their WAN, as well as the bandwidth utilization. Most folks make a guess at how much bandwidth they need. Wouldn’t it be nice to tell the business owner that with these four apps running along with UCaaS, the 20 employees will need 10MB x 10MB? Also, when you start getting into the software the business uses, you will be able to identify upgrade oppor- tunities. Maybe they are using ACT! on a server in the back room. Maybe they are still on their own Microsoft Exchange. Perhaps they don’t even need those servers anymore because most software resides elsewhere. The more information you have, the better your recommendations can be. As Chuck Piazza of Momentum Telecom stated in his sales presenta- tion at the MicroCorp event, asking better questions and having questions that others do not ask are what sets one apart as the trusted advisor. Your main job is to identify op- portunities. Sure you are there to quote out an internet pipe, but if you ask enough questions you can “land and expand.” At the core, partners are there to help businesses leverage technology to their advantage. Or as Hugh Macleod of Gapingvoid puts it, “Business is the art of getting people to where they need to be faster than they would get there without you.” o Peter Radizeski is president of RAD-INFO INC., a telecom strategy and marketing consult- ing agency. He is also author of five books and available to speak at your events. channel management NEER PI T E L E P H O N E ENSURE YOUR SMB CUSTOMERS GET THE SERVICE THEY DESERVE. Pioneer understands the unique needs of small and mid-sized businesses. We have been serving the SMB community for over 25 years. Our staff of dedicated service delivery experts makes selling UCaaS and SIP services to your customers EASY. Our ongoing relationship with our small business customers is a priority at Pioneer. Our customer service team is trained to meet the needs of all companies — whether or not they have a dedicated IT department. There are hundreds of options. Why not partner with Pioneer? For more information Contact us at partnerprogram@pioneertelephone.com or (207) 766-7816 AWIN FOR YOU & YOUR SMB CUSTOMERS GROWYOUR BUSINESS WITH PIONEER. Customer Service Maine-based CSR;s that still answer the phone in 30 seconds. 25 Years of Experience We know how to take care of your SMB customers. Partner Program Working with the way our partners do business Value Pricing Seats starting at $17.99 Software Budget Breakdown for 2019 (1-99 Employees) Operating systems 15% Security 12% Productivity 11% Back-up/DR 10% Industry-specific apps 9% Virtualization 9% Business support apps 7% Email servers 6% IT management 4% Database management 4% Communications 3% Developer tools 1% Other/Don’t know 8% Source: Spiceworks September - October, 2018 | Channel Vision 63