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Microcast Gaining an Edge This year Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide will not be making an appearance in the college football playoffs thanks.. →

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Convey Announces Cloud Conventions 2020

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Convey Announces Cloud Conventions 2020

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Atlanta, GA — March 11, 2020 — Convey Services, a SaaS technology company, today unveiled Cloud Conventions 2020, the largest virtual trade.. →

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Convey Services, Trackmax partner to.. →

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Convey Services, Trackmax partner to offer online resource.. →

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Alliance Engage Program Expands to 11.. →

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Cloud-Based Marketing Tools Offering.. →

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Atlanta, GA — February 19, 2014 — Convey Services today launched BizYeti.com, a free online business content sharing community that hosts and.. →

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Episode 37 - Avoiding Social Isolation in a.. → Episode 37 - Avoiding Social Isolation in a Virtual Work.. →

How to keep employees socially connected

Let’s face it. Times right now are pretty stressful at best and downright scary at worst. We’ve sent our employees home and changed ...

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0 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-podcast 0 356561 356561 Let’s face it. Times right now are pretty stressful at best and downright scary at worst. We’ve sent our employees home and changed the way we do business as we cope with how to keep our employees truly connected and business moving forward. Many of our people are more focused on navigating the dangers of going grocery shopping and how to keep their kids educated and entertained. Convey kept its office open and available to employees who wanted to come into work until we decided it was no longer safe to do so and sent everyone home to work virtually. We’ve got a lot going on as we launch our virtual trade show, Cloud Conventions, in May so finding a plan and process to keep everyone motivated, feeling connected and staying productive has been top of mindshare. Right now, we are all being over-webinared to death, so having a better way to stay connected is critical so we don’t just check out. Being a veteran of the conference calling industry, as well as having run an addiction treatment program, I went back to that well of my past experience to create a plan and process for social connecting while social distancing that seems to be working for our company. Here is our plan and process that I want to share with all of you. We start with an 8:15 Huddle First thing in the morning, we have a quick huddle over video conferencing that focuses more on how we are doing personally vs. what we are doing professionally. Cameras are turned on, even though we don’t look that great in our pajamas or sweatpants and with no makeup, but we can see the environment that everyone is working in, even if their cats jump on their desk. Here are the three questions we ask our team: What did you learn about our current situation with the virus?What are you watching that you’d like to recommend to everyone?What did you accomplish personally? The answer to the first question is designed to have us talk about the progress our country is making in the fight against Covid-19, debunk any false information, and do a reality check on how long our situation might last. Since we are all streaming Netflix or Amazon, we can connect socially on shows that we are all watching together. Right now, our guilty pleasure is Tiger King, a 7-part documentary about Joe Exotic and his big cat animal park in Oklahoma and his death match with animal rights activist Carol Baskin who runs the Big Cat Animal Rescue in Tampa. This gives us a big laugh and an opportunity to talk about the bizarre story that has gripped the interest of America. We’ll be on to the next binge-worthy show soon. We would have talked about this live in the office and doing so virtually gives us as close to the same experience as possible. The question about personal accomplishments keeps people focused on finding something small they can do to feel they are not just wasting away at home. We have people share their online workouts, something new they cooked for dinner, or even attending support groups online. Tonight, I’m participating in a virtual trivia game that our team is doing vs. going to the restaurant we owned that had to be shuttered during the crisis. Break up the day with a virtual lunch. The first day of our total work from home environment, we had everyone meet for lunch over video. We got a chance to catch up socially, find out what everyone had cooked, and just hang out as we would have at the office. We won’t do that every day, but I suggest once or twice a week as a great way to break up the day. End the day with a 5:00 daily recap. Our last call of the day is at 5:00 and we ask everyone to weigh in on the following: What was your biggest accomplishment today?What are you focusing on tomorrow?Do you need any assistance from another teammate or need to collaborate with a smaller group?How are you doing personally? Asking for the biggest accomplishment makes people feel a sense of achievement and purpose. Focusing on tomorrow gets them to start planning out the next day. Asking for what they need from their teammates gets people to connect in smaller groups outside of the regular meetings. And we want to know people’s concerns, fears, small victories and just how they are doing in these unusual circumstances. Takeaways It’s going to be very easy for all of us who are used to technology or who have worked virtually anyway to forget that we need to be mindful of the personal needs of the people we work with. They may not seem like they are struggling to cope with our new reality, but let’s face it, we all feel a level of anxiety and perhaps fear. If you keep people from being socially isolated, focused on their accomplishments both personally and professionally, and connected over common ideas, entertainment or activities, you’ll have a team that’s more resilient, connected, productive and happier. Let’s face it. We need a break from our persistent webinar environment and I challenge everyone to give this plan and process a try for just one day and I promise you’ll have some very good results.

Episode 37 - Avoiding Social Isolation in a Virtual Work.. →

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Episode 36 - Pivot Don't Panic Episode 36 - Pivot Don't Panic

How Businesses Can Adjust in the face of the Coronavirus

You can’t turn on TV or the radio without having the media create a level of panic about the Coronavirus. The telecommunications, cloud ...

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1 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-podcast 0 351984 351984 You can’t turn on TV or the radio without having the media create a level of panic about the Coronavirus. The telecommunications, cloud and contact center industry’s largest trade shows were cancelled with moments to spare. And you all know the wild ride we are having on Wall Street. However, because we live in a technology-driven world, perhaps it is time to pivot, not panic and let technology step in while the virus behaves like the flu, has its season, and then goes underground as the weather warms up. Here are some thoughts for our business community. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ll recognize the many times in your life where circumstances dictated that you make a change. Perhaps you had to change jobs, you got a divorce, or had to make adjustments to compensate for a health issue. People react to change in one of two ways. They either view them as an opportunity to “pivot”, adjust and move in a new direction. Or they view change as a time for panic and stare the change in the face like a deer in the headlights without moving forward or moving on. When the airplanes hit the Twin Towers on 9/11, the business community took a hard hit nationwide. People were afraid to do business as usual; they stopped traveling, and the deer in the headlights effect took over. In 2001, I ran a conference calling company and from that Tuesday through the end of the week, we were dazed, our phones were silent, and it seemed that our customers were at a loss for what to do next. But then the following week rolled around, and panic gave way to pivoting. Our customers called us in droves, asked us to set up conference calling accounts for their employees and adjusted to having people work remotely, stay off the road and do virtual sales calls, and have meetings over the web and phone. This pivot allowed business to continue while the world sorted out the risk of a potential terrorist attack. Our revenue skyrocketed and we expected a drop off when the airplanes started flying again, but that wasn’t the case. Not only did business pivot, but they recognized that virtual meetings saved money, were incredibly efficient and allowed people to collaborate in new ways. Today, you can’t turn on TV or the radio without having the media create a level of panic about the Coronavirus. In Atlanta, we closed all of Fulton County schools for 2 days when one person was infected in one school. Atlanta is the home of Delta airlines who announced that they expected a 25% drop in air travel. The telecommunications, cloud and contact center industry’s largest trade shows were just cancelled with moments to spare. And you all know the wild ride we are having on Wall Street. However, because we live in a technology-driven world, perhaps it is time to pivot, not panic and let technology step in while the virus behaves like the flu, has its season, and then goes underground as the weather warms up. Here are some thoughts for our business community. Rediscover the power of virtual meetings. If your company’s employees don’t have conference calling accounts, get them one. Audio and web conferencing are extremely affordable and very effective. If they are done right, you can promote interactivity the same way you would do in a conference room and in fact, get more out of those people who might not speak up in a live meeting. Conduct virtual sales calls or customer meetings There is nothing that beats a face to face meeting to establish relationships, read body language and bond with your customers. But right now, the opportunity to do so has diminished. So do the next best thing. Shoo the kids and dogs out of your home office, put on your business attire, get rid of the junk in the background and do a meeting with your webcam. Now, they can see you and you can read their responses all from the comfort of your home. Use business texting. Our company uses Slack to connect with each other when people are working remotely and also connect with our software development team overseas. I can look at the Slack dashboard, know when people are online, send images or files through the system, or group people together for a chat discussion. It’s quick, efficient, and gets the job done. Set a time for a quick personal catch up. When you are in a physical office, you can walk down the hall, congregate in the lunchroom and connect with your co-workers. If your team is homebound, consider setting aside a few times during the day for personal catchups just to make sure the team stays engaged. Rethink your trade show strategy Two of the telecommunications and cloud industry trade shows, one in Vegas and the other in Orlando were cancelled last minute because of the Coronavirus. Think about the disruption in travel, events, missed promotional opportunity and people’s schedules. Our company is helping the industry adjust by holding a virtual trade show called Cloud Conventions. Of course, we can’t have the sparkle that a trade show pub crawl would have, and you can’t walk away with the bag of pens and giveaways that load your suitcase down, but you can adjust. Interaction happens in live chat and virtual meetings. Content is delivered by speakers over the web, then available online. There are giveaways but think of them as virtual swag where you might get a gift card instead of a plush toy or a pen. Takeaways The Coronavirus presents a lot of unknowns, but if we continue to panic and forget just how much technology allows us to make the needed adjustments, we’ll fail to pivot and keep doing business despite the disruption. And once the Coronavirus has passed as did the SARS epidemic and even the garden variety flu, we should think about what pivots we made that we should keep doing. People adopted conferencing as a stand way of communicating after 9/11 and created unprecedented business efficiencies. Perhaps we should add virtual trade shows to our marketing strategy so that people who didn’t have the time or the money to fly to Vegas can still get an interactive, educational and online experience without the risk and hassle of getting on an airplane. My advice is to pivot, not panic and when corona is in the rear view mirror, be glad we have technology to keep things moving.

Episode 36 - Pivot Don't Panic

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Episode 35 - Reasons not to DIY with Websites Episode 35 - Reasons not to DIY with Websites

Reasons why you should not “do it yourself” when it comes to your website

Reasons why you should not “do it yourself” when it comes to your website Many small businesses think it’s OK to take a DIY approach ...

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2 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-podcast 0 351983 351983 Reasons why you should not “do it yourself” when it comes to your website Many small businesses think it’s OK to take a DIY approach when it comes to their website. They get free technology from WordPress or inexpensive site building programs, set out to build their website or engage an inexpensive intern to do the job for them. But much like those home DIY projects, the results are often not what the business needed or wanted and the results can be a website that is not interesting and engaging, too hard to keep up to date and doesn’t reflect how that business wanted to be viewed in the marketplace. Here are some reasons that having a DIY website may not be your best business decision. When it comes to projects around the home, many people have adopted a do it yourself mindset. Go to sites like Pinterest and you’ll see videos and instructions on how to install a tile backsplash, build under the staircase storage, or refinish your kitchen cabinets. But people that engage in DIY projects have likely had an experience that catches them off guard when they go beyond their skill set. Those do it yourself projects can turn into disasters that cost them money, require them to bring in a professional to fix what they broke, and just don’t live up to the promise that looked so easy in the video. Many small businesses think it’s OK to take the same DIY approach when it comes to their website. They get free technology from WordPress or inexpensive site building programs, set out to build their website or engage an inexpensive intern to do the job for them. But much like those home DIY projects, the results are often not what the business needed or wanted and the results can be a website that is not interesting and engaging, too hard to keep up to date and doesn’t reflect how that business wanted to be viewed in the marketplace. So much like the homeowner that shouldn’t have tackled that kitchen makeover, here are some of the traps that business owners often fall into when they attempt to do it yourself when it comes to their websites. Here are some considerations for when a DIY website may not be your best business decision. Most people build their own website to save money over hiring a professional. But something to consider is that DIY websites still come with hidden costs. 35% of the market uses free WordPress software to build a site, but you are definitely going to encounter hidden fees. For example many of plug-ins to give you the features you want or added apps all come at a price. Beyond that, many businesses become dissatisfied with is what they did in-house, hire someone to fix it and escalate their cost. Building your own website takes valuable time away from running your business. Creating a website is hard work and takes longer than you think. To do it right, you have to design it, create its content and make sure that search engines can find it, a skill set that most people don’t have. If you’re not a professional web developer, the hours upon hours you spend trying to create a website could be more efficiently spent generating business and growing your client base. Websites need to be found, particularly in Google searches. You can have the greatest website in the world, but if nobody can find it, what’s the point? You’ve likely heard the term, “Search Engine Optimization or SEO” which means making your website appealing to search engines like Google so that potential customers can find it and when someone looks for the type of services you offer, you come up near or at the top of the list. Search engines not only have to find you but when they do find you, they need to like what they see. This is a more complex science than most DIY website builders understand. DIY websites often have poor analytics. Most programs used by DIY site builders have inaccurate site analytics. Why are analytics important? Analytics give you a picture of how your website is performing, what traffic you are getting and what those individuals are looking at. Knowing that information gives you the chance to adjust your information giving more weight to content that is most popular. DIY sites are often not mobile friendly. Viewers of website may do so on their desktop computer, but are just as likely to view sites on a mobile device such as a tablet or smart phone. Your site needs to display just as well on a wide screen monitor as it does on the smaller screen of an iPhone. Do it yourselfers often ignore this requirement because it takes more expertise than they typically have. If you build your own site, who is going to support it when something goes wrong? What happens if your site goes down, formats are broken, or if a new version of a plug in comes along that breaks your site. And what about protecting that site from hackers that SPAM forms, try to steal data, or overload your site. Most DIY website builders don’t have the skill set to learn how to protect from these risks. Once a DIY website is built, how does someone keep it current? You start with a toolkit or service to build your site, but technology is constantly changing. So, the version you are using may not be up to date and the process of getting current may be difficult. Not to mention, that websites need to have the option to have new content added on a regular basis without engaging in another development effort. And the final reason, but not certainly the last one, is that you risk your businesses credibility if you don’t do it right or build it poorly. Your website is often the first and most lasting impressions you can make on a potential client. An unprofessional website is hurting you and most people make up their mind about your business in the first seconds of viewing what you’ve built online. If you’ve done a bad job, your prospect or customer has moved on to your competitor’s website. Takeaways You wouldn’t own a business if you weren’t talented in many ways. You’ve built customer relationships, generated revenue, managed the customer experience and handled operations. However, most of you are not in the business of building websites so taking the risks of spending more money than you wanted to, investing time in a website project vs. your business, not getting found on Google, not being able to resolve issues and just looking bad is way too much of a risk for the small business. So, if you’ve built your own website and it was a DIY mistake, help is on the way. Convey is getting ready to launch a new program to give you that high-quality business website you deserve, keep it updated with fresh information automatically, and give you other valuable marketing tools in the same technology to drive demand. Our technology is constantly using the most updated tools, is mobile optimized, helps you get found on Google, is constantly refreshed and managed by Convey and makes sure you are impressive when customers and prospects find you in their online buying journey.

Episode 35 - Reasons not to DIY with Websites

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Reasons why you should not “do it yourself” when it comes to your website Many small businesses think it’s OK to take a DIY approach when it ...

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Episode 34 - Reasons not to use WordPress Episode 34 - Reasons not to use WordPress

Why WordPress sites are bad for small business

The current market leader in websites is WordPress powering 50 million websites. It’s “free” technology for creating the site, ...

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3 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-podcast 0 351982 351982 The current market leader in websites is WordPress powering 50 million websites. It’s “free” technology for creating the site, appeals to the cost-conscious business, seems easy enough and offers some great looking layouts to make site creation easy. If you already have WordPress as the underlying technology your site is built on or are considering using it, here are some downsides that should give you reasons not to use this “market leader”. Sometimes we get lulled into a false sense of security because we use a product that the majority of the marketplace has adopted as its standard. We think because everyone is using it, it must be the best option, the most reliable and the safest choice. But the business landscape is littered with customers not having their needs met by the market leader. We all thought the only way to watch a movie at home was to go to the Blockbuster store, only to have Netflix come along with a better way to do business and shutter Blockbuster stores nationwide. And does anyone remember MySpace, the first and most successful social media site? It’s gone by the wayside as better options to share our lives were invented by Facebook and Instagram. So, let’s think about the current market leader in websites, WordPress. 50 million websites are powered by WordPress. First, it’s “free” technology for creating the site, appealing to the cost-conscious business, seems easy enough and offers some great looking layouts to make site creation easy. If you already have WordPress as the underlying technology your site is built on or are considering using it, here are some downsides that should give you reasons not to use this “market leader”. WordPress relies on plugins for much of its functionality. Plug-ins are created by independent developers that add certain things like displaying an accordion list or your image gallery. Most people with WordPress sites are awestruck by the added functionality that makes websites look better and more custom but fail to understand the inherent risks. Because plugins are created by different people, they are often not supported the way you think they should be so if a plugin crashes, taking down your website or the functionality you like, you may not be able to get things back to normal. Sometimes plugins don’t play well in the same sandbox. The initial plugin you added worked great, but then you added another one that sent your site into chaos. Software updates can break your site. Just like any other software, WordPress is constantly evolving, and updates come pretty often, sometimes each month. The problem with updates is that they cause issues. The theme that you chose may no longer work. The plugins you added might not be compatible with the new software version. And remember, this updating process happens all the time causing you to have to be on your toes. Maximizing how your WordPress site is found by search engines isn’t always easy. Search engine optimization can be more difficult with WordPress if you don't know what you're doing. Plugins are available to help with SEO, but then you run the risks associated with plugins, so may end up with a bigger problem on your hands. Many factors play into search engine rankings, and if you aren't aware of all of them when building your website, you might choose a theme or plugin that actually works against you. WordPress can have hidden costs to develop and maintain. Most people find that creating a WordPress site requires that you hire outside developers. These developers can fall in love with the code and all the crazy things they can do with WordPress. Without realizing it you can become their technology experiment, have your project become super complicated, take way longer than you think and cost you too much money. WordPress sites can be notoriously difficult to maintain, often breaking down every few months. They need to be constantly managed, updated and fixed as updates come downstream. You may have to hire developers to deal with technology updates and fixes. Editing a WordPress site is not for the faint of heart. I have developed and managed WordPress sites and if I get frustrated or confused, as I often do, I can only imagine how a non-technical business owner feel. WordPress was designed for coders, not business people. I find that WordPress is confusing because it’s not built to be user-friendly for the average person. That’s why so many WordPress sites get launched, but rarely edited or updated. WordPress sites have issues with security. If you don’t change it, the default setting for WordPress is to allow an unlimited number of login attempts. Hackers love this and can force their way into your site or overload your server trying. Aside from unlimited logins, WordPress has a number of other security vulnerabilities. If the software updates are not maintained, well defined holes in security remain on your site. Many people may use the same themes for the sites and once a hacker has found a way into the theme, every site with that theme is fair game. Sometimes WordPress sites can be a visible and easy target for hackers. Remember that you download WordPress for free at WordPress.com. And so can every single hacker on the planet. What this means for you is that when one hacker finds a way to hack it, he’s going to try to hack every WordPress instance out there. It doesn’t take long for hackers to find vulnerabilities especially if you are hosted alongside other WordPress sites on hosting providers like GoDaddy. Takeaways Despite the fact that WordPress has almost 1/3 of the marketplace, and for all the reasons listed above, it’s not the right choice for a small business. It may be free to use the code, but it will cost you in additional development, plug-ins, maintenance, fixes and updates. Beyond that, there are security flaws that entice hackers to install malware or ransomware and once they figure out how to do it, they’ll go from one site to another to compromise its security. So, if have a WordPress site and want to make a change, help is on the way. Convey is getting ready to launch a new program to give you that high-quality business website you deserve, keep it updated with fresh information automatically, and give you other valuable marketing tools in the same technology to drive demand. Our technology is constantly using the most updated tools, is mobile optimized, helps you get found on Google, is constantly refreshed and managed by Convey and makes sure you are impressive when customers and prospects find you in their online buying journey.

Episode 34 - Reasons not to use WordPress

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The current market leader in websites is WordPress powering 50 million websites. It’s “free” technology for creating the site, appeals to the ...

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Convey Announces Cloud Conventions 2020 Convey Announces Cloud Conventions 2020

The Virtual Trade Show for the Telecommunications & Cloud Channel

Atlanta, GA — March 11, 2020 — Convey Services, a SaaS technology company, today unveiled Cloud Conventions 2020, the largest virtual ...

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4 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-Press-Release 0 351980 351980 Atlanta, GA — March 11, 2020 — Convey Services, a SaaS technology company, today unveiled Cloud Conventions 2020, the largest virtual trade show in the telecommunications and cloud industry with over 30,000 sales partners invited to attend. The event goes live from May 11-14, 2020, hosting industry and business speakers, roundtable discussions, content, education and event-only financial incentives. Attendance at Cloud Conventions 2020 events is free for qualified agents, VARs, MSPs, master agents along with vendors and IT services providers. The program combines live speakers, event-only promotions, live chat, discussion forums and on-demand content to give attendees an interactive educational experience. “Cloud Conventions 2020 has been in the works for months, but in light of the disruption and cancellation of live shows caused by the Coronavirus, a virtual event provides an opportunity for telecom/cloud vendors to connect one-on-one with sales partners from across the country, without the risk and expense of travel,” said Carolyn Bradfield, founder of Convey. “Convey Services has the largest partner audience subscribed to its network of online portals for master agents, vendors and sales partners making Cloud Conventions one of the best opportunities in the industry to make valuable connections.” Vendors and sponsors will offer registered attendees special promotions not available outside of Cloud Conventions including a virtual swag bag of Spiffs, gifts and prizes. Industry speakers and session leaders will hold live discussions of technology and industry trends along with new and emerging services. Other business experts will present creative, low-cost strategies to help partners acquire and retain customers, provide vertical market insights, tactics to run channel businesses more efficiently along with unique subjects, like how to value and sell your channel sales practice. “Cloud Conventions goes beyond what you would expect in a typical live event because we add experts in sales and marketing, growth hacking, cyber insurance, and a host of other business-related topics exclusively for channel sales partners,” added Bradfield. “Cloud Conventions is an unprecedented opportunity for vendors to elevate their brand, raise their profile and promote themselves before, during and after the event. Sponsorship packages will offer services to engage selling partners and to create additional value for exhibitors and sponsors.” Cloud Conventions provides attendees with technology to schedule meetings with sponsors and exhibitors, participate in live chat, and manage events and meetings using a personalized calendar along with text reminders. Peer discussion forums will help sales partners interact and exchange ideas. When the live event closes, the Cloud Conventions portal will remain active so attendees can revisit virtual booths, watch recorded speakers, access content and connect with sponsors and vendors for the remainder of 2020. Registration for Cloud Conventions opens on Monday March 16th and interested vendors can request information about virtual exhibit and sponsorship opportunities by contacting info@cloudconventions.com. About Convey Services Convey Services delivers content and marketing portals and connects them into networks to inform, educate and engage channel partners and direct sellers in the telecom/cloud space, the property and casualty insurance market and food distribution industry. Convey’s portal technology automates and organizes partner management, has tools to engage and educate partners and integrates email marketing technology for members to run packaged email marketing campaigns to their customers and prospects. For information visit www.conveyservices.com, info@conveyservices.com or call 888-975-1382. Press Contact Bruce Ahern — (770) 580-0810 Chief Marketing Officer Convey Services bahern@conveyservices.com

Convey Announces Cloud Conventions 2020

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Atlanta, GA — March 11, 2020 — Convey Services, a SaaS technology company, today unveiled Cloud Conventions 2020, the largest virtual trade show ...

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Web Accessibility Web Accessibility

ADA Compliant Websites & Portals

Accessible websites & portals serve all users regardless of technology, education, or ability. Web Accessibility allows a disabled person ...

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5 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 eBook-eBook jplist-topic-Ebook 0 350959 350959 Accessible websites & portals serve all users regardless of technology, education, or ability. Web Accessibility allows a disabled person access or benefits from a website, portal, system or application. Accessible websites & portals present information using multiple senses such as sound and sight allowing for additional ways to navigate and interact beyond the typical point-and-click-interface such as keyboard-based controls. The combination of a multisensory and a multi-interactivity approach allows disabled users have the same experience as nondisabled users.

Web Accessibility

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Accessible websites & portals serve all users regardless of technology, education, or ability. Web Accessibility allows a disabled person access or ...

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Episode 33 - Hidden Website Gotchas Episode 33 - Hidden Website Gotchas

Avoiding Website Gotchas We talk about understanding the hidden issues that ...

You’ve all heard the term, gotcha. A gotcha is something that happens that is unexpected, catches you off guard, and can often have ...

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6 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast jplist-topic-podcast 0 350958 350958 You’ve all heard the term, gotcha. A gotcha is something that happens that is unexpected, catches you off guard, and can often have negative consequences. Gotchas are something you usually want to avoid because surprises throw you off your game, cause you to have to adjust and often cost time and money. And let’s face it, most business people don’t really like surprises. They like a level of predictability, want to know where landmines are so they don’t get blown up and have the ability to stick to a plan. When it comes to websites, most people realize that if the website looks bad, is outdated, and difficult to navigate, it hurts rather than helps a business. But what they may not know, is that there are some gotchas in their websites that are often nasty surprises that cause them to spend lots of money in redesign, maintenance or what’s even worse, legal fees. Let’s start with what may get your company sued. Not being ADA Compliant. Everyone knows about the Americans with Disabilities Act because we see wheelchair ramps, handrails in bathrooms and braille available in elevators. What many don’t know is that websites also need to comply with ADA regulations so people who are visually impaired or otherwise handicapped can access them. This hasn’t been a big deal until recently, but now it’s a very big deal. Although the government is not cracking down yet or fining businesses, class action lawyers particularly in New York and California are having a field day. Lawsuits are on the rise with over 2,000 cases in 2018 and 2019, up from only 800 in 2017. They settle quickly because companies don’t have the resources to fight them. And lawyers love to attack an industry group, no matter how big or small the businesses are. They find non-accessible websites, research the industry, then the form letters go out the door threatening everyone. Being ADA compliant is not as easy as you might think because a web reader, used by someone visually impaired must be able to read a picture, know where a hyperlink is taking them, and be able to use the keyboard to tab through the site. In this digital age, the disability community is sending a clear message to companies that they will not be left behind. At the same time, many companies are unaware of this issue until they receive legal action. The next “gotcha” is not being mobile optimized. Mobile devices, such as your smart phone dominate when it comes to surfing the Internet. Your website has to be ready for a mobile user by using responsive web design. This means that your site looks good on a wide screen monitor, and changes to fit the needs of the person on their iPhone. It shouldn’t matter which browser or device the user is using to access your website the screen needs to adjust automatically based on the screen size of the device. There are several consequences of not being mobile friendly, as many older sites are, but here are the big ones. If your site is not mobile optimized, it will be harder to find because Google, the 800-pound gorilla will bypass your site in favor of others who are mobile friendly. If customers can’t view your site on their cell phone, they may perceive you are out of touch and not very good at what you do because your site is old school. And, if a viewer has trouble with your site on their smart phone, they’ll navigate away in favor of your competitor’s more current technology. And next is the gotcha of not being found on the Internet. When it comes to getting found on the Internet, you need to comply with what Google needs so it can help people find you. Here are some “gotchas” that ruin your ability to get found. First, may be to use an inexperienced developer or free web builder that allows you to create a pretty site, but gives no attention to search engine optimization. Google built a series of tools for your webmaster, but if they aren’t used, you guarantee yourself Internet obscurity. Simple mistakes that people make are duplicating content, trying to use too many keywords when they aren’t relevant to the content, having a website that takes too long to load, having too many ads or sponsored links and letting your content get stale by never updating it. Gotcha! The investment in your website is now wasted because nobody can find it. If you never update your site or add anything new, then Gotcha, people won’t take you seriously. Let’s be clear, most of the industries Convey serves are always changing. Take the telecommunications channel. Only 5 years ago, the cloud wasn’t a thing and businesses had limited networking options. Sales agents had only a few vendors to keep up with and life was easier. Today, new vendors come on the scene constantly and businesses have more options than ever to reduce cost, be more efficient and have better technology. Your website needs to reflect what’s new and that involves adding content on a regular basis. Using a free or super low-cost web program is a big gotcha when “free” turns into expensive. It’s really tempting to go to WordPress.com, download the free software and try and turn up a website. Free or super low-cost website technology options are out there, but the “gotcha” is that free is usually never fee because of hidden costs. Take WordPress as an example. You want it to be more than a basic website, you have to purchase plug-ins. You want to update it, then good luck with that. WordPress is complicated and unless you are a developer, then you’ll need help. And what about when the site breaks because of incompatible plug ins or software updates. Gotcha again. You need developers to fix the problem. Not paying attention to security. You think because you’re a small company, that hackers won’t pay attention, right? Well, gotcha. You don’t have to be Equifax or Home Depot. In fact, most security breaches involve small businesses. Not to pick on WordPress, but those websites are usually hosted by providers like GoDaddy and use template that thousands of other businesses use. Once a hacker figures out how to gain access, he’ll run the tables with other sites just like yours potentially costing you and your customers significant money to fix the problem. Takeaways Nobody likes a “gotcha”, particularly when it comes to the website that defines who your company is, legitimizes your business and attracts people to your company. If your website is not ADA compliant, mobile optimized, found in search engines, current and updated, costs too much to maintain, or is vulnerable to hacking, you’ve potentially got big problems. Convey is about to give you the help you need to avoid website “gotchas”. We’re getting ready to provide low cost, high quality websites to the telecommunications and insurance industries with technology built for agencies. Our technology is constantly using the most updated tools, is mobile optimized, is web accessible, helps you get found on Google, is constantly refreshed and managed by Convey and makes sure you are impressive when customers and prospects find you in their online buying journey. We will help you get rid of the expensive and surprising gotchas so you can stay focused on your business, not your website.

Episode 33 - Hidden Website Gotchas

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Episode 32 - First Impressions Count with.. → Episode 32 - First Impressions Count with Your Website

You never have a second chance to make a first impression

People make the same snap judgments about website that they do about people. Google and other researched how people react to websites and ...

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7 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-podcast jplist-topic-microcast 0 349020 349020 People make the same snap judgments about website that they do about people. Google and other researched how people react to websites and found out that in about ½ a second, a person will form an opinion about your website and either stay to explore more or leave and go elsewhere. Explore how your website might be leaving a bad first impression. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” as the phrase goes and as a first impression is made, if it’s less than great, unfortunately it takes a long time to change it. Experts say it takes less than a second for someone to form a first impression about a person. But let’s recognize that we now live in a digital age and often our first impressions about you and your company are online vs. face to face. Let’s consider websites. People make the same snap judgments about websites that they do about people. Research shows people react and form opinions on websites in only a fraction of a second, on whether or not they want to stay and explore or leave and go elsewhere. Interestingly, we’ve talked to a number of small business owners at Convey that come to our portals for business information and polled them about their viewpoints on their websites. Here is what we learned that surprised us: People view their websites as a necessary evil, but not materially important to their businessTheir websites never produce any leads, so why have them?People admit that their websites are poorly designed and out of date. More importantly, small businesses may not recognize how much their current customers or prospects are doing online research before they engage you to help them complete their buying decision for business services. People in business follow the same pathway that consumers do by starting their buying journey online, researching their options, checking you out online and then either engage with you or look elsewhere. Recent studies have shown that almost 70% of the buyer’s journey for business services is digital. People find the services they need first, then engage with you second. If your site doesn’t assist the online buying journey your customers and prospects are engaged in, then you are likely missing deals without even knowing it. Back to first impressions. Let’s focus on some common mistakes that companies make with their websites that drive that digital researcher elsewhere vs staying on your site to learn more about you: Let’s start with the kitchen sink effect. You want the viewer to know everything, so loading your website with tons of information ensures they don’t miss anything valuable. Right? People view overly busy websites as confusing and overwhelming and frankly a turn-off. This is a particular challenge for business in an indirect sales channel that represent many products and providers. People don’t want to see every vendor you work with or all their services. They need you to focus their attention on what is most important. The second turn off is a website that is too slow. You’ve seen them. Everything takes too long to load, and we don’t have the patience to wait for that cool picture to display. And slow also relates to not getting to the point quickly enough. And then there is the website that just looks bad. We talked about sites that are just too busy, but what about the ones that are just poorly designed. They use garish colors, have visuals that are not appealing, or have text that is too small or hard to read. Websites that have old information signal to the viewer that your business is not up to date on the latest trends and products they may want to explore. I’ve viewed websites where the office address is old and phone numbers are outdated. I’ve seen websites in the telecommunications and cloud channel that highlight vendors that were purchased years ago and are no longer around. I’ve seen insurance websites that don’t refer to current product categories such as cyber insurance. Unless you keep your site up to date, people will think you are not in tune with what’s current. Websites need to “net it out” and if there is too much text, viewers can get to what’s most important. It’s perfectly OK to have content on the website that gives you a deeper dive into the products you sell, but it’s not OK to not offer a quick overview before someone goes deeper. People need to know who you are, your mission in the marketplace, and the key areas you focus on without having to dig through paragraphs to find it. Websites that are difficult to navigate or search are a huge turn off. I’ve gone through websites where it’s almost impossible to find what you are looking for. A straightforward navigation is necessary and websites that don’t have basic search where you can enter keywords and be taken to the information you need are a real turnoff ensuring that a frustrated viewer will navigate away from them. And last but not least, is the website that has no call to action or ways to connect with you. When a business complains that they don’t get any leads from their website, it’s often because people don’t have a way to express their interest in your services. Websites need contact forms and ways to express their interest. Otherwise, you’ll never know that they may have wanted to buy from you. Businesses need to think about their website as their best opportunity to make a first impression. That impression can make a small business look substantial, knowledgeable, trustworthy, and worth of attention. Or that first impression can be old school, out of touch, outdated and confusing. Businesses who don’t think their websites are important to their business just haven’t realized their potential. People are checking you out online every day and make a decision to learn more, get in touch, or go elsewhere. Those people may be your existing customers who could have bought more from you or new leads to expand your business. The online buying journey for business services is here to stay and businesses must address it. Now, if, like many others, you don’t have the time, expertise or resources to make the right first impression, help is on the way. Convey is getting ready to launch a new program to give you that high-quality business website you deserve, keep it updated with fresh information automatically, and give you other valuable marketing tools in the same technology to drive demand. Keep tuned into our podcast to learn more about how we are getting to help small businesses that sell services make that very important first impression and garner more engagement for your business.

Episode 32 - First Impressions Count with Your Website

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People make the same snap judgments about website that they do about people. Google and other researched how people react to websites and found out ...

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Convey Services Offers Networked Portal.. → Convey Services Offers Networked Portal Technology As.. →

Released May 16, 2019

Convey Services Offers Networked Portal Technology As Stand-Alone PRM Solution Posted on May 16, 2019 by Terry Moffatt in Channel News, CRM ...

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8 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-Press-Release jplist-topic-channel-marketer jplist-topic-channel-news 0 337513 337513 Convey Services Offers Networked Portal Technology As Stand-Alone PRM Solution Posted on May 16, 2019 by Terry Moffatt in Channel News, CRM / PRM Solutions, Partner Portals Convey Services, which manages networks of connected content and marketing portals, has expanded availability of its portal technology. The company is rolling out its networked portal solutions as stand-alone partner relationship management (PRM) systems, customer resource centers, internal knowledge centers, and membership platforms. Convey’s portal networks are currently deployed in the telecommunications, cloud and IT services industry and property and casualty insurance and foodservice distribution markets. “Convey’s capabilities are unique in creating standardized portals throughout a network, then connecting them for knowledge sharing,” said Convey CEO Carolyn Bradfield. Its technology allows networked portals to distribute different content and marketing campaigns to defined member classes. Portals are engineered to communicate with channel sales agents, inside or outside sales partners, customers, and association and non-profit member organizations. “Businesses and associations can deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience. Content can be segmented by vertical market, regional operations or member groups,” Bradfield explained. Convey’s proprietary hub-and-spoke technology features a centralized hub portal where content and marketing assets are managed and then distributed to secondary portals connected to the hub. This ability allows information from vendors and suppliers, as well as internally generated video, audio and graphic content to be selectively shared with any of the ‘spoke’ portals in the network. Convey’s networked portals can be open to the public, restricted behind a log-in, or accessible by logging into an administrative portal using single sign-on credentials managed by the Convey API. A CRM integrated into every portal manages members of the site and provides reporting to monitor activity and viewing habits of everyone that logs in. Convey’s Conduct technology, integrated into each portal, can be used to assist sales partners with marketing outreach. Hub portals generate email marketing campaigns and distribute them to networked portals where members can deliver them to prospects and customers. Campaigns can be general in nature or sponsored by specific vendors and suppliers. https://www.channelmarketerreport.com/2019/05/convey-services-offers-networked-portal-technology-as-stand-alone-prm-solution/

Convey Services Offers Networked Portal Technology As.. →

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Convey Services Offers Networked Portal Technology As Stand-Alone PRM Solution Posted on May 16, 2019 by Terry Moffatt in Channel News, CRM / PRM ...

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Alliance Engage Program Expands to 11 Master.. → Alliance Engage Program Expands to 11 Master Agent Portals

Released August 18, 2015

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Connect Your Business With 'Convey' Connect Your Business With 'Convey'

Released January 18, 2012

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Connect Your Business With 'Convey'

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Convey Engage Platform Enhanced; Resellers'.. → Convey Engage Platform Enhanced; Resellers' Role Becomes.. →

Released July 23, 2014

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Convey Engage Platform Enhanced; Resellers' Role Becomes.. →

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Convey Services Launches New Cloud-Based.. → Convey Services Launches New Cloud-Based SaaS Solution

Released June 17, 2014

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Convey Services Launches New Cloud-Based SaaS Solution

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Convey Adds MessagePro Text Messaging.. → Convey Adds MessagePro Text Messaging Platform to the.. →

Released on August 14, 2018

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Convey Adds MessagePro Text Messaging Platform to the.. →

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The PSI Network Master Agent Group Joins.. → The PSI Network Master Agent Group Joins Convey Engage

Released on July 9, 2014

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The PSI Network Master Agent Group Joins Convey Engage

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Cloud-Based Marketing Tools Offering.. → Cloud-Based Marketing Tools Offering Operational Benefits.. →

Released on August 9, 2019

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Cloud-Based Marketing Tools Offering Operational Benefits.. →

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CarrierSales Unveils Carrier Vault, New.. → CarrierSales Unveils Carrier Vault, New Online Portal for.. →

Released on October 22, 2015

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MicroCast

This time of year, we are obsessed over gift giving. We’ve now been through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday trying to find ...

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InterAct LifeLine Launches InterAct Cares.. → InterAct LifeLine Launches InterAct Cares Nonprofit.. →

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Being in “the channel” can be a challenge, to say the least. We have to balance our personal lives with our careers, manage through complex ...

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Episode 20 - Curt Allen Joins InterAct.. → Episode 20 - Curt Allen Joins InterAct LifeLIne

Conversation with Curt Allen & Carolyn Bradfield

Listen in to a conversation between Curt Allen and Carolyn Bradfield as Curt shares his transition out of Windstream and involvement in ...

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33 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast jplist-topic-curt-Allen 0 334302 334302 Listen in to a conversation between Curt Allen and Carolyn Bradfield as Curt shares his transition out of Windstream and involvement in InterAct LifeLine. Carolyn and Curt share the mission of InterAct LifeLine and how this new technology company is poised to take on the opioid crisis and disrupt broken processes in addiction prevention and treatment.

Episode 20 - Curt Allen Joins InterAct LifeLIne

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Episode 19 - Define Your Channel Program Episode 19 - Define Your Channel Program

MicroCast Convey Channel Helps You Define Your Channel Program Let’s face it. Most of you don’t really want or need every partner out ...

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34 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-podcast 0 333413 333413 MicroCast Convey Channel Helps You Define Your Channel Program Let’s face it. Most of you don’t really want or need every partner out there to try and sell your services. You could try that strategy, but you end up with endless quotes, frustrated partners and very few deals. To have an effective channel program, you have to define who you want to do business with, both on the partner and customer side. Vendors who participate in Convey Channel have numerous opportunities to use their content catalog to define their program, focus partners on the type of accounts that are in your sweet spot, and what partner benefits are part of your channel program. Over the years, we’ve seen a number of vendors and master agents make the mistake of being all things to all partners. Unless you are a huge national master agent with lots of resources or a vendor who has an extremely wide range of services, this strategy creates a recipe for disaster. Partners tend to focus their sales efforts and build a customer base that matches their product expertise and sales skills. The partner that likes to sell complex network deals to healthcare chains is likely not the same person that would be stimulated by pursuing a small business for hosted voice or failover service. Convey has built its content and marketing network to help both the master agent and the vendor to define who they are and the type of partner they want to work with. Start by creating an ideal partner profile and communicate your partner strategy through your Convey Channel content catalog. That statement may seem scary to vendors and master agents because certainly it seems less risky to try and work with every partner, right? But the reality is that 20% of partners are most likely to be those that are active with you and produce 80% of the referrals and your channel revenue. I’ve seen master agents be very successful by focusing on managed services providers as agents or vendors succeeding by attracting the partner who likes to sell complex cloud deals. A content catalog gives you many opportunities to let partners know who you are and how you define your partner program. As an example, you can create a page inside your catalog entitled “Partner Program”. Add text & graphics to let partners know if they are right for you or create a short informational video to communicate the message. Use a banner to direct viewers to that page or a content post that define your program. Then consider creating an “elite partner program” and inviting partners to join it. Ask partners to “sign up” for your elite partner program in order to receive special help and support. You can add a form to any page inside your Convey catalog asking the partner to let you know they are interested. Once the form is filled out, you can designate any person in your channel organization to get notified so they can follow up. If you have one of Convey’s partner portals, partners can apply to become members by linking them straight from your catalog on master agent portals to the member application inside your own portal. You can even automate accepting that partner into your program or screen the application first before you approve that partner. Next use the content catalog to educate partners on the type of customer that you would like them to pursue. Unless you want an endless flow of referrals jamming up your quote desk, taking up your channel managers time and not resulting in transactions, you have to help focus your partners’ efforts. Use your content catalog give partners an education on your target markets, the kind of account you want to work with and the individuals inside that account that are the right decision makers. Here is what works best. Add case studies on sales successes in your best vertical markets. Promote a webinar that you deliver to educate partners on the prospect that they can win with and how to sell to them. Add a separate battle card for each industry that you want partners to pursue. It’s important that you use the full range of catalog opportunities to keep reinforcing your ideal customer profile. And finally, consider expanding how you work with partners by adding a Convey Partner Portal. Convey integrates its Convey Channel Network with individual vendor portals to make it very efficient for you to update and engage all of your partners. Vendors that have a Convey portal can have it connected to up to 40 master agent portals in our network. When you add that battlecard, spiff, or case study, it’s available to partners that login to your own portal and can be distributed throughout the network. Having your own partner portal allows you to gain the efficiencies of automation, give partners assets and information they can’t get anywhere else, track what they engage with because they are now logged into your environment and give partners incentives because they are members of your elite partner program. The Takeaway There are more partners than ever before in our channel market with newer partner types such as managed services providers and value-added resellers asking to provide network and cloud services to their customers. Successful channel programs focus their efforts on the type of partner that is best positioned to sell their services, educating them about how to pursue customers in their sweet spot, and providing them resources to be successful. Convey Channel helps you define your partner program and attract the best partners to sell your services. To learn if your company is right for our Convey Channel program, go to the Convey Services website at http://conveyservices.com or visit Convey Channel at http://conveychannel.com

Episode 19 - Define Your Channel Program

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MicroCast Convey Channel Helps You Define Your Channel Program Let’s face it. Most of you don’t really want or need every partner out there to ...

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Episode 18 - Eating a Balanced Channel.. → Episode 18 - Eating a Balanced Channel Marketing Diet

A Balanced Channel Marketing Diet It's easy in business to limit yourself to just a few marketing techniques especially if you are in the ...

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35 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 333359 333359 A Balanced Channel Marketing Diet It's easy in business to limit yourself to just a few marketing techniques especially if you are in the channel with limited resources and marketing budgets. You might look at the success others are having on social media and want to confine your marketing to LinkedIn and Facebook. Or, if your company has been around for a while, you might feel reluctant to dive into new digital marketing techniques and try instead to keep growing your channel using sponsorships and events. One of the most dangerous phases in American business is “but we’ve always done it that way.” If your channel fails to add the marketing diversity it needs to succeed in the modern market, your channel might continue to grow, but at a slower pace and without many key ingredients needed to sustain that growth. Eventually, a person that tries to survive on only pasta will notice they don't feel as healthy as they once did, and you'll notice the same thing about your channel if you limit yourself to just one or two marketing strategies. Partners will likely interact with your business in a variety of ways before they decide to refer customers to you. They may browse your website, view an ad, scroll through your social media, search for reviews… the list goes on and on. This reinforces the fact that today’s partners are no different than today’s consumers who prefer to start their discovery process online and start exploring without your help. Partners are more autonomous than ever and choose to access information online and on demand. Our goal at Convey is to help you achieve a more balanced diet in your channel marketing strategy by adding that all-important element, digital and online presence through our Convey Channel program. Here is how we help you create a balanced marketing diet. First you have to get the partner to the table, so they know what you are serving. In the world of Convey Channel, you have a wide audience of partners who are hungry for services. There are around 40 master agents who have subscribed their over 23,000 sales partners to a Convey partner portal. If you have a content catalog in our network, partners have many ways to find you because we help those master agents drive traffic to the portal. In 2019 alone, we had over 2 million content views and downloads from partners who began their online journey to find you through Convey. Then it’s time to start the meal with an appetizer. The partner may not know you yet, but they know they are hungry for the type of service you offer because their customers are asking for it. In a balanced digital diet, you give the partner a taste of who you are, so they want to dig deeper. Content catalogs on Convey master agent portals can contain a summary of your services in a battlecard, a quick video about your program, or a page that overviews your value proposition. Now, let’s go to the main course. Now that the partner has come inside your content catalog for a meal, you need to feed them what they want. Partners need to know the type of customers that they should pursue, how to sell to them, how to interact with you and how they make money. Partners looking for a deeper dive want a full meal of case studies, white papers, product features, or descriptions of high target vertical markets. You can vary that meal inside of a Convey catalog by promoting webinars, adding content, or being featured in outbound email campaigns. And no balanced marketing diet would be complete without the dessert. For partners, the dessert is most often that financial incentive that sweetens the deal. We’ve seen Convey providers get very creative about how they showcase their spiffs and promotions. They add creative banners to their content catalogs that can also appear on the master agent home page. They get creative with their visuals and add interesting contests. Based on statistics from millions of views, Convey knows that nothing gets more attention than a financial incentive. We all know that between meals, there’s nothing nicer than a snack. It’s important that you keep the content flowing so partners remember that you are out there. Every time you add a new content post, upload a spiff or promotion, or promote an event it gets higher preference in the automated routines that Convey has to add to master agent newsletters or feature it on the home page. And let’s not forget the gourmet meal you can serve up. Every portal we have for both master agents and providers has marketing technology for you to create outbound email campaigns, deliver them to partner dashboards and make it easy for the partner to launch them without having to copy and paste, get creative, do any work, or worry that you might look at their prospect list. Our Convey marketing program is not a meal that every partner will consume, but it’s very satisfying for the partner who wants to go above and beyond in his or her own marketing. The Takeaway With the large number of master agents and their partners relying on Convey portals, you are just not eating a balanced marketing diet unless you become part of the online journey the partners are engaged in by visiting their master agent portal. Content catalogs are managed in a centralized portal making it easy to distribute your information to partners, feed them what they want and keep them coming back for more. Learn more about Convey Channel by getting in touch with us on our telecom industry site, http://conveychannel.com or our corporate site http://conveyservices.com.

Episode 18 - Eating a Balanced Channel Marketing Diet

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A Balanced Channel Marketing Diet It's easy in business to limit yourself to just a few marketing techniques especially if you are in the channel ...

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Episode 17 - Communicating at the Right Time Episode 17 - Communicating at the Right Time

Full TranscriptConvey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. One of the ...

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36 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 328224 328224 Full TranscriptConvey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. One of the key concepts every vendor must keep in the forefront of their mind when it comes to keeping sales partners engaged and interested is “out of sight, out of mind”. With so many vendor choices and services out there, it’s just not enough to sponsor partner events, go to trade shows and travel to meet partners. Communication must be continuous, online, and on-going to keep your company top of mindshare. Your message fades quickly once you are back on the airplane going home after a face to face event. Here are some interesting statistics from the training industry: 1. After only one hour, people retain less than half of the information you presented. 2. After one day, that drops to 70%. 3. After six days, 75 % of the information has gone out the door. So how does a channel program create a communication strategy until the time becomes right for a partner to notice, pay attention, and get engaged with you? You have to go online, attract people to your message, and continuously reinforce your value proposition. Here are 3 simple strategies. # 1 Be present where your target audience is most likely to look. Although sales partners might be on Facebook, they are definitely on LinkedIn, researching companies, finding prospects, and looking for business ideas. They have signed up for email broadcast services like iAgent, Channel Vision or Telecommunications Association. They subscribe to their Convey master agent portal. You need to find a strategy for all of these online or electronic outlets to get to the audience that really matters. #2 Communicate continuously to ensure that your message will be seen You never know when someone is going to be online trying to find strategies or services to sell to customers. You have to continuously feed the content engine to ensure that when someone is on LinkedIn, they find your post in the Channel Partners group, read your email sent from Channel Vision, or find that SPIFF on a Convey master agent portal. And don’t just say the same thing. Vary your messages, inject new ideas, and communicate in a way that grabs their attention. #3 Reinforce your message after a live event You’ve spent a large portion of your marketing dollars on sponsorships and events, only to have that message fade if you don’t do anything else. After the event is over, keep it alive in your social media posts, Convey content posts, or email broadcasts. Take that new product announcement, the latest promotion, or the addition to your channel team that you announced at the regional event and go online to reinforce what partners learned when they met you. The right time to communicate to partners is all of the time and the only way to do this is to have a strong online content strategy that focuses on where your audiences are looking, communicates to them continuously and reinforces your most valuable messages.

Episode 17 - Communicating at the Right Time

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Full TranscriptConvey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. One of the key ...

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Episode 16 - Communicating the Right Message Episode 16 - Communicating the Right Message

Full TranscriptCommunicating the Right Message Convey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s ...

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37 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 328223 328223 Full TranscriptCommunicating the Right Message Convey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast audio series. The way we communicate has changed forever. In our personal lives, we send text messages, use Facebook messenger, and use Instagram. Our communication has gotten shorter, more direct, and to the point. In business, however, we fail to recognize that short, sweet and to the point is the way people like to receive our messages. Communicating the right message in the right way in the channel is no different. Here are three critical mistakes we see companies make when they communicate with their sales partners: 1. Oversharing. We have thousands of content posts across hundreds of vendors on our master agent portals. When we look inside a vendor content catalog and see dozens of content posts, we worry that the vendor is now oversharing. Most of the time, more is not more and having less material gets people to focus on what is important. 2. Focusing only on the product. Knowing the features of the product is important, but it’s not the most critical thing that partners look for. They need to be informed about the right customer, the best markets, and why they should trust you as a vendor. 3. Failing to recognize what partners really care about. Partners care about serving the customer but they also care about the bottom line. Is this product easy or hard to sell? What resources will it take to develop a customer base? And how do they make money with you? So how does a channel program deliver the right message to engage a sales partner. Here are 3 simple strategies to help you with messaging. # 1 Add a simple battle card to serve as an overview. We all like to read the summary before we read the book, the review before we see the movie and the battlecard before we dive into a vendor’s services. For those of you less familiar with them, battlecards are a 1-page overview of your partner program, services, and financial incentives. They are the most viewed content, outside of spiffs and promotions, on Convey master agent portals and an essential content piece for all partner programs. #2 Focus on the ideal customer profile You cannot win every deal that a partner gives you, but you can win the ones that are the best fit. Let the partner know who the ideal customer is by defining the size of the company, vertical markets they exist in, their characteristics, and why they would buy. Knowing who to refer to you is more important than the features of your product and services. #3 Let the partner know how to do business with you and quantify what it’s worth So, the partner has found the right customer. What’s next? Do you want them to get a quote from you? Register the deal online? Set up a meeting? Or what? Partners need to know the rules of engagement, so they know exactly what to do with the prospect. And certainly, a partner needs to know what’s in it for them. If they sell the deal, what’s the commission value? Is there a promotion to incent the customer to buy or a spiff to reward them for the sale? Make sure they understand the numbers.

Episode 16 - Communicating the Right Message

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Full TranscriptCommunicating the Right Message Convey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast audio ...

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Episode 15 - 5 Reasons to Know About Convey.. → Episode 15 - 5 Reasons to Know About Convey Channel

Some of you listening to this Microcast don’t know who Convey Channel is. Others of you are wondering how we fit into your channel ...

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38 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 332914 332914 Some of you listening to this Microcast don’t know who Convey Channel is. Others of you are wondering how we fit into your channel marketing strategy, and yet others are thinking about expanding your relationship us. For those of you that don’t know us, Convey Channel is designed to be part of your digital marketing strategy. We run an industry content distribution and marketing network in the channel linking over 40 master agents with their vendors and distributing information to their 23,000 sales partners that subscribe to portals as members. Here are 5 quick reasons to get to know the Convey Channel program, how we help bring efficiency to your communication strategy and how we help you get results. First, Convey helps you eat a balanced marketing diet. Being successful at channel marketing is like eating a balanced diet. Some of us have been on these crazy diet plans where we eat an abundance of one food to the exclusion of others. For me, it’s the cabbage soup diet. But once you are into your diet, you start to crave the foods that aren’t part of the plan. Channel marketing is no different. If you don’t vary the menu, partners will get tired of your meal and start looking elsewhere for something more satisfying. Consider the Convey Channel program to be part of that balanced diet because it puts your information online, keeps it available 24/7 and if you do a good job adding content, provides partners with a satisfying meal every time they look at you. Convey promote efficiency and convenience for you and the partner The channel has experienced explosive growth in the last 5 years. Before the cloud, cybersecurity and the move to wireless, partners only had to keep up with a few network vendors, not hundreds of them. And the number of partners selling services has expanded with the entry of VARs, MSPs and other non-traditional referral partners. You don’t have the time to get information in everyone’s hands if you don’t use automation and partners don’t have time to search the web for all things hosted voice and the other services they sell. Convey’s portals puts your information in a single place, make it convenient for partners to find it, help the master agent out because he doesn’t have to distribute it and makes it more efficient for channel marketing to manage it. Third reason: We empower you to define your partner program Let’s face it. Most of you don’t really want or need every partner out there to try and sell your services. You could try that strategy you end up with endless quotes, frustrated partners and very few deals. You have to define who you want to do business with, both on the partner and customer side. Catalog owners inside a Convey master agent portal use pages and content posts to define their program, focus partners on the type of accounts that are in the vendor’s sweet spot, and what partnership benefits are part of their channel program. 4th, Convey creates opportunities to engage Just having content to read with no call to action makes it very difficult for a vendor to see if the strategy of having a digital presence is really working. Partners that look at a vendor catalog on any of our master agent or vendor portals need a call to action, and Convey Channel is designed to help partners engage with you by requesting quotes, registering for webinars, requesting access to your partner portal, or filling out contact forms. And last, but not least, Convey keeps your company top of mindshare Channel programs rely too heavily on face to face encounters with partners, but the fact is that when the event is over and the partner is on the way home, most of the information they learned is already on the way out the window. The Convey Channel program gives vendors a digital strategy to reinforce their message and stay in front of partners even when channel managers are not with them. The fight for mindshare has never been more intense than it is in today’s channel. Takeaway So, as you think about next year, your channel strategy and how you will invest your marketing dollars, we think you should get to know Convey Channel. We help programs balance their marketing strategy by adding a digital element, get information to partners quickly and efficiently, help you define who you are and the partnerships you want, create calls to action and always be present so when a partner goes looking, they find you. The next microcasts will dive deeper into how we deliver our commitments to be that trusted partner in the channel that can help you attract more partners, keep them informed, and motivate them to refer. But you don’t have to wait for those microcasts to drop, just touch base and we’ll be happy to show you Convey Channel’s program.

Episode 15 - 5 Reasons to Know About Convey Channel

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Some of you listening to this Microcast don’t know who Convey Channel is. Others of you are wondering how we fit into your channel marketing ...

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Episode 14 - Sales Leads Episode 14 - Sales Leads

Full Transcript Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a ...

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39 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 331485 331485 Full Transcript Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. The concept of providing partners with sales leads is not a new one, but automating the way you collect them, distribute them to partners and a process to ensure those leads are not wasted requires new thinking and automation. In this MicroCast we are going to share some ideas about how to generate leads for very little money, the business rules you should consider before you decide to give those leads out, and the automation to deliver, manage and track the way leads move through the funnel using Convey’s partner portal technology. Finding sales leads doesn’t have to be time-consuming and expensive. When it comes to finding leads, you have technology-driven options that improve the quantity and quality of leads that you can provide to partners. Your channel organization can engage in content marketing, social media outreach or drip marketing campaigns to drive inbound demand. But for this MicroCast, I want to focus on a strategy called data scraping to produce larger lead lists. Although you can try data scraping yourself, it’s much easier and cheaper to use freelancers who have technology that scour the web to generate leads. Freelancers use your criteria to create a custom lead list at a fraction of the cost and of much higher quality than any lead lists you might purchase. So how do you gain access to these valuable resources? Freelancers exist all over the world and the hourly rate for someone in India or in the Philippines as an example that can generate a lead list is embarrassingly low for the high-quality output they produce. The best way to engage a high-quality freelancer is to use a service like UpWork or FIVRR, spelled F-I-V-R-R where freelancers are profiled on their portal. You can put in your project requirements, find freelancers who have done projects like this before, and get reviews on their work from other customers. You pay the platform provider and they pay the worker. Freelancers can create a customized lead list using a process called data scraping. In simple terms, they use software to access multiple websites to find information on companies or individuals including names, titles, contact information, email addresses, company size, or locations. That information is delivered to you in a spreadsheet so you can import it into the technology you will use to manage and distribute those leads. You can even take this further and pay a freelancer to do some investigation or calling to qualify that lead. To give you an idea of how effective freelancers and data scraping is as a strategy, Convey employed a freelancer in the Philippines at $3.50 an hour and for less than $600 they delivered a 6,000 person lead list of individuals inside companies in the Southeast that were candidates to use technology in their buildings to reduce energy cost. Set business rules so partners understand your expectations and those leads are not wasted. The worst thing you can do is give leads to someone without any expectation of getting something in return. My suggestion is to have partners opt in to receive leads from you versus just sending them out. Leads are valuable and they should be reserved for partners that have achieved a certain status in your channel, that are willing to act on the leads, and that will allow you to follow up on their progress. Insight from the partner gives you what you need to assess the lead quality, how they marketed to the prospect, and what happened to the lead. Make sure you let the partner know how you got the lead, the stage that the lead is in, whether it is qualified or not, if the lead is in a specific vertical market, or anything about what they are receiving to set their expectation. Use technology to manage the distribution and follow up strategy for leads. Automation is the only way a channel program can effectively get leads into the hands of a large number of partners, track their progress and monitor if their lead program has been effective. Although there are many ways you can do this, I’d like to profile how Convey’s partner portal manages lead distribution with its prospect management technology. Aside from having a CRM to manage partner data, Convey’s partner portals have a separate prospect CRM to hold lead lists. Leads can be added into this customizable database when individuals fill out forms on the portal, but more commonly they are added by uploading them from an Excel or CSV file. Once the leads are in the CRM, the portal owner can set up business rules that define how to transfer leads, have prospects accept them or if you will require feedback on the lead process. Here are some of the rules that you can define for prospect transfer: Decide if leads will be available to multiple partners or delivered to only one partner at a time.Once a lead is available in the system, partners get notified and the last thing you want is a few partners taking all the leads. The system prevents that by letting you set a maximum number of leads one person can have in a given month.If a partner wants the lead, do you want them to formally accept it and if so, how long will you let that lead stay in queue before it’s taken? What information will you let partners see before they accept the lead and what information will you supply once it’s been delivered? You don’t want to give away all the information until the lead is in the hands of a partner.And last but not least, do you require that the partner update the status of where they are in contacting the lead? If the partner lets the lead sit there without getting in touch, you can always pull the lead back into the pool if you want and redistribute it. Using automation to manage the lead transfer process allows you to bake in fairness and neutrality to the way leads are delivered and gives you the insight into which partners are most active and successful in accepting leads and translating them into customers. Help partners market to the leads you have given them. Your channel program likely has a marketing department, but the partner organization likely does not. You may want to help the partner soften up those leads by providing marketing tools they can use to approach that lead digitally before they try and call to schedule an appointment. Provide the partner with sharable content that they can brand with their company graphics and contact information. Deliver an email template they can use to send an introductory message to the prospect. If you have a large number of leads you’ve handed partners, then consider creating email marketing campaigns for partners so that they can deliver campaigns to their lead list. If you are using one of our portals, we have built a service into them called Conduct. You can create the email campaign complete with 4 outbound emails and a sign-up page, deliver it to the partner dashboard and notify the partner it’s there. All they have to do is add their contact list and hit the “launch” button to automate how it goes out. Providing the marketing assets to partners gives you the opportunity to control the message, make it easier for partners to follow up, and if you use the tools built into our partner portals, you gain insight on the effectiveness of how those tools are used and how prospects are responding to email marketing campaigns. Takeaway Nothing will win the heart of your partner more than by giving them valuable leads, making it easy and efficient for them to work them, and the tools they need so they don’t have to spend time inventing the marketing they need to follow up. Remember that leads are valuable so get your partners to opt in to the lead program, make a commitment to follow up and give you insight on the progress they’ve made with the leads. That lets you make adjustments on the type of lead, the quantity, and how you produced it so you can make leads more and more effective. Stay tuned to our MicroCast series to learn more about the marketing tools inside of Convey partner portals and how they can help partners translate leads into customers.

Episode 14 - Sales Leads

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Episode 13 - Partner Marketing Tools Episode 13 - Partner Marketing Tools

Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Partner Marketing Tools Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all ...

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40 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 331462 331462 Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Partner Marketing Tools Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. Most of the providers that Convey works with would love to have partners use marketing to promote their services, but the reality is that partners rarely do what we think that they should. So why is it that partners don’t use the same marketing strategies that have proven so effective in the technology marketplace? First, partners just don’t have the time to devote to marketing. Partners are generally attached to very small agencies, so they are having to do it all. They have to secure more customers, educate them about services, manage the order and installation process, and respond to issues when the technology doesn’t work the way they expect. Marketing is generally last on the list. Second, being creative doesn’t come easy for partners. In a former life I was an English teacher and taught writing, among other things. I consider myself pretty good at it, but the vast majority of people I work with struggle to put the right words together. So, imagine the difficulty in creating a marketing email, a social media post or a blog if you can’t think of what to say. Third, partners don’t know how to generate a lead list to market to. If you are going to deliver an email campaign, target people to invite to an event or even try and influence people on social media, you have to have a way to generate a list. Partners don’t really have the understanding how to create lists of people that they can work with and then what to do even if they had a list. Convey’s philosophy has always been that if you do the work for partners, provide them marketing tools, and then show them how to get a good list they will be much more likely to add marketing to their revenue strategy. We’ve built marketing tools inside the Convey portal designed to motivate partners to use them. We’ve added an easy way for partners to share content. You’ve uploaded a case study, a white paper or product information that’s meant to be shared with customers. Partners have two easy sharing options every time they access content. An obvious thing they can do is to download a file if you havean uploaded one for viewing but an even easier process is our One Touch Email Share. Here is how it works. Partners see that case study or product literature and then click the email share button. No matter what email client they use, it opens automatically with a link to the content post already in the email. The partner just adds a personal message, then sends the email to their customer or prospect. When the prospect clicks the link, they don’t come back inside your portal, but they do come back to a landing page to view, download or reshare the content. Easy email marketing! And the best news is that our reporting tool shows you which pieces of content were shared, and which partners did that. For partners that really want to commit to an email strategy, we have a unique service inside of every portal called Conduct. For those of you who are now thinking that email marketing is dead, think again! Email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media, according to a study done by McKinsey & Company. The same study also shows that the buying process happens 3 times faster with email than in social media. Moreover, it is also said that most individuals prefer to receive business information via email. For the “Big 3” of social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), the engagement rate isn’t even 0.6%. Compare that to email’s average open rate of 22.86% and even its click-through rate of 3.71%. Emails reach most of the people they’re intended for, so email marketing must be an essential part of a partner’s marketing strategy. We’ve built our Conduct technology to overcome the worries that we know partners have about email marketing: I don’t have the time or expertiseI am worried about adding my lead list to the portalI don’t know if it works Partners don’t need the time or expertise to create campaigns because Conduct lets you create them for the partner. Here is how it works. Login to the portal as an administrator and set up the email campaign. Add the text and graphics, the email subject line and the call to action. Conduct lets you create campaigns of up to 4 outbound emails and creates a personalized landing page for the partner. Once the campaign is ready, deliver it to the partner dashboard and Conduct tells them it’s waiting. Partners can explore campaigns you’ve added and pick the ones they want to use. All they have to do is to add the list of contacts, tell Conduct when to launch it and sit back and collect the leads when people respond. They can create their own campaign if they want, but most choose to have you do the work. Partners don’t have to worry about the security of their lead list. You may have watched TV and seen a commercial on LifeLock™, the service that protects your identity. Conduct has ListLock™, the technology that secures their list and keeps it private. Once Conduct is enabled on a portal, nobody other than the partner can change their password in order to access their account and get at their list. It’s effectively locked and secured. You can use some of the strategies I shared in my MicroCast on how to create a lead list to generate them for the partner or to teach the partner to generate them for themselves. Learn how freelancers and data scraping tools create better leads at a fraction of the cost of purchasing a list. Neither you nor the partner have to worry about whether the campaign is working. When emails are sent out, we don’t wait to see who signs up. We analyze what happens to each email. Conduct knows if the email was delivered or bounced, if it was opened and if so, how many times, and if the recipient clicked through. Then, of course, there are the sign-ups that show people were interested in the message, the offer or the special deal. Reports are available to the partner to show how each contact responded and available to the portal owner to see the overall performance of the campaign without looking at the exact list. Just like any of the larger commercial email services such as Constant Contact or Mail Chimp that have been around for a while, we have tools inside of Conduct that make email campaigns easy, personalized and follow all of the email campaign rules. Partners add their contact information and even their logo to brand emails and sign up pages.We keep emails CAN/SPAM compliant by having the right information in the footer and automatically managing opt outs.Lists are kept in the Contact Manager and partners can easily upload their contacts, organize them into lists, keep custom data on each contact and even use the Contact Manager as an easy to use CRM system. Takeaway You can have the best marketing materials in the world but if the partner doesn’t have the tools to take your materials or message all the way to the prospect you can guarantee yourself that they won’t be used in the way you want them to. Convey’s marketing tools inside of our portals ensure that you can control the marketing message, make it easy for partners to actually use them to market, and analyze the result of your efforts.

Episode 13 - Partner Marketing Tools

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Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Partner Marketing Tools Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there ...

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Episode 12 - Engaging Partners Episode 12 - Engaging Partners

Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Engaging Partners Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know ...

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41 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 331461 331461 Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Engaging Partners Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. Nowhere is the old phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” more true than in the channel. So many channel programs rely too heavily on face to face encounters at trade shows, regional events or sponsorships, but forget the fact that when the event is over and the partner is on the way home, most of the information they learned is already on its way out the window. Having a digital strategy to reinforce the message and stay in front of partners even when you are not with them is essential to staying top of mindshare. Mindshare is simply the amount of attention you get from your partner network. When a sales opportunity presents itself, are partners thinking of your company first? Keep in mind that your products aren’t the only ones they’re marketing and selling in our crowded telco and cloud space. Your channel program can only have so much to say about the quality, price, and delivery of the products, but you can separate yourself from the competition by winning the mindshare battle with your partners. Here are some general best practices that you should follow when you want partners to notice you and be the first thing they think about when they are in front of a customer. First, be clear about what makes you unique in the marketplace. Is it your market niche? Exceptional service? Highly targeted products and services? Make this value proposition simple and easy to remember. Here is an example in a statement that’s clear, “We provide HIPAA compliant cloud hosting to healthcare.” Second, keep the messages coming. A one-time advertising blitz can get your message out quickly to a large number of partners, but staying top of mindshare requires consistent delivery of messaging over time. Keep it coming. Third, make sure partners know it’s you. Everything from your customer literature to your e-newsletters should have consistent messaging and similar look and feel. One brand, one message. Fourth, use a balanced approach. Stay in front of your audience using multiple channels over time. Awareness is based on repetition. And last, provide information that is useful. Frequency doesn’t have to mean being annoying. Partners should perceive you as a provider of useful information rather than an intrusive pest. Communicate frequently but give your partners genuine value each time. Having a digital strategy that leverages automation allows a channel program to be clear about who they are, have consistent branding, keep the messages coming, and make sure the information is useful. Let’s see how you can accomplish all of those goals using Convey’s technology. Start by defining the type of partner you want, the type of customer you want them to pursue and use technology to get your point across. At Convey, we see that many channel programs trying to be all things to all partners. We have over 20,000 sales partners that use our portals to get information on providers but in reality, only a fraction of those partners will affiliate with you. If a program tries to go “wide” they will end up quoting lots of deals, rejecting many of them because they just aren’t viable, and driving the partner away because they become frustrated. There are digital strategies inside of our Convey programs for providers to define the type of partner they really want to work with and the ideal customer profile they want them to pursue. In our Convey Channel program providers get a portion of a master agent portal called a catalog where content is added on a centralized site to be distributed to over 40 master agents. Or providers can own one of our custom portals and use them to educate partners Here are some digital strategies that work inside of our portals to define the ideal partner and customer profile: Add banners with taglines that clarify your ideal partner or market, then link the partner to a call to action to either learn more, join your program, or refer a deal.Create web pages, case studies or success stories that profile vertical markets that you are strongest in and customer wins.Consider having an elite partner program and invite partners that meet your criteria to express interest in joining by having an automated application process. Use the automation in our portals to keep the message coming. There is no excuse to not keep in constant contact with your partners. Make sure you are keeping them in the loop about current products, training opportunities, changes in prices, upcoming promotions and spiffs, or key events in your business. If you want to leave your channel partner unhappy, just ensure that they’re the last to know about major changes to your services, company or channel program. Convey’s partner portals make keeping in constant contact easy and automated. Here are some communication strategies and how our portals make them easy: Partners need to be reminded to keep coming back to the portal. Our system tracks their login history and reminds them to come back if they’ve been idle too long. Portals automatically notifies partners when they have a lead, a commission statement, or an action they need to take.Portals have discussion forums for partners to exchange ideas and ask questions of you and each other. The technology recaps those conversations, sends out a daily discussion digest and invites partners to come back and join the conversation.Add new content, a promotion or spiff, or an upcoming webinar and highlight those new developments in an automated newsletter. The system pulls from the newest items, highlights them and links the partner to come back to the portal to take a look.Partners can opt in to receive text messages from the portal to remind them about events or other action items. Statistics will tell you that text messages are opened 97% of the time and read within 90 seconds of getting them. Convey’s portals automate the way you reach out to partners to keep the messages coming and draw them back into the portal for more. Try different techniques that promote engagement and calls to action In today’s digital world, you have to assume that people need to see the same message multiple times, presented in different ways that appeal to the way they process information. Some people are analytical and like to read, so giving them white papers, case studies and product details will appeal to that type of partner.Some partners are visual, so big bold graphics in banners and pages or in our portal home page feature boxes are the shiny object that attracts their attention and motivates them to click and exploreSome partners learn by experience, so having webinars to let them hear from the experts makes sense. Discussion forums to exchange ideas in real time may be very appealing to an experiential learner. Use reports in our portal to analyze what partners look at and do more of what’s working and less of what’s not. Every time a partner logs into our portals, visits one of your content catalogs, views or downloads a post or navigates around your portal, we record that event. You can pull a member activity report to get an overview of the most popular locations and posts or an event report to see who registers for a webinar and then look at a specific partner to see who is the most active and engaged. We know through our experience that partners visit case studies, battle cards and promotions and spiffs more often than anything else, but your portal will give you all the detail you need to understand what partners really care about. Takeaway Being top of mindshare is critical in a crowded channel marketplace. If partners aren’t getting your message consistently, they will undoubtedly think about your competitors. We live in a world of digital engagement that requires constant reinforcement and no channel program can keep up with that type of demand unless they use automation to make it happen. Our portals are designed to help you win the minds and hearts of your partners, do it efficiently with automation and not break the channel budget in the process.

Episode 12 - Engaging Partners

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Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Engaging Partners Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many ...

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Episode 11 - Automate Partner Management Episode 11 - Automate Partner Management

Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Automate Partner Management Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we ...

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42 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 331436 331436 Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Automate Partner Management Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. Convey is a big believer that every channel program should be automated, have a digital strategy and the right technology tools for their partners. And we believe strongly that having a PRM or partner relationship management system is a must-have for all channel programs. Unlike a CRM that is designed primarily for direct sales, a PRM brings a channel program the following benefits: PRMs streamline partner onboarding. If you bring on new partners constantly, using a manual process to onboard them wastes lot of internal resources versus a PRM solution that is more efficient. PRMs manage education and training. A PRM provides programs the ability to execute a well-defined learning plan to make sure partners know which customers to pursue, the markets they exist in, the right sales process and good basic product knowledge. PRMs keep this training online and constantly available. PRMs offer communication & marketing support. They have tools to manage documents, communications, and other marketing assets in one online location. This ensures that partners can find the right information at the right time, allowing them to sell more effectively. PRMs help you get the ROI for marketing or sales expenses. Incentives are an essential element to drive partner performance. PRMs enable you to gauge what motivates them so you can reallocate funds based on what’s working or not. PRMs automate how you get the word out about new products. Having a well-designed PRM solution lets partners know what’s new and provides the ability to give real-time feedback on products. This ensures that launches can go off without a hitch. And last but not least, PRMs increase partner satisfaction. Partners do not have unlimited resources and time, so when you offer a more efficient and beneficial way to do business with you, partners will naturally look to you to provide them with solutions for their customer base vs. your competition. In today’s MicroCast we are going to focus on the tools inside the Convey PRM system that automate your program, increase your team’s efficiency and make it easy for partners to do business with you. Let’s start with how Convey streamlines partner onboarding. If you participate in Convey’s Channel Program, you may be maintaining a catalog that is viewed on our master agent portals. But those master agents are not going to give you their partner list. Getting partners to become members of your portal allows you to develop personal relationships with and engage directly with them. Convey’s PRM automates how partners become members in the first place by turning on an automated application process. Partners fill out the application, adding information that you find valuable. The PRM can approve partners immediately providing login credentials or have an approval process for you to screen the application and approve or deny it. If you add the partner to the member database directly, Convey delivers a welcome email automatically that you can customize message including a password set link. Convey’s portals are designed to provide education and training. It’s our philosophy that training and education can take many forms, all of which are supported by our portal technology. Portals are divided into content catalogs, so you can choose to consolidate training in one catalog inside the portal or spread it out over many locations. Consider your partner audience and the ways they learn. Some partners like to analyze and read so their education so it can take the form of case studies, white papers, or product feature sheets. Other partners like to visualize, so adding graphics, drawings and pictures to explain who you are may better engage them. While other partners like experiences, so offering webinars, videos, or discussion forums may be their best option. No matter which education option you choose, you can monitor the training that partners are using with our member activity report. Convey portals automate communication and marketing support. There are many ways our portals communicate with partners so let’s start with our Message Library that delivers notifications, reminders and messages. Partners are automatically notified by email when their password is changed, when there is a lead waiting for them, or commission statements are added. Reminders go out if the partner fails to login after a certain number of days. You can create custom messages or newsletters and schedule them to go out regularly pulling new information each time from the portal. We have an entire MicroCast devoted to marketing support that profiles our 1-touch email service and the Conduct Campaign technology that lets you deliver pre-created email marketing campaigns for partners to launch to their prospects. Our portals help you automate how you manage incentives. Partners love promotions and spiffs that incent them to sell your services vs. the competition. However, most incentives are not forever and expire after the month or the quarter is over. If you have added an incentive and are promoting it in a banner or a piece of content, our scheduling engine will let you add those elements to the portal when the promotion begins and remove them when it has expired so you don’t have to worry about having outdated information on the portal. Launching a new product? Convey’s portal can automate how you engage partners. If you have an upcoming launch, you can prepare ahead of time by adding banners, content posts, and outbound emails and holding them so that they appear by using the scheduling engine. Set the message library to send outbound emails on a regular basis to make sure they got the announcement, know where the training is, and can find the spiff that you are offering. Convey has a partner CRM or can link to any other CRM system for member management. We love our CRM tool because it can be customized in minutes, it is easy to use, and comes with the system. However, we recognize that companies may have already invested in a CRM like Salesforce or may be using another tool. No problem. The member management API lets you manage member data in your system and create member records in ours. If you use Convey’s CRM, then you have flexible options about how data gets into it. You can upload partner lists. You can have partners fill out the member application and automatically add that data to the CRM or you can have partners fill out profile information inside the member dashboard to collect more information. Add notes and tasks to a partner record to automate delegating responsibilities or ensuring that you follow up and use reports to extract the data you want on your partners. Takeaway If you aren’t looking into a partner relationship management system, then you are missing an opportunity to do more with less resources, consistently engage your partners and automate everything from onboarding to training. We want you to look at Convey for its capabilities, ease of use, its low cost and its ability to distribute content directly to your partners that are members of your portal or to master agent portals in our Convey Channel Network.

Episode 11 - Automate Partner Management

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43 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 331434 331434 Full Transcript Convey Channel MicroCast Automating and Upgrading Your Channel Program Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. Because Convey lives in the world of automation and digital experiences, we are going to overview several key areas that providers and master agents can execute in an efficient and automated way to distinguish their channel programs in order to attract more partners and keep them engaged. In subsequent MicroCast sessions, we’ll take each individual segment and devote our podcast to the steps you can take to turn one of these concepts into reality using technology as the backbone to execute the strategy. Technology companies should use technology to make it convenient for partners to get product information, to learn how to sell services, to see real life examples of success, and to understand how they fit into your strategy. If partners find it hard to get information or think it’s difficult to sell your solutions, they will switch to selling other solutions that are easier. Digital strategy #1 is to automate how you find, deliver and manage sales leads for partners. Ask any master agent what partners would like most and most of them will answer, “a good old-fashioned sales lead”. But providers struggle with the time and expense of finding the lead, the best way to distribute those leads to partners, and how to make sure that the leads they deliver are not wasted. When it comes to finding the lead, you have many options rooted in technology. Your organization can engage in content marketing, social media outreach, or an activity called data scraping. Freelancers have technology that scours the web to generate leads based on your criteria that will generate a custom lead list that is at a fraction of the cost and much higher quality than most lead lists you might purchase. When it comes to distributing and managing those leads, Convey has options inside its partner relationship management system to add prospects to a sales partner’s dashboard, set the rules around how they accept the lead and a feedback loop to ensure they are following up. Digital strategy number 2 is to use technology to stay top of mindshare by continually engaging partners. Nowhere is the old phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” more true than in the channel. So many channel programs rely too heavily on face to face encounters at trade shows, regional events or sponsorships, but forget the fact that when the event is over and the partner is on the way home, most of the information they learned is already on its way out the window. Having a digital strategy to reinforce the message and stay in front of partners even when you are not with them is essential to staying top of mindshare. You might still print those 4-color marketing slicks, but partners would rather get your information online. If you don’t have a LinkedIn page or up-to-date profiles for your people, you look unprofessional and disorganized. And if you’re using your corporate website to distribute information to both partners and customers, then partners are missing valuable things they need to do business. Digital strategy number 3 is provide tools for your partners that automate how they engage and market to their prospects and customers. One of the biggest challenges in providing tools to your partners is that partners have all levels of marketing expertise. Some partners may be better at marketing than their vendors, but most have limited capabilities, and some have none at all. Most partners have a deep desire to do good marketing, even if they don’t know how, have the time and lack the infrastructure to do it. That’s where technology proves most valuable for vendors to control the message, automate how they get tools in partner’s hands, and track if those tools are effective. As an example, Convey built two tools for partner marketing, one simple and one robust that use automation to help partners market. Add content in one of our catalogs or on partner portals and allow partners to share by email. When they touch the button, their email client automatically opens with a link to a landing page to view the content. The more complex tool, built into partner portals, lets marketing create a multi-email campaign, deliver it to partner dashboards and has enough automation so that all partners need to do is add their list and hit the go button. Digital strategy number 4 is to use automation to onboard, train and manage partners. If you want partners to affiliate with you, the thing that will slow your program to a crawl is the manual processes you might engage in to have them sign up, understand the partner agreement terms, be trained on services, know the right contacts, and be managed on an-ongoing basis. Although I’m biased, any program that wants to grow and thrive that does not have a partner portal is condemning itself to use staff to do administrative things that technology can manage better vs. spending time bringing partners or revenue in the door. Portals let partners automatically apply to affiliate with you, collect their information and add it to a CRM that keep track of them. They can hold partner agreements and keep them available for the partner to review at any time. Training should be on demand and online with modules that include videos, courses, or product information. Training webinars should be recorded and posted for anyone who missed the live event. Portals can automate delivery of commission statements, sales leads or important messages and notifications. And partners should be able to update their information online so you can learn more about them. Takeaway One of the most dangerous phrases in business, and in the channel, is “But we’ve always done it that way!”. Even if the current tactics you are using to engage partners is working, it doesn’t mean that it always will work or that you shouldn’t attempt to evolve and stay current. There are so many examples where businesses fail to see how their landscape was changing putting them at risk. What about Kodak? Technology replaced the 35mm camera film. Or how about answering machines replaced by voice mail and hosted voice? In the next 4 episodes of our MicroCast focused on creating a digital strategy for your channel, we’ll give you some ideas of how to use technology to find, manage and distribute sales leads to partners, to keep partners engaged and you top of mindshare, to provide automated marketing tools to help partners sell and to automate processes to onboard and manage partners.

Episode 10 - Automating and Upgrading Your Channel Program

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44 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-Halloween-Special 0 328222 328222 Full TranscriptConvey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. This week is our Halloween MicroCast series and we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out in our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, can ruin your channel program and destroy your revenue. Today we’re going to focus on the “Invasion of the Sales Partner Snatchers. You used to go to Channel Partners in Vegas and there were thousands of partners wandering through the exhibit hall or attended regional meetings. Then, all of a sudden, the invasion of the partner snatchers descended on the channel and one by one those partners started disappearing snatched away and gone forever. If pods from outer space didn’t spirit partners away, then where did they go? The answer is complicated. People became agents years ago because they may have been in a company’s telecom department, then decided to branch out and start their own business. Many of these partners are now aging out, retiring, or just not active and they are being replaced by new partner models that may not be so obvious to you. So, what are vendors and master agents to do so they don’t experience the nightmare of the disappearing partner on Channel Street? Here are some thoughts: Diversify your partner base. If the only type of sales partner you have focused on is the telecommunications agent, you are missing a variety of other partner types that have the right customer base not only for network services, but for cloud and business as a service. And you may be putting your channel program at risk as your traditional partner base shrinks. Think about including managed services providers, value added resellers and IT service providers. After you do that, look around and consider less traditional partners that are calling on accounts with non-technology-based services. Here is an example. The other day I ate lunch with an insurance agent who is building a practice around commercial insurance for assisted living facilities. That person would make a great referral partner because those facilities need to upgrade their phone system, move applications to the cloud, use technology to make their buildings smarter, and network their locations together. He’s non-traditional but he’s calling on the right customers in a high-value target market. Once you diversify it’s important to understand the different type of partner models and how they function. Let’s take the managed services provider as an example whose business model is different than a telecommunications agent. An MSP owns the customer relationship because they not only manage their IT and network, they also invoice the customer for services rendered. MSPs will often step aside and let the vendor take the lead when it comes to selling services that they don’t have native expertise in, making them an ideal partner who wants a trusted relationship with a master agent or vendor and is willing to make the referral. It’s also important to learn where the new partner types hang out and plan to go where those partners congregate. If you expect these different partner types such as an MSP or VAR to haunt the hallways of Channel Partners in Vegas or other telecommunications-oriented events, think again. They will likely be elsewhere. Expand your presence at organizations like ASCII or shows like IT Expo to find other technology-oriented partners.

Halloween Special 5 - The Nightmare on Channel Street: The.. →

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45 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-Halloween-Special 0 328221 328221 Full TranscriptConvey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. This week is our Halloween MicroCast series and we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out in our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, can ruin your channel program and destroy your revenue. Today we’re going to focus on vendors that checked into the Bates Motel, handed over their MDF funds, and thought they were getting the key to channel revenue, only to never come out alive. Your Vegas hotel bill, those huge green fees at the golf tournament, or sponsorships for that expensive cocktail party have been washed down the drain with very few partners that you hoped would engage actually selling your services. You try to wake up from the nightmare where you are being chased by your management team, screaming that you don’t know what the ROI is, which partners were converted and what revenue is going to result from your efforts. You are caught up at the Bates Motel in the Nightmare on Channel Street, but there are ways to make sure that your marketing development funds give you a provable ROI, don’t break your budget and produce partner relationships and customer referrals. Here are some thoughts. Don’t overspend on live events by changing your event strategy. Vendors tend to overspend on events by sponsoring a cocktail party, complete with a killer band, great drinks and in a cool venue. But those events often have other vendors clogging them up and little opportunity to engage directly with the partner that you want relationships with. Consider creating a niche event that is more innovative and creates an exclusive gathering that entices your partners to attend and because you view them as important in your go-to-market strategy. More intimate events that give the partner a personal experience and offer the channel team the opportunity to participate in activities directly with the partner are much less expensive than the big blowout. Think a Top Golf outing, wine tasting, or fireside chat with a local celebrity. And, don't feel you have to go it alone. There are vendors that offer services that are compatible vs. competitive to yours. Invite them to co-sponsor and add an educational component that is not product-focused but more industry and market focused. Create educational, virtual partner events that you can execute for a fraction of the cost of a live event. Webinars and podcasts continue to be a hot trend in content marketing. They are inexpensive and effective if they are done right. Make those events short and use your marketing budget to pay an industry thought leader to bring an expert or knowledge perspective vs. focusing on trying to sell your products and services over the web. People will come to hear the thoughts of people that are different and interesting. Think about the power of Ted Talks that attract massive audiences. Consider offering knowledge on the vertical markets your customers exist in, on selling strategies, and on strategies that partners can use in general to grow their business. Virtual events can be delivered with minimal marketing funds because there is no travel involved and no expense in finding a venue, paying for food and drinks, and those pricey giveaways. Execute a digital strategy to help sales partners market directly to their customers and prospects. Partners have spent years building customer relationships or creating contacts in their local marketplaces that could become customers. However, they don’t have the time, creativity or expertise to execute an effective digital marketing strategy. Allocate your MDF funds to reward partners who are willing to let you help them

Halloween Special 4 - The Nightmare on Channel Street:.. →

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46 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-Halloween-Special 0 328220 328220 TranscriptConvey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. This week is our Halloween MicroCast series and we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out by entitling our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, can ruin your channel program and destroy your revenue. So many of you have seen the Walking Dead, that wildly popular series that has lasted for 9 years and filmed in the state of Georgia, Convey’s home. This episode of the Nightmare on Channel Street starts off easy enough. Partners are throwing deals to you right and left, asking you for quotes and submitting deals. But then the nightmare begins. You’re working way too hard preparing tons of quotes for companies that are just plain wrong for your services. It’s a nightmare because your entire channel team is totally deployed chasing deals that will never convert, partners are frustrated because they don’t know which prospects meet your standards and your channel is being sucked into a never-ending quoting nightmare. What looked like good deals are the now the “walking dead”. How can a channel program hold off those zombies and get deals that will actually convert? If you want to survive this episode, here is what you can do. Make sure that sales partners have a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile. If partners are sending prospects over to you and asking for quotes that never produce a deal, whose fault is it really? I’ve seen many channel programs complain about the wasted time in quoting bad deals, but not enough programs accepting that they were ones at fault because they never educated the partner on what types of customers are ideal for them. Partners need to understand what markets you are strongest in, the size of the company that is right for you, and what type of buyer inside that company you need to talk to. Convey had a vendor that was getting absolutely no traction with partners for their hosting solution. When we explored the type of customers they already had, we found out that 65% of them were healthcare organizations because of the HIPAA-compliant platform the company had. However, their healthcare market focus was never shared with partners, so they had no idea where to focus their efforts. Once partners were educated, the right deals began to flow through. Make sure your program has a clear understanding of the ideal partner you want to represent you. Not every partner that is out there has the customer base, technical expertise, or sales capacity to sell services, yet many channel programs cast a wide net then wonder why they are either ignored by partners or get the wrong referrals. Convey’s Channel program has over 23,000 sales partners that belong to 40 master agent portals but trying to influence and form relationships with all of them when selling your services that are only appropriate for some of them is a recipe for frustration and un-met expectations on both sides. And lastly, clearly define the rules of engagement for deal referral or getting a quote. Partners like a clear understanding of process. They have hundreds of vendor choices and if they are not clear about how to refer, how to ask for a quote, what information you want, and who to deliver it to, they will make up their own process. Consider formalizing your referral and quoting process by creating forms to add the information you care about. Set partners expectation about what you plan to do once you get their information so everyone is on board and on the same page.

Halloween Special 3 - The Nightmare on Channel Street: The.. →

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47 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-Halloween-Special 0 328219 328219 Full Transcript Convey MicroCast Series This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. This week is our Halloween MicroCast series and yesterday we gave Freddy Krueger a shout out by entitling our first episode, the Nightmare on Channel Street. We identified nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, ruin your channel program and destroy revenue. Today we’re going to focus how you wake up from the nightmare, run away from the monsters chasing you to not only survive on Channel Street, but to thrive. Let’s focus on the problem of the disappearing commissions. We’ve seen the rapid pace of mergers and acquisitions in the channel, many of those deals financed through debt, saddling the company with large debt-service and interest payments. Take Windstream as a prime example. They snapped up smaller companies like Earthlink and went into debt to do it. You know the rest of the story; this year Windstream had to file bankruptcy in order to survive and protect itself. Now, enter the bankruptcy court, and that channel program lost a level of control over how partners got paid. Commissions became at risk, especially to those partners that stopped selling new Windstream accounts years ago. So how do master agents and partners protect themselves from this nightmare on channel street? Here are some ideas. First, diversify your provider portfolio. The first rule of business is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. Companies that have a top-heavy revenue stream tied up in only a few customers are those at most risk. Although you have your favorite providers, putting most of your revenue in one place elevates your risk. Beyond that, you may be missing new services, new strategies and new opportunities other providers might represent to you and to your customers. Next, upsell existing customers with additional services. If you’ve sold big network deals, you are likely making good commissions from those relationships. However, those companies have evolving technology needs that you can fill. If you affiliate with a master agent that is part of a master agent association like the Technology Solutions Exchange or the Alliance Partners, those master agents very likely own Convey Partner Portals. Inside their portal is a world of other cloud and technology services you can offer your customers to upsell to your customer base and continue to diversify your source of commissionable revenue, reducing your risk. And third, stay abreast of channel developments. Most of the struggles that vendors are facing in the channel are often reported on in the variety of channel publications and websites. Make sure to access those sites and read the tea leaves so that you are not surprised. If you know what might be coming with suppliers you work with, you can make more intelligent decisions about where to place your business so that it is in less jeopardy. The nightmare of being blindsided by changes in your provider’s business is one that can be avoided. Plan now to diversify the providers that you place business on, diversify your portfolio by upselling customers with new services, and stay informed about developments with the suppliers that you are working with. This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’ve been listening to our MicroCast in the Convey Channel Partner special Halloween series.

Halloween Special 2 - The Nightmare on Channel Street:.. →

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48 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-Halloween-Special 0 328218 328218 This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. This week is our Halloween MicroCast series and we’re going to give our old friend Freddy Krueger a shout out by entitling our program, the Nightmare on Channel Street. For those of you who don’t remember Freddy, he starred as a character in the Nightmare on Elm street, an insane child killer, released on a technicality and murdered by the town’s parents. He comes back in people’s dreams and continues to kill through 9 different movies. So in honor of Halloween week, we are going to identify nightmares in the channel that keep you up at night, ruin your channel program and destroy revenue. Our first episode in the Nightmare on Channel Street is called “the death of commissions”. This episode of unfolds as nervous channel partners watch in horror as big companies gobble up smaller ones, creating a behemoth that lumbers through the marketplace like a zombie trying to feed itself on dwindling sales with a pack of hungry debt holders hard on their heels. The struggling company darts into court to protect itself from hungry debt holders by filing bankruptcy and then the nightmare really begins, but not for the company, instead for partners that sold its services. A new group of characters come on the scene, the bankruptcy court judges who nullify partner contracts gasping in horror at the commissions flowing out the door to partners who stopped selling their services years ago. Judges rule, commissions begin to die and partners that depended on them start scrambling for new sources of revenue. Episode two is called the “The Invasion of the Sales Partner Snatchers” You used to go to Channel Partners in Vegas and there were thousands of partners in the exhibit hall, or to regional meetings full of partners. Then, all of a sudden, there was the invasion of the body snatchers and one by one those partners started disappearing, seemingly snatched away, gone forever. Where did the partners go? Some of them got discouraged with channel sales and went back to their careers working for a company. Some of them simply aged out and retired from active duty, continuing to take whatever commission checks that were still coming their way. Or some of them just decided that it was not interesting enough to keep coming back, only to hear the same old presentations delivered the same way. And the other explanation for their disappearance is that pods from outer space have landed in the channel, snatching up the partners we used to know and depend on. In Episode three, vendors check into the Bates Motel, hand over their MDF funds and may never have their channel marketing budget come out alive. Your Vegas hotel, those huge greens fees at the golf tournament, or sponsorships for that expensive cocktail party have been washed down the drain with very few partners that you hoped would engage actually selling your services. Now, you wake up in a cold sweat being chased by your management team, screaming that you don’t know what the ROI result is, and which partners were converted and what revenue is going to result from your efforts. Next it’s a cold Halloween night and you’re waiting in the Pumpkin Patch for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. But that never happens because you’re in episode 4 of the Nightmare on Channel Street. If you worry about trying to find partners to represent you in the channel, only to have your trick or treat bag filled with rocks, then you are not alone. The channel has expanded, the number of vendors has grown, and it’s much harder to get partners to pay attention with all of the noise in the channel. Trying to get people to pay attention to you can be one of the nightmares on Channel Street. And our final nightmare is entitled the Walking Dead. At first everything seems wonderful for you on Channel Street. Partners are throwing deals to you right and left, asking you for quotes and submitting deals. But then the nightmare begins. You’re working way too hard preparing tons of quotes for companies that are just plain wrong for your services. It’s a nightmare because your entire channel team is totally deployed chasing deals that will never convert, frustrating partners who don’t know which prospects meet your standards and being sucked into a never-ending quoting nightmare. So, if your channel program is caught in one of the Nightmares on Channel Street, what should you do? Hide in the graveyard of other channel programs hoping Freddy won’t find you? Run from the people trying to suck the blood out of your marketing budget? Or hope that the budget chainsaw won’t cut through your team when the results aren’t what management expected? Remember that in all horror movies, the bad guy always loses in the end. The nightmare is over, and the main characters live on to fight another day. So, what about the Nightmare on Channel Street? Well this is what we call in the MicroCast world, a cliff hanger. You’ll have to tune into this week’s Halloween MicroCasts to find out how you, as the main character in your channel movie, makes it past the partner snatchers, out of the Bates Motel, and avoid the Walking Dead to keep your channel program alive and well. This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’ve been listening to our MicroCast in the Convey Channel Partner special Halloween series.

Halloween Special 1 - The Nightmare on Channel Street

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49 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-microcast 0 328217 328217 Full TranscriptThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. It’s natural to want everyone to like us and nowhere is this more true than in the channel. We get sucked into the idea that engaging thousands of sales partners will create the path to revenue. However, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to executing a good channel strategy. It’s very rare when a service appeals to every partner, that they are comfortable selling, and that they understand. Executing a one-size fits all marketing strategy when it comes to partner recruitment is a sure-fire recipe to confuse the partner and frustrate your team when you are over-quoting for prospects that will never become customers. You have to understand who the right partner audience is for what you do and then help them understand the right customer audience for what you sell. Here are only some of the consequences of connecting to the wrong partner or having partners connect to the wrong customer. 1. Engaging the partner who doesn’t get your service increases your cost of sales. You have to spend more time and resources educating partners, holding their hand through the sales process, and going through more prospects to get a deal. 2. Partners get frustrated when you reject their referral which can damage your reputation. There is nothing more challenging than to get the wrong type of deal in the door, reject it and then have a partner complain about you to their peers. 3. Your attrition rate goes way up. Attrition happens in two places: partners that become disengaged and customers that were less than ideal that don’t stick or renew. So how does a channel program find the right partner audience to connect with and help those partners connect to the right customer audience? Here are three helpful tips: # 1 Define the ideal partner profile to your channel audience. As an example, if your services are more complex or require a higher-level sales skill, then consider creating an “elite partner program”. Define the type of partner you would like to engage with, the type of customer base that you would like them to have that meshes with your service, and some extra perks they might get for being in the elite program. #2 Define the ideal customer profile No matter what the service is, there is always an audience that is more right for your products and services than others. That audience is referred to as the ideal customer profile. Tell your partner who those customers are by defining the size of the company, the vertical markets you most often find them in, and the decision maker inside the company that will best appreciate your value proposition. #3 Seek out master agents who have partners that come closest to your ideal partner profile. Other than some of the mega master agents like Telarus and Intelisys, many master agents have specialized in certain partner types. They might focus on managed services providers as partners, agents who sell complex network deals, or those that specialize in certain vertical markets. Forming a relationship with a master agent that has your ideal partner profile allows you to go deeper, not wider to attract the right partner. Remember, that it is pretty difficult to be all things to all people and certainly this is very true in the channel. It’s OK to exclude or not focus on partners that don’t have the skill set, customer base or desire to pursue the type of customer you want. And, partners will thank you for not wasting their time and wasting yours chasing the wrong deals.

Episode 4 - Communicating to the Right Audience

MicroCast

Full TranscriptThis is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to the Convey MicroCast audio series. It’s natural to want everyone to like us and ...

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Episode 3 - The 3 C’s of Channel.. → Episode 3 - The 3 C’s of Channel Communication

The 3 C’s of Channel Communication Convey MicroCast Series Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast ...

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50 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-channel-experience jplist-topic-microcast jplist-topic-podcast jplist-topic-Communication 0 328203 328203 The 3 C’s of Channel Communication Convey MicroCast Series Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast audio series. Many companies focus on customer communication but communicating with channel partners is every bit as important because they are your customers. Communication is a second only to financial incentives as the most important tool to motivate and manage partners. Channel partner communications should be strategic, cost-effective and focus on motivation, education, and engagement. Communication in the channel should include a 3-pronged strategy: communicate to your channel, communicate through your channel and communicate for your channel. Let’s take a look at how to execute each strategy. Start with communicate to your channel. Communicating to your channel is all about providing information, training and motivation that is directed at sales partners. Information and training explain what you want the channel partner to do promote your services, upsell customers, understand the features and benefits of your products and services, and knowhow to best position them against each other and against competitors’ products. Motivational communications explain the rewards that a channel partner receives if they do what you want. That type of communication focuses on promotional activities such as incentive programs, special pricing and deals, or commission accelerators. Communicate continuously to your channel by direct messaging, and email marketing through channel outlets such as iAgent or Channel Vision, or on Convey’s master agent portals. Now let's look at communicating through your channel. Communicating through your channel means providing channel partners with customer-facing materials to get your message directly to the customer. Providing your partners with those tools gives you certain advantages. They allow you to maintain a consistent positioning of your products in the market and against competitors’ products You now have a message that reinforces your brandYou are helping channel partners sell your products and services because you did the hard work for them by creating the tools. If you communicate through your channel, the materials you provide should be simple, easy to access, and easy to deliver to the customer. You should allow for co-branding so that the partner can add their company and contact information. Here are some common tools that partners need from you to accelerate their sales: Product PDFs, data sheets, and 1-page overviews that can be emailed or printedPromotional kits that give partners the tools to feature you on their website, in social media posts, and other literature they use. These kits typically have digital versions of your logo, product photographs or illustrations, sample copy, and other graphics about your offerings. Marketing campaigns developed for the partner so they can email prospects or customers and generate inbound demand. Add marketing development funds (MDF) to help sales partners advertise, use digital marketing, and launch other promotional activities for your products. Make sure to attach strings to the MDF funds that come with provable activity and messaging that you control. Now let’s look at the last one, communicate for your channel The most valuable commodity a channel partner can get from you other than training and marketing help is a hot sales lead. Use your company’s marketing resources and automation to generate inbound demand, then deliver leads to partners. Leads elevate your value to partners and reward those individuals that are able to convert prospects into customers. Make sure that there is a process in place to deliver the leads, ensure that the partner intends to act on them, and gives you the insight into how those leads are working through the sales funnel. Remember that all partners are not created equally so communication intensity and frequency should be directed to partners that have the right customer base, refer repeatedly and can translate prospects into valuable deals. Then, execute the 3 “C’s of channel communication. Communicate to your channel to inform and train them. Communicate through your channel so you can get your message from channel partner to customer. Communicate for your channel to do the marketing work for them, deliver sales leads and monitor their progress. Convey’s channel program and technology supports the 3 C’s of channel communication. Use Convey’s Channel network to train and communicate to partners through an online vendor catalog. Create email marketing campaigns in Conduct, add them to master agent portals who will deliver them directly to the partner to run. Use Convey’s prospect transfer technology to add leads, send them to partners and monitor their progress. This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’ve been listening to our “MicroCast” from the Convey Channel Partner Program.

Episode 3 - The 3 C’s of Channel Communication

MicroCast

The 3 C’s of Channel Communication Convey MicroCast Series Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast audio ...

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Episode 2 - Crafting the Right Online.. → Episode 2 - Crafting the Right Online Experience for Your.. →

Podcast Transcription: Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast audio series. We’d like to welcome ...

MicroCast

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51 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 MicroCast-MicroCast jplist-topic-channel-experience jplist-topic-microcast jplist-topic-podcast 0 324451 324451 Podcast Transcription: Hi, this is Carolyn Bradfield and you’re listening to Convey’s MicroCast audio series. We’d like to welcome our listeners to our Channel Partners MicroCast audio series from Convey Services, a technology specialist that runs a content and marketing portal network in the channel used by over 23K sales partners. Today’s series is all about crafting the right online experience for your channel program. Without fail, most of us begin our buying experience online. We google the product we want to buy, read reviews, compare prices and often complete the transaction without leaving the comfort of our living room. Most of us look at that experience as easy, quick and convenient. However, when it comes to helping our sales partners with an online experience to find services they want to represent, compare options and complete the transactions, vendors in the telecom and cloud marketplace may not be have elevated their strategy enough to make it easy for sales partners to go online and get what they need to sell services. If your company is highly active in face to face interactions by sponsoring partner events, going to trade shows and traveling to meet partners, a key fact that you must remember is that your message fades quickly once you are back on the airplane going home. Here are some interesting statisticsfrom the training industry: After only one hour, people retain less than half of the information presented.After one day, that drops to 70%.After six days, people forget 75 percent of the information has gone out the door Without a good online strategy to reinforce your message, attract partners to keep looking at you, and make information easy to consume, most of the dollars spent in sponsorships, events, and face to face contact will be wasted. Because Convey runs an online portal network connecting partners to vendors through our master agent portals, we have the opportunity to evaluate how effective vendors are at their online strategy. Here are some ideas to elevate your game. Tip #1 Know what your online presence looks like when people search for you. Many companies would be shocked to see that much of the information that appears about them in search engines or other online outlets is just out of date, or plain inaccurate. We learned this from one of our vendor-partners, Vivial who runs free online assessment to show you where people will get tripped up when they try and find you. Believe it or not, number one reason customers can’t find you on Google comes from incorrect business listings that can leave partners wasting valuable time searching. Find more information about Vivial on the Convey Services website and get a free evaluation of your online presence to see what needs to change. Tip #2 Take a hard look at your website Unfortunately, many channel programs don’t have as much control as they need over their website; however, there are certain things a modern website must have to be effective. Most interactions with websites will be on a mobile device so it must be responsive so you can view it on your phone as well as on your laptop. If a website is designed for both customers and partners, make sure that the partner section is easily accessed from the home page and you focus your message on the benefits of becoming a partner. If your website is old, tired, and out of date, it is imperative that you do a refresh to bring it current. Tip #3 Invest in LinkedIn. Although there are a number of social media outlets you could use to promote your business, Linkedin is the gold standard for all channel programs. Your company page should have a succinct overview loaded with good keywords, your logo and a cover image, Make sure to add information about your organization including your website URL, your location and the industry you are in. Commit to posting content regularly and make sure your posts have images to make them stand out. Tip #4 Simplify your message I often look at a vendor’s website or the online catalog on one of our Convey portals and struggle to understand just what business this vendor in. In only a few seconds, a viewer should understand what you sell, who you sell it to, and the value of doing business with your company. As an example, a great banner message in your website or online Convey portal might be: HIPAA compliant application hosting solutions for the medical industry....or try this one...Improving the patient experience with our contact center solutions. For vendors who maintain an online catalog through the Convey network, we always advise them to narrow their focus to the services partners are most interested in, define the type of customer that is ideal including what industries they exist in, what you want the partner to do when they find that customer and how the partner makes money. Tip # 5 Invest in a Partner Portal So I’m sure you are asking yourself, if you have a website, what is the point of a portal? Remember that websites are designed to speak to the end customer first, so the information partners need to know may not be appropriate. Portals function not only as a “partner website” but do other valuable things that automate a partner program and engage the audience. With a portal, your message can be targeted to help the partner better understand the product, the sales process, and the economic value of the customer. You can stay top of mindshare by having the portal reach out to the partner to get them to visit repeatedly and get rewarded for being inside your portal. You can analyze what they look at, get them to write reviews on your content, and see who is really engaged with what you do so you can focus your efforts on nurturing those relationships. My advice to channel programs is to keep in front of your partners not only in person but reinforce your message online. Make sure that your online information is accurate so you can be found, that your website is as good on a desktop as it is on a phone, that you invest heavily in Linkedin and a good content strategy. Simplify the message and summarize who you are, who you sell to, how partners should interact with you and how they make money. And consider investing in a partner portal to deepen your online interaction with partners, keep them engaged and reward them when they come back and look at you online. 5 years ago, Convey transformed how master agents and their partners engage with vendors through an online portal network that now has over 40 master agents and 23,000 partners. We provide individual partner portals to vendors that serve the cloud and telecom space that have tools to automate partner management, keep partners engaged, and give them marketing tools to promote your services. Explore our website, which is also one of our portals, to get connected to the right online experience for your channel program. This is Carolyn Bradfield and you’ve been listening to our “MicroCast” Convey in our Channel Partner Program.

Press Release

Atlanta, GA — July 24, 2019 — Convey Services today launched the Technology Marketplace, a new technology referral service for property and ...

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Convey Services Launches BYZEO.com Portal to.. → Convey Services Launches BYZEO.com Portal to Help.. →

Atlanta, GA — April 24, 2019 — Convey Services today announced the launch of BYZEO.com, an information and educational portal dedicated ...

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55 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-BYZEO jplist-topic-Expense-reduction 0 285557 285557 Atlanta, GA — April 24, 2019 — Convey Services today announced the launch of BYZEO.com, an information and educational portal dedicated to helping small-to-medium sized businesses (SMB) reduce expense by introducing solutions to automate processes, replace aging technology, manage telecom and mobility cost, track and manage assets and operate smarter buildings. BYZEO is a Convey-powered portal that delivers content created, collected or curated from respected providers and industry resources. The portal showcases strategies that help business owners and executives think differently about how to automate sales and marketing, operate more efficiently, maximize vendor relationships and reduce spending on services.

Press Release

Atlanta, GA — December 5, 2018 — Convey Services today unveiled the 2019 Sales Partner Outreach Program designed to help Telecom/Cloud ...

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Convey Integrates Conduct Email Marketing &.. → Convey Integrates Conduct Email Marketing & Adds Discussion.. →

Atlanta, GA — November 7, 2018 — Convey Services today announced technology upgrades to its Partner Relationship Management (PRM) ...

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60 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-Conduct jplist-topic-marketing jplist-topic-email-marketing 0 278643 278643 Atlanta, GA — November 7, 2018 — Convey Services today announced technology upgrades to its Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution with the integration of email marketing automation tools and a new forum discussion platform. The Partner Portal is used by master agents and distributors that need to automate membership management, deliver content and training, communicate with site members, register deals and analyze the activity of channel sales partners in the telecommunications, cloud, IT and insurance industries.

Convey Integrates Conduct Email Marketing & Adds Discussion.. →

Press Release

Atlanta, GA — November 7, 2018 — Convey Services today announced technology upgrades to its Partner Relationship Management (PRM) solution with ...

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Convey Releases Conduct™ Campaign in Beta Convey Releases Conduct™ Campaign in Beta

New Email Marketing Campaign Solution Designed for Channel Sales

Atlanta, GA — June 6, 2018 — Convey Services today released Conduct™, a new email marketing campaign platform designed for indirect ...

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61 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-Conduct jplist-topic-email-marketing 0 278642 278642 Atlanta, GA — June 6, 2018 — Convey Services today released Conduct™, a new email marketing campaign platform designed for indirect and channel sales organizations. Conduct is a SaaS-based marketing solution that is integrated into Convey online portals used by master agents in the telecom, cloud & Internet of Things (IoT) markets, foodservice distributors and master agency networks in property & casualty insurance. Conduct delivers pre-packaged marketing campaigns directly into the online accounts of sales partners and producers that are members of Convey platforms. Campaigns are created by selected suppliers, carriers and vendors with each email campaign branded for the individual Conduct user. Campaigns come with multiple email messages and a customized sign-up page to collect responses. Agents simply add their contacts, choose an email campaign, review the content and schedule the campaign to launch. Conduct Beta will be available for a limited time as a free trial for enrolled agents.

Convey Releases Conduct™ Campaign in Beta

Press Release

Atlanta, GA — June 6, 2018 — Convey Services today released Conduct™, a new email marketing campaign platform designed for indirect and channel ...

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Convey Introduces Channel Accelerator.. → Convey Introduces Channel Accelerator Program to Deliver.. →

Atlanta, Georgia – April 11, 2018 — Convey Services today introduced the Channel Accelerator program to deliver new telecom, cloud, ...

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62 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-channel-accelerator 0 278641 278641 Atlanta, Georgia – April 11, 2018 — Convey Services today introduced the Channel Accelerator program to deliver new telecom, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and other related business services to the telecom/cloud channel through the Convey network of master agents and their 20,000+ sales partners. Channel Accelerator (www.channelaccelerator.com) screens new providers, then helps structure their marketing, compensation and support programs to make them channel-ready. The Program provides master agents with the ability to sell services under a single Channel Accelerator agreement. It complements the IoT Channel Accelerator (launched in March) and is designed to expand the categories of vendor and providers that can participate.

Convey Introduces Channel Accelerator Program to Deliver.. →

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Atlanta, Georgia – April 11, 2018 — Convey Services today introduced the Channel Accelerator program to deliver new telecom, cloud, Internet of ...

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Convey Introduces IoT Channel Accelerator to.. → Convey Introduces IoT Channel Accelerator to Deliver.. →

Posted in TMC News on February 14, 2018

ATLANTA, Feb. 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Convey Services today introduced the IoT Channel Accelerator program, an online resource portal ...

News Clipping

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63 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 News-Clipping-News-Clipping jplist-topic-channel-accelerator 0 278640 278640 ATLANTA, Feb. 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Convey Services today introduced the IoT Channel Accelerator program, an online resource portal focused on delivering ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) solutions and education to channel partners in the telecommunications and cloud market. Developed in conjunction with the IoT Advisor Group of Jacksonville, Florida, IoT Channel Accelerator helps agents and sales partners learn about IoT opportunities, explore end-to-end solutions and gain access to providers that offer services to help their clients manage mobile assets, increase operational efficiencies, reduce cost and improve the overall customer experience.

Convey Introduces IoT Channel Accelerator to Deliver.. →

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ATLANTA, Feb. 14, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Convey Services today introduced the IoT Channel Accelerator program, an online resource portal focused on ...

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Convey Introduces IoT Channel Accelerator to.. → Convey Introduces IoT Channel Accelerator to Deliver.. →

Atlanta, GA — February 14, 2018 — Convey Services today introduced the IoT Channel Accelerator program, an online resource portal ...

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64 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-IoT jplist-topic-channel-accelerator 0 278639 278639 Atlanta, GA — February 14, 2018 — Convey Services today introduced the IoT Channel Accelerator program, an online resource portal focused on delivering ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) solutions and education to channel partners in the telecommunications and cloud market. Developed in conjunction with the IoT Advisor Group of Jacksonville, Florida, IoT Channel Accelerator helps agents and sales partners learn about IoT opportunities, explore end-to-end solutions and gain access to providers that offer services to help their clients manage mobile assets, increase operational efficiencies, reduce cost and improve the overall customer experience.

News Clipping

Article by Steven Anderson published on April 26, 2016

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Convey Redefines Content Delivery with.. → Convey Redefines Content Delivery with ‘Platform as a.. →

Atlanta, GA — April 28, 2016 — Convey Services introduces Platform as a Profit Center (PaaPCTM), an online solution that redefines ...

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68 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-portal jplist-topic-profit-center jplist-topic-Platform-as-a-Profit-Center 0 278635 278635 Atlanta, GA — April 28, 2016 — Convey Services introduces Platform as a Profit Center (PaaPCTM), an online solution that redefines cloud-based content and training delivery, turning a technology expense into a revenue generator. PaaPC is designed for organizations that have an audience that will pay for content or training, or have suppliers that want access to sales agents and revenue producers who need information about products and services. Convey hosts and delivers content, training, promotions and events allowing multiple individuals or groups to update the platform. PaaPC solutions reduce or eliminate the cost of deploying online content and training delivery or generate profit through the sale of catalog subscriptions, memberships, advertising, content or training.

Convey Redefines Content Delivery with ‘Platform as a.. →

Press Release

Atlanta, GA — April 28, 2016 — Convey Services introduces Platform as a Profit Center (PaaPCTM), an online solution that redefines cloud-based ...

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Convey Services Now Represents the Top 37.. → Convey Services Now Represents the Top 37 Telecom & Cloud.. →

New Master Agents MicroCorp and WTG Launch Convey Platforms

Atlanta, GA — March 24, 2016 — Convey Services increased their market coverage to 37 of the top master agents in the telecommunications ...

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69 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-Telecommunications jplist-topic-Master-agent 0 278634 278634 Atlanta, GA — March 24, 2016 — Convey Services increased their market coverage to 37 of the top master agents in the telecommunications and cloud space with the launch of sites for MicroCorp and WTG. Focused on the cloud and telecommunications channel, Convey showcases over 100 of the most significant carriers and vendors in the industry, with another 250+ new carrier, network and hardware suppliers being added to its online portal system in 2016. Convey’s SaaS-based solution saves channel sales teams time and money by simplifying the process of information delivery, along with training and engagement between suppliers and revenue producers.

Convey Services Now Represents the Top 37 Telecom & Cloud.. →

Press Release

Atlanta, GA — March 24, 2016 — Convey Services increased their market coverage to 37 of the top master agents in the telecommunications and cloud ...

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Convey Launches The Cloud Conventions.. → Convey Launches The Cloud Conventions Virtual Expo

For Telecommunications, VARs, MSPs and Cloud Providers

Atlanta, GA — February 17, 2016 — Convey Services today unveiled Cloud Conventions 2016, a virtual expo available online from March ...

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70 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-cloud-conventions jplist-topic-Virtual-Trade-Shows 0 278633 278633 Atlanta, GA — February 17, 2016 — Convey Services today unveiled Cloud Conventions 2016, a virtual expo available online from March 7-31, with live sessions on March 9th and 10th. Cloud Conventions connects sales partners, value-added resellers (VARs), managed services providers (MSPs) and Master Agents to vendors and carriers in the telecommunication and cloud space. The Expo features virtual booths along with instant connections to industry experts and service providers for conversations and exclusive promotions. A dozen live educational sessions, keynote and panel discussions will feature experts discussing industry trends, sharing best practices and offering creative business and marketing solutions.

Press Release

Atlanta, GA – June 8, 2015 – Today, Carolyn Bradfield, CEO of Convey Services was the guest on the syndicated radio show “This Just In” ...

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Curt Allen, President of X4 Solutions, joins.. → Curt Allen, President of X4 Solutions, joins the Convey.. →

Atlanta, GA — April 15, 2015 — Convey Services today announced the addition of Curt Allen, President of X4 Solutions, to the Convey ...

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74 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 jplist-folder-All-Posts-217 Press-Release-Press-Release jplist-topic-curt-Allen 0 278629 278629 Atlanta, GA — April 15, 2015 — Convey Services today announced the addition of Curt Allen, President of X4 Solutions, to the Convey Services’ Board of Directors.

News Clipping

The Alliance Partners, the channel partner industry organization that brings together agents, VARs, managed service providers, IT consultants and ...

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Explore Convey Services Press Releases and News Clippings.