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AireSpring Appoints New Senior Vice President AireSpring continues to build its All Star Executive Team. This month we welcome the newest member of the team in the position of Senior VP Wholesale Sales.
will lead the wholesale team with a twofold mission. He will focus on maximizing opportunities within AireSpring data and voice services, domestically and internationally. Additionally, Mr. Nelson will spearhead AireSpring's expansion into new markets and opportunities as he further develops the wholesale team. We're excited to welcome this veteran telecom executive to AireSpring! Please reach out to Wendell for information about growth opportunities in AireSpring Wholesale services. Email: wendell.nelson@airespring.com. |
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AireSpring Recognized in CRN's Annual Guide Recognizes the IT Channel's Top Partner Programs
At AireSpring, we believe that our service, responsiveness and support are the factors that convince partners to recommend us first to their customers. “We are honored to be acknowledged by inclusion in the CRN 2018 Partner Program Guide as a leader in technology partner programs,” stated Daniel Lonstein, president and chief revenue Officer at AireSpring. “In an industry that is seeing a record number of mergers and acquisitions, AireSpring has had the same leadership and an unwavering focus on the channel and customer for over 17 years. The corporate culture is driven by the personalized service and support that often declines when such industry dynamics are in play. We continue to focus our efforts on expanding partnerships to serve the channel with our world-class cloud communications, Platinum SD-WAN and cloud connectivity solutions, and our relentless dedication to a 100% channel sales model.” The Network Connectivity Partner Program Guide will be featured in the August 2018 issue of CRN and online at www.crn.com/connectivity-ppg. |
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AireSpring's Charles Lomond Honored with Telarus Partner Choice Top National Channel Manager Award National Director Channel Sales Recognized by Telarus Partner Community for Fourth Consecutive Year AireSpring is proud to announce that Telarus has recognized Charles Lomond, National Dreictor of Channel Sales at AireSpring, as a 2018 Top National Channel Manager. The Telarus Partner Choice Awards recognize the best providers in specific categories and are conferred based on community votes. The award was announced at the annual Telarus Partner Exchange in Boca Raton, Florida on June 21, 2018.
A recipient of the Telarus Partner Choice Award for four consecutive years, Mr. Lomond is one of the industry’s top performing and most highly regarded channel managers. He has over two decades of experience and has collected a total of thirteen Telarus awards recognizing his valuable contributions to the strong relationship enjoyed by AireSpring and Telarus. “It is a huge honor for us to publicly recognize the hard work of people who go above and beyond for Telarus and our partners,” stated Roger Blohm, EVP of Telarus. “Our 38% sales increase last year was fueled by the valiant efforts of our suppliers who never utter the words ‘that’s not my job.’ They make it happen again and again, and for that, we express our gratitude and appreciation.” “We are honored to see Charles recognized for his continued achievements delivering year-over-year results and excellent service for our valued channel partners,” stated Ron McNab, AireSpring Senior Vice President Channel Sales. “Charles has demonstrated a level of commitment and energy that reflect AireSpring’s corporate culture as a 100% channel-focused company with unprecedented white glove service and support. This award further reinforces the successful, lasting industry relationships that Charles has built and maintained, and the opportunities that lie ahead in expanding partnerships for our world-class cloud communications and connectivity solutions.” “I am incredibly humbled and honored that, once again, my channel partners voted to honor me with this award,” stated Charles Lomond, National Director of Channel Sales for AireSpring. “AireSpring is known for having extremely competitive pricing and some of the highest commissions and SPIFFs in the industry, but at the end of the day, I think the exceptional service and support my team and I work hard to deliver is what really differentiates AireSpring from other providers. It is always rewarding to see our partner community recognizes our efforts to go the extra mile.” Feel free to reach out to Charles and congratulate him: charlie@airespring.com.
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AireSpring Announces Update to AirePBX Cloud Hosted Business Phone System
AirePBX CommPortal Update Adds 911 Emergency Call Notification Function and Refreshed Interface
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New Broadband Carrier Added to QuoteSpring 4.0  AireSpring is pleased to announce the addition of Verizon Low Cost Ethernet (LCE) to our menu of services. The addition of Verizon LCE is part of our aggressive expansion of broadband connectivity options in the Eastern region. Verizon's business class broadband LCE offers best effort services over fiber, resulting in savings of up to 50% over traditional dedicated fiber. Available bandwidths include:
Download new rates and commissions from our partner portal at: www.agentstar.net |
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AireSpring Adds Frontier FTTP to Broadband Carrier Lineup  AireSpring has partnered with Frontier networks to deliver more broadband access connectivity.
Frontier's FTTP service delivers capabilities for symmetrical bandwidth speeds and flexible, scalable services. You can offer customers greater signal reliability than traditional cable and DSL internet service which rely on electrical signals. Thanks to Frontier's FTTP light-based fiber optic signals, customers are immune to most types of interference, ensuring high quality internet access. Frontier FTTP offers highly scalable, symmetrical speeds with equally fast downloads and uploads. Customers can select the speed they need now and increase the range of speeds as their business grows. We are excited to welcome over 1.5 million serviceable addresses in California, Florida and Texas to our national broadband coverage! Available bandwidths include:
Download new rates and commissions from our partner portal at: www.agentstar.net |
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AireSpring has You Covered...with the broadest nationwide coverage and the strongest SPIFF Factor in the Industry!
Reach out to your AireSpring Channel Manager today or call us at 888.389.2899. |
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Become a QuoteSpring Master Conducted by Chris Abbott, AireSpring Channel Manager Learn the ways of QuoteSpring and generate quotes at hyperspace speed, you will. Whether you are a Padawan with much to learn or a QuoteSpring Knight who is already wielding this powerful tool to win deals, you have much to learn. QuoteSpring allows you to produce professional quotes with competitive pricing and options from over 30 carriers. AireSpring continuously updates the program to incorporate our expanding universe of providers, adding more options and features to make it the most effective quoting tool in the Galaxy. Master all the latest features in this overview and be ready to choose from AireSpring's growing list of 30-plus carriers and hundreds of thousands of lightsaber, fiber lit locations around the nation. Partners and products include:
...and many more. The Force is strong with QuoteSpring Master Chris Abbott who will help you stay on target with the newest carriers, products and latest features in AireSpring's QuoteSpring 4.0. This informative training will include demonstrations of quotes generated at hyperdrive speed.
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CHANNELCON 2018 |
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TELARUS INNOVATION CONFERENCE |
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MICROCORP ONE ON ONE |
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TBI iMPact |
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TBI CLOUD COMMISSION |
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TELARUS INNOVATION CONFERENCE |
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Welcome to the latest edition in our series of profiles, shining the spotlight on AireSpring’s amazing partners. This month, we’re speaking with Andrew Bond, Partner in Trinity Network Solutions and Partner in Bandwidth Avenue. Hello Andrew, thank you for agreeing to speak with us today. To begin, please tell us a little about yourself and your professional background.
POTS lines, T1s and DSL. All I can say is cold calling 101 was better than college. Instead of paying for my education, Integra Telecom paid me. I was given the Halls Lake Central Office as my territory. Cities included Lynnwood, Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace. This is an area that was basically my own backyard, in a neighborhood where I knew every street and where all the commercial buildings were. My job was to go door-to-door and prospect potential customers to sell Integra Telecom products to current XO Communications and Verizon customers. Comcast didn’t have a cable offering for businesses yet. My daily activities included collecting 75-plus business cards three to five days a week, following up the next week with those prospected potential customers, finally closing enough sales for roughly $2500 in new monthly billing. These sales strategies led to recurring success, attaining quota seven out of 12 months and then qualifying for the President’s Club in September of 2005. I quickly discovered that I was generating referral sources with phone and IT service vendors, and got to the point where I didn’t need to do any more cold calling. I had IT vendors and property managers sending me customers and I noticed that I was receiving more leads than I could service with Integra. It was starting to hurt my monthly quota. I was throwing away around $3,000-4,000 in opportunities and I started to think, “Wow, what do I do with this?” When people talked with the CEO of Integra and asked him what his goals were for the company, he said “I want to have a ubiquitous presence in every market that we offer service in.” I loved that, but the problem is, we didn’t have that capability. I wanted to have a presence anywhere that someone gave me an address in the U.S. Then, Comcast released their cable-to-business services so I started throwing customers that I couldn’t service through Integra over to them, and they reciprocated in kind. At the same time, I noticed that the more that I said no to a request, that vendor would call me less and less. The more I said yes, I can get something, I can come up with something for you, the more my book of service would grow. That has been my staple rule to go by. These points of success guided me into the next five years of professional telecom sales and consulting. One day I got a call from one of my phone vendors and she asked, “Can you service a private line in Las Vegas between two sites, coming back to Seattle?” I said, sure, let me check it out. At the same time I was logging into the Qwest business partner referral program, sending leads over to Qwest because I couldn’t process new orders fast enough. I would do the Qwest referral program, then get them installed in seven days, then come back and sell them resold Integra POTs lines. In order to get paid for the orders, they were giving out SPIFFs for referrals but you had to work with a Master Agency in order to get them. I contacted a Channel Manager in Seattle named Erica Witzow. She referred me to Mark Brewster, who owns Trinity Network Solutions, and that was at the end of 2005. I met with them and mentioned my out-of-state deals that I couldn’t conclude with Integra. So, I left Integra Telecom to work as an independent sales rep with Trinity Network Solutions. This was a 12-month independent agreement. I represented Trinity Network Solutions, the telecom providers they sold and the product sets and the carriers they supported. I gained higher end product knowledge through working with carriers like Qwest, AT&T and Verizon, specifically in product categories such as Fiber Optics, Data Center, Co-location, VOIP and MPLS. We looked at Century Link, AT&T, Electric Lightwave and some others, ran some quotes, and I got a customer with my first deal as a broker, although I was working for someone else. As it got close to the end of the year I decided I wanted to be an agent or a broker and work with every vendor and every managed service provider I possibly could. After a year of proving myself to Trinity Network Solutions, I was hired on and promoted to Business Development Manager. There are two sides to their business, the direct sales and the agent sales side. Trinity was an agent for only four telecom service providers and are now responsible for selling 100-plus different Voice, Internet, and Co-location service providers. My responsibilities are to continue growing our sales channels through carrier diversification, direct sales representation and developing our indirect sales channels. My success in achieving these goals has contributed to the growth Trinity Network Solutions has experienced. Now I have over 50-plus managed service providers (MSPs) with Trinity in the Western region, many of whom I’ve worked with for over a decade. I find MDF funds for them for customer events and conferences, so that we can continue to sell new MRC business. As much as I take from the customer, I try to give back to customers too, consulting with customers whether they have two to 2,000 users. I have customers who bill $50 a month and customers who bill hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Trinity is my family, everyone from the back office to everyone who’s worked here. I think people buy from us because they feel like they’re buying the big Tier 1-2 provider and get to keep a local feel. I expect to live here forever. That’s been my history. However, I always want to stay on the leading the edge of quoting technology, and I was getting frustrated with the manual quoting process. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a tool online to just run a quote and access a database, just like Expedia for travel. I poked around for a few months, then one day Patrick Oborn and his team turned on their ShopforT1.com site with a button that said “become a referral partner.” So I did. My first channel manager gave me access to ShopforT1 and I was selling stuff in different parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana that I didn’t know I could reach, because I didn’t know the suppliers. No one taught me this stuff-it’s all been learned in the School of Hard Knocks, other than certain products and database. My latest business venture is Bandwidth Avenue. Bandwidth Avenue developed an app that we launched less than a year ago. Coming from the drive to create something new, it’s a collaboration between Trinity Network Solutions and Green Information Systems, one of our MSPs in Seattle. They have a software development arm and they have built an app and launched it under a community named ConnectWise, with an open API they encourage other MSPs to build tools around them. It makes their users stickier because someone else built a better business process around them. We continue to build Bandwidth Avenue into new communities such as Autotask and IT Glue. We were recently awarded first place in this year's Shark Tank competition at the Telarus Partner Exchange event in Boca Raton. What do you like about working with AireSpring? I work with Charlie Lomond and he is a hard worker, super-responsive. I’ve worked with him for as long as he’s been there—I think I spoke with him the day he started, about 12 years ago. Plus, he is always there—I never have to ask where’s my quote or my project status? He knows what the broker needs every day. AireSpring has some great products. I’ve sold MPLS and MPLS with voice and internet. I’ve done your Bring Your Own Bandwidth (BYOB), SIP Trunking and other services. AireSpring has a broad product line and the products and coverage are available nationally. All the project managers I have worked with at AireSpring have been great. AireSpring does hiring really well. Only once in 12 years have I ever had any issues with commissions. I had one commission fall through the cracks, and when I noticed it, it was well past the time limit to pay. AireSpring went ahead and put it through for me, which really meant so much. What would you say is the secret to being a successful agent? The key is to be on top of the new and in the know at all times. Lots of agents think once they have their book up to a couple of hundred thousand dollars a month, they’ve got it made. But if you quit training it can go backwards. I’d say half of those agents that kick back after two or three years thinking nothing will go away, that they can keep selling the same products, are now back working for Comcast or CenturyLink again. You have to be relevant, keep recruiting new managed service providers, keep up on changing technology. You never know when a deal is going to go bad, then the company doesn’t want to work with you, it’s just perception and it happens to everyone eventually. When somebody buys from an agent who has over 10 years’ experience, you feel you’re buying a product from an expert, rather than just a product from a carrier. You’re buying their experience. We know how to press the carrier for an install better than anyone else. That annuity is what keeps us around. What is the “next big thing” you think agents should be aware of in 2018 and into 2019? I think agents should be creating tools for their partnerships that offer real collaboration where you don’t have to send an email, make a phone call. It’s just one ping that connects to all. SD-WAN may be important, but I can still sell bandwidth without it, and I can pay attention to it as well. Another piece I think agents are overlooking but is coming soon is the Microsoft Office 365 cloud licensing reselling. I think it’s the next biggest thing. Ingram Micro has a cloud back-office tool that you can private label, establish the account and hand over to a MSP, give them their login, and they can order and go in with their global admin rights and start purchasing as many licenses as they want in your portal, then go over to the Microsoft side and start procuring. It’s a good margin and agents aren’t yet paying attention to this. It goes back to what I said, that the more “yes’s” you can say, the more your book of business will grow, and the more attention you get from that community. It gives you a new conversation to start, just like Bandwidth Avenue does If you talk about a reduction in bandwidth cost for ten times more bandwidth, that is a great conversation starter. We’re also selling Microsoft 365 services through the Ingram Micro Cloud marketplace, and Cloud Plus, which are new sources of revenue we have never experienced before. Agents should pay attention to this. The drawback right now with these tools is the learning curve and advertising these cool new tool sets to your MSP partners to drive revenue. I do have some clients billing through it. CloudComputingProviders.com is a test idea we are working on. We're experiencing a 23% margin per customer and it's very low maintenance. Another issue agents need to be aware of is the consolidation taking place in telecom. I think that with the consolidation that we are seeing in the industry, we’re going to see something similar to the Baby Bell model, with fewer players in the future, and we need to anticipate that. Whether it hurts or helps the industry, I don’t know, but on the whole, I think it’s good for agents. Century Link buying Level 3 was never anticipated, Charter and Spectrum are on a roll and are competitive. So far, I think consolidation has actually helped the agent side of the industry. Back in 2005, there were just too many agencies to sift through and get going in your business. Now, the learning curve isn’t as difficult. What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of telecom? My wife Leah and I have been married for six years. We like to travel, we're big foodies and we love wine. I used to be a big basketball player until I injured myself a few years ago. So, I had to put that torch down, but then I picked up the golfing torch, and that has become really addicting. If you look at my Instagram page, TelecomJunkie86, you’ll find lots of golf, wine and food. I love to cook fish. I make cedar plank salmon and halibut, cod. Here in the Northwest we can get a lot of fresh fish straight from the boat to the dinner table. I wouldn’t say I’m into fishing, I rely on the fishing instructor to show me how to throw a line out and whatever comes in is what I catch.
Andrew, thank you for taking time to talk with us today. |
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At AireSpring, we know that it is our dedication to customer service that sets us apart, and customer service begins with great employees. Here is your chance to get to know another key member of the AireSpring Customer Service team. This month we are talking with Sosi Sarkis, expert Tier 1 Technician. Hello Sosi. To begin, please tell us about your professional background and how long you've been in the telecom industry. I got my bachelor's degree in electronics and communications engineering from the University of Technology in Iraq, my home country, then worked for a number of years doing technical support in information technology (IT). In 2009 I came to the U.S. with my family and began working in banking, performing quality assurance in mortgage banking for Bank of America. During that time I decided to return to school so that I could get back to working in my chosen field of information technology. I took a networking course, got some hands-on experience, and ultimately got my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification in August of 2014. I was lucky enough to get an interview for a job as a Tier 1 Technician at AireSpring soon after, and was thrilled to land the job. I started immediately in Tier 1 work and I am still enjoying it after four years. Tell us about your role at AireSpring and how long you’ve been with the company. My role here at AireSpring is doing Tier 1 technical troubleshooting for our customers, and that extends to full customer service support for them. We are totally focused on ensuring that customers stay up and running and are fully satisfied with their service. Our primary goal is to help customers resolve any issues, so I have a lot of direct phone interaction with them as well as with the underlying carriers. We follow a careful process of identifying the issue, helping the customer articulate the problem to us, whether it is slow internet, for example, or if they are completely down. We open a trouble ticket to ensure seamless tracking for the customer. Drawing on our technical expertise, we run analyses to troubleshoot and clearly identify the issue, as well as its source. We rely on our fellow team members to step in if we are not immediately available, so there is no gap in customer service from the customer viewpoint. We also make use of our AireContact product to track all call activities, and this helps us to experience our own product from the inside. Now that I have reached a certain level as a Tier 1 Technician, where we handle the broad range of data and voice services, I am working toward achieving Tier 2. I hope to reach that level in the next year. What do you enjoy most about working with AireSpring? I feel as if AireSpring is my second home. Everyone is so friendly here. Even when I first came for my interview, I thought right away, "I love this place!" When someone is upset, knowing how to reduce their anxiety and find the solution they need is one of the most rewarding things about the job. It helps that we often work with the same customer and contact for years, and develop a real friendship with them. They trust that we are working on their behalf until they are 100% satisfied, including follow-up calls to update them on our progress. The best thing of all is that I am always learning, there's something new every day, and we have ongoing training to keep up with our new products as well as industry trends. Solving some problems can mean learning a great deal of new information at times, and of course, the technology is always emerging and changing. What are some of your hobbies or interests outside of the office?
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AireSpring is an award-winning provider of Managed Connectivity and Cloud Communications solutions providing fully managed and connected end-to-end, next-generation solutions for multi-location enterprise customers, including:
AireSpring's services are delivered over its revolutionary nationwide MPLS Mesh Network, providing customers a fully integrated, end-to-end solution from a single vendor.    |
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