EP 55: Navigating Innovation with Industry Leaders

Transcript for this Episode:

Announcer: Dive into the world of innovation with us as we unravel the challenges, breakthroughs, and latest trends that are shaping our digital landscape. This is Tech UNMUTED, your guide to the tech revolution.

Terry Corder: Hey, welcome to another episode of Tech UNMUTED. I'm Terry Corder with Fusion Connect. I have the opportunity today to be with Mike Baillargeon. Ha-ha.

Mike Baillargeon: Got it, baby. You got it.

Terry: I got it.

Mike: You got it.

Terry: That's right. Here in the industry, we all call him Mikey B. He's with Telarus, and we're excited to have you on today, Mike. Thanks for joining me.

Mike: No problem, Terry. Anything for my friends at Fusion. I have that crazy last name, or as my wife says, a name our daughters can marry out of.

Terry: There you go. [laughs] Always something to look forward to there. There's always a positive. Mike and I, we've known each other for several years now. We've worked together quite a bit. Fusion and Telarus work together all the time, and we really work a lot on Microsoft Teams calling, we work together on customer experience, the communication experience for customers, CX. That's the big thing. Everybody's talking about CX.

I just want to take a few minutes for you and I to get to chat and tell our partners out there what they can look forward to working with yourself, and us here at Fusion, some of the experiences we've had together, some of the great things we've worked on together, and just really why it's important to come to Telarus, work with you, and then why, in many cases, you guys are bringing us in to help.

Mike: Yes, sounds great. It's been a great partnership. Hey, everybody. Mike B, for those of you who don't know me, I am a CX Solution Architect for Telarus. What does that really mean? I'm a phone nerd, I'm a contact center nerd, I'm an AI nerd. If you think you have a phone opportunity, if you don't know what a phone opportunity looks like, if you want to call me and say, "Mike, can you find me a phone opportunity?" Give me a call. We're here to help and --

Terry: If they're calling you, they are on a phone opportunity you know?

Mike: Fair enough. I hear Fusion might give friends and family discount to partners, but that might be something for Annie to work out. Since Annie's not here, we'll give her an action item.

Terry: There you go.

Mike: Here at Telarus, we do focus quite a bit on the CX side. My peer, I'm in the East Coast, you can probably tell with a little twang, I'm up in New England, and my peer, Megan Tai, who's just the salty earth, she covers the West Coast, and then we cover the middle together. A little thunder and lightning team here at Telarus when it comes to UCaaS, CCAS, AI, and beyond.

Terry: You are. Megan is great, you're right, salt of the earth. Love getting to talk to her as well and work with her. Really, you bring us opportunities. We've worked with you on contact center deals, we've worked with you on Teams deals, we've started talking about AI and some of that, what are you seeing for your partners out there that are just looking for that deal? You said give you a call to help identify a good communication deal.

Let's give them an example. I always, when I'm talking to a partner, an in-partner, a valued person at a company, I want to talk to them about how they find that with their customer. What are a question or two that they can ask to really see what the customer, to identify a customer need? What do you recommend? I'll have a couple too.

Mike: There's a few questions. Here's how you don't start, "Hey, Terry, I'm Mike. I'm a tech advisor, I'm a tech roadmap analyst, I am a phone nerd. Hey, do you need a new phone system?" If you start off with, "Do you need a new phone system?" The answer is going to be no. "Hey, do you need a new call center product?" If you start off with that, the answer is going to be no.

Terry: Always.

Mike: Always, 100%, right? Now, all the tech advisors watching this are rolling their eyes like, "Oh, we would never do that." "Oh, great. We have the best tech advisors in the world then."

Terry: That's right.

Mike: What can they say? A few things. One is, during the lockdown, you were either on Team Zoom or Team Teams. It's like the old Eclipse movies, were you on Team Jacob or Team, who was the other one?

Terry: Oh, Edward.

Mike: Yes, nerd alert. Nerd alert. Okay. Anyway, so I talked to clients about how they're collaborating with their customers internally today. Even before I say, "Hey, do you need a new phone system?" Even, "Hey, what is your phone system?" I start with, "Hey, you're Team Teams or Team Zoom?" Why do I do that? Because now I have a direction, right?

Terry: Right.

Mike: If they say they're Team Zoom, well, guess what? Don't take this in the wrong way, but I might lean in with Zoom Phone. Solid product, works great in that Teams environment. If they say, "Yes, we're all in with Teams," now I have a completely different direction. I'm like, "Oh, okay. Tell me how you're using Teams today. I thought you were here to talk about the phone system. I'll get to that. Tell me how you're using Teams today. What's your licensing structure with Teams?" Because in order to turn on the voice part, there's two things you need. You need a Teams phone license, whether that be the $8 a la carte license, or that'll be embedded in the E5 license.

Terry: Yes, right.

Mike: Then you need what's called a calling plan, aka FusionConnect.com.

Terry: That's right.

Mike: You use Fusion to make and place those calls. If they say they're Team Teams, I want to know how deep they're into that. "Oh, we do that for internal chatter. We actually have external customers. We actually can use it to call internally. We're there all the time, we're a Microsoft Dynamics shop, we use SharePoint, we use OneDrive." That is an amazing Teams phone opportunity because they're already vested in that user interface.

Terry: Microsoft has done a great job there. They've embedded it all together. I know there's been the whole thing, April 1st in the US, they changed and pulled Teams out of the license. Even with them doing that, Microsoft is so embedded into their customer base that they've really set themselves up for, and all of us, up for a great opportunity with our clients, so I agree with you 100%, "Are you Team Zoom, Team WebEx, Team Teams? Which one do you do? Now let's start talking about it." I even go as far as, "Hey, do you use Word and Excel every single day? That means you must have Microsoft Teams. Do you use it?"

Mike: yes. Yes, 100%. The other interesting thing, I think Zoom sort of won the marketing war from the video conferencing point of view. My grandma knows how to use Zoom. Again, it's a great product, we sell a lot of it. I think Teams has won the desktop war, right? The desktop war can be monetized a little bit more easily because as you said, my whole productivity portfolio is based upon Office 365, Microsoft 365, and Teams. Those are great, great opportunities.

The second thing I ask, and here we go, "What kind of phone system do you have today?" "Okay, breaking news. Terry, breaking news." [makes sound] NEC last month sent their tens of thousands of customers a letter saying, "Hey, we appreciate your patronage for the last 20 years. Your phone system will no longer be supported at the end of this year. You'll get one more year of support, but you can't buy licenses or buy hardware." That means on New Year's Eve, if you have an NEC system of 100 users, and on New Year's Day, you need 101 users, you can't buy the license.

Now, this is an old trick, but I am an old dog. Now that we're actually able to go on-site to meet customers again, I always look down and see the receptionist, what her or his phone is. If it happens to say NEC, you're doing a little cabbage patch dance because this is an immediate lead. Mitel entered into an agreement with RingCentral a couple of years ago, where they sold their cloud portfolio to Ring, and those customers have a decision to make, either go to Ring or go to something else.

Well, these are great customers who are leaning into Teams, and these are great opportunities of customers who have to do something. They might as well go through through Teams, through Fusion Connect, and then [unintelligible 00:10:02]--

Terry: I agree, yeah.

Mike: Yes, go ahead, please finish.

Terry: No, I was just going to say I appreciate that, and I agree with you. As you know, you and I were talking a few minutes ago, and I said I was on-site with a customer just this week. I went in, and the first thing I did while you're standing there waiting for your contact to come out and meet with you is you stand there and talk to the receptionist. Most people, "Oh, okay, well, you can have a seat over there." As an IT guy, not me. My first thing, I'm standing there, and I'm leaning around, and, "Oh, hey, I see how many phone calls do you take in a day? I see you've got a physical phone sitting here. What do you do?"

Mike: Like the size of the fish you caught last weekend, Terry.

Terry: That's right.

Mike: It's like, "I caught a fish this big. The receptionist's phone is this big." Yes, same concept.

Terry: Yes, it is. it's noticing that stuff, it's hearing that about NEC doing that. That's love to hear, hate it for them, hate it for their customers, love to hear it for us and our partners, for your partners, that we have another option for them. When you see that NEC phone sitting there, talk to them, "Hey, did you know," because I'll bet you a lot of them, the receptionist doesn't know. The IT guy probably got that email or might even have been the person that pays the bill. The IT guy might not even have that information. They're a telephone guy or girl.

It could be that you're standing there talking to the receptionist and say, "Oh, what are you all going to-- Did you know your NEC phone's not going to be able to grow after January 1st?" "Well, no." Then when the IT guy comes out or IT lady comes out, first thing, "They were just telling me this phone's not going to work soon." That's a little hysteria, but it works. [laughs] You work with them, you become that good, trusted partner. You're that advisor to them that really shows them that you're going to help them out, so. Great, great way to do it.

Mike: Chaos brings opportunity, right, Terry?

Terry: Yes.

Mike: Right. Now NEC owners, Mitel with the ShoreTel acquisition, they're in the same boat, it's become a little chaotic, and now there's an opportunity for our tech advisors to calmly walk them to the next-generation phone platform. The third opportunity with Fusion, before we move on to a different-

Terry: No, go ahead.

Mike: -topic because is retail and franchises, I don't think anybody does it better than Fusion to do that, like franchise in a box, where you can do the phone, the Internet, manage firewall, that whole franchise-in-a-box model, and then it's just rinse and repeat, right?

Terry: I appreciate that, yes.

Mike: As they add another franchise, then that's another opportunity, it's a new location, so it's a new opportunity, and it's fully commissionable across the board. I think those three, are you team teams? Do you have an old on-prem phone system? Then the third is do you have like a franchise model that you're looking to standardize IT on? Those are three slam dunks.

Terry: Absolutely, and I agree. I've been working with, in fact, the customer I went and saw, they are a regional medical center, 900 locations. They literally want a rinse and repeat, "Hey."

Mike: Did you tag me to that one yet?

Terry: I'll check and see. [chuckles]

Mike: Okay, appreciate that.

Terry: No, that's exactly, we do a lot of franchise, retail, restaurant, we're working on several different opportunities. I just hung up the phone with another one where we're talking to them about alarm lines, elevator lines.

Mike: Oh. Wow.

Terry: We've got a great box that does that, and it's a rinse and repeat, "Hey, how many lines do you need? Put it out there, we use a great piece of hardware, the data remote hardware.

Mike: Perfect.

Terry: Yes, it's an outstanding piece. Really, it's building those preparedness for those franchises, building in that solution, and really focusing on the right verticals.

Mike: Can we just double-click on-- I did an interview with someone, and I would give an answer, and he'd be like, "Can we double-click on that?" I was like, "I'm never going to use that phrase," because he said it 37 times.

Terry: You just used it?

Mike: "Can you double-click on that one?" Yes, I just used it, right? October, [makes sound], August 2nd, 2022, that's when the FCC deregulated POTS lines. It meant two things. One, it didn't mean that they went away, it meant two things. One is Verizon and Windstream and whomever, they don't have to support anymore, they can just drop a customer. Rather than just dropping a customer, they saw an opportunity to say, "Hey, you're paying 350, $35 a month right now, and we appreciate that, but I think it's worth $500 a month." I just talked to a client, a small little regional hospital, they got jacked up, and they're out of service area. They were paying $50, now they're paying $950.

Terry: Yes, $800 is the highest I've seen, $950, that's incredible.

Mike: Yes, yes, it's incredible. We presented Fusion's, we call it the POTS in a box, but in the professional world, it's the POTS transformation unit. At $50 a line times four lines, it just blew them away. They're like, "Can we have it tomorrow?"

Terry: Exactly, and it took two weeks.

Mike: It took them a whole two weeks to install it, Terry. We've got to talk about that.

Terry: I know. [laughs]

Mike: Now the customer is super happy. Then it opens us up for more stuff. At $50 a month, the commission on that is okay, but now I'm that tech advisor, now we can talk about the phone system, now we can talk about cybersecurity, now we can talk about IoT. All those swim lanes of technology that we, at Telarus, give our partners access to, now they can hit all those swim lanes because, "Hey, you fix this one problem for me," and it's a great price, and in two weeks we got it installed, which is a record, I was just joking about that.

Terry: Oh, I know, yes.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Now, let's move to the next swim lane of technology, which could be, again, the phone system, the call center, AI, IoT, all the acronyms out there.

Terry: Oh, yes. All the acronyms, yes. [laughs] "We're going to do the alphabet today.

Mike: We got them all.

Terry: Let's do the alphabet." No, I agree with that 100%. You get that entry, any little piece, "Hey, I don't want to eat the whole pie. I want a piece of the pie." Once I show you how good I've made that pie, now you're going to want more and more of it. We've got a great service delivery team, we've got an implementation team that project manages opportunities. You talked about the retail restaurant, the franchise, the being able to do things over and over repetitively, clean and well. We do that. We've got a great team that does that.

Really, that's where we shine bringing out the right products and then getting them installed, making them happy, and allowing your tech advisors to really just then grow their solutions over and over. Hopefully, part of that comes to us, but it all goes through you. It's exciting.

Mike: Yes, let's talk about the delivery model a little bit. Terry, as you know, huge baseball fan, go Red Sox. In baseball, if I go three out of 10, I'm a Hall of Famer, right?

Terry: Yes.

Mike: If I sell 10 deals with a supplier and they get three right, that's not Hall of Fame.

Terry: No, you're throwing them out.

Mike: That means they don't get an 11th opportunity for sure, right? We, Telarus, we, our tech advisors, do hold you guys at a high standard because it's our customer.

Terry: As you should.

Mike: We don't get paid until the customer is happy and gets paid. I will say, I'm very proud to say, I am 16 out of 16. I'm batting 1,000 with Fusion. Over the last 12 months, I've sold roughly 16 deals, and everyone went in smoothly within a month and a half. All happy customers.

Terry: I'm knocking on wood over here because we're in IT. In IT, you know how that is.

Mike: Yes, I will say, I have one going in right now. Everything's working well. There's one thing that's not working-

Terry: Oh.

Mike: -but I've escalated through you. You know what I'm talking about. I escalated through Annie, and there's a fix in place already. The good news is when there is an issue, I'm here to escalate it up to the VP level of sales and engineering. I have Terry.

Terry: I know you do. [laughs]

Mike: I'm texting with Terry, and so.

Terry: That's what I'm here for. That's what we're all here for. In IT, when you've been in IT as long as we have, and I'm proud and ashamed to say it's over 30 years for me, probably the same for you. We were just talking about that. When you've been in this long, you know there are going to be bumps in the road. It's not if they're there, it's how you handle them and resolve them getting to the final solution, that's the most important thing. I'm glad to hear- -16 for 16 so far, and we're-

Mike: 16 for 16.

Terry: -going to keep it going, and do a whole lot more. I want to talk about something real quick. The summit's coming up. Your summit is coming up in, so we're recording this, we're about a week and a half, a few days before the summit. I want to tell people all about it. Tell us, the summit of 2024, it's going to be in Nashville, and which is not too far from me. I'm in Kentucky, so I'm driving down. It's going to be with-

Mike: With Bourbon.

Terry: -with Bourbon, yes. It's the 6th through the 9th?

Mike: 8th.

Terry: 8th?

Mike: Yes.

Terry: 6th through the 8th, so tell everybody about it. Tell them how to get there.

Mike: Yes, so this is our Telarus Partner Summit. The idea is all about the three E's. This event will empower you with new tools, enable you how to use them, and educate you on the six swim lanes that we talked about earlier. We're going to have some great keynote speakers. Rumor has it we have these great breakout events. I'm hosting-

Terry: Pannels, even?

Mike: -Quattro, four breakout sessions. By far, by far, my favorite one is empowering your clients with Microsoft Teams, Voice, and other CX products. Rumor has it Terry will be on the panel-

Terry: I might be there, yeah.

Mike: -with a couple of other great suppliers. There's only a few spaces left for that one, so I highly recommend that when you do register, that you go in and you choose that breakout session. It's all about you, partners. We think we know what you want, but you need to talk to us and say, "That's not what we wanted. We want something different, and we'll pivot on the fly for you." I know we only have a few minutes left. I'd like to talk about a couple of things that Fusion is doing that are unique to the market. If you don't mind.

Terry: Sure. No, not at all. Please.

Mike: All right. Okay, I'll put on my Fusion hat.

Terry: [chuckles] I might have one of those here, okay?

Mike: All right. Just send me the 1099.

Terry: We'll tell our marketing team off-site to get that for you.

Mike: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Stacy, just send me a 1099, I'll take care of it for you. One thing that Fusion is doing that's really, really unique, and this just out, it just came out this month, and we're on the advisory board, and they passed it past me. I did the cartoonish, eyes came out, I was like, "Oh, this is exciting."

Terry: Ah-hoo-ga.

Mike: Ah-hoo-ga, right, yes. Fusion is now paying a spiff on renewals.

Terry: Yes, we are.

Mike: While other providers are giving you lower commission after the first contract, Fusion wants to keep, obviously, they have to earn the customer's business for them to renew, but they also are committed to the revenue generated by you, the tech advisor. Now, think about this. Let's say you sell a customer 100 seats. Three years later, they're at 200 seats. Great, you get the commission on 200 seats. Now, you get a spiff at a 200-user contract, not the original 100-user contract. Fantastic!

Terry: Not only that, you get that spiff on that renewal, but you also can add other products and services and get additional spiff. Things like-

Mike: What? Tell me more, Terry, tell me more.

Terry: -the SD-WAN, the network, CSP, "Hey, do you need license?" We talked about licensing. You were talking about, "Hey, if you--" One of the first questions to ask, "How do you use Microsoft in your environment? Well, guess what? We're a CSP, and we're paying commissions and an additional multiplier on your spiff if you combine Microsoft Teams Calling and CSP together or some of our other services."

Mike: We use the phrase land and expand quite a bit. I think that you guys are the epitome of that because you have one of the most complete architectural solution toolkit that we have. I sell the little POTS-in-a-box, I get a spiff. Then I sell them Microsoft Teams Voice, I get a spiff. I sell them Contact Center, I get a spiff. Then I sell them SD-WAN, I get a spiff.

Terry: That's right.

Mike: What I love about you guys is every new product that comes out, the compensation is there. It's in the land and expand.

Terry: It's so important.

Mike: Obviously, yes, it's so important. Your account management team does that better than anyone else, right?

Terry: Thank you.

Mike: There are farmers within account management that are like, "Yes, I'll put a little water on it and hopefully it'll grow." I really think what your team does is really care about the customer and want to make sure they have the best products in place to get them there. Now, obviously, Terry's an engineer and I'm with Telarus, there's T's and C's with all of that stuff. However, go back, talk to your channel manager, come to us here at Telarus, we'd be more than happy to talk you through that, look in the back office. All that information should be there as well.

Terry: Yes, absolutely. I appreciate you bringing that up.

Mike: No, it's fantastic.

Terry: It's very important. We're doing different events around the country, we're calling them Fused events this year. Those events, last week was our first one and it was our kickoff. That's where we announced all those spiffs where you heard that little birdie tell you that we are doing those big spiff pushes for all of our partners, your tech advisors. We're making sure that we're taking care of you, not just upfront, but when you renew as well because it's important. It's important that we keep you whole and make sure, you don't want to have to move a customer just to continue to make money with them because that's what your livelihood is.

Better than that is, "Well, let me keep them where they're happy, where they have a solid solution. They've been great for three years and keep me whole, help me keep them here," so we do, and that's what we're here to do, so I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us today. I want to remind everybody, your summit's coming up. It's August the 6th through the 8th. We're doing our panel on August the 7th at 2.30 central time. It's going to be in the Ryman Studio D, make sure you've gone and signed up for that. All of you out there-

Mike: Wear comfortable shoes.

Terry: -wear comfortable shoes, or cowboy boots with us.

Mike: Gaylord is the biggest hotel east of Las Vegas. Wear comfortable shoes. You heard it here first, folks.

Terry: Yes, we're down at the Gaylord, it is huge, beautiful hotel. Wear comfortable shoes, come and join us. See Mikey B, see me, and we're excited to see everybody. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Terry. Appreciate you.

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Episode Credits:

Produced by: Fusion Connect