What's Inside

1. AireSpring Expands Channel Team with Two New Regional Channel Managers
2. AireSpring's AirePBX UCaaS and Platinum SD-WAN Solutions Earn TMC 2019 Product of the Year Awards!
3. Telarus Recognizes AireSpring's Charles Lomond & Mike Chase at Partner Summit
4. Product Update - AireSpring Offers New Verizon TLS Ethernet Pricing
5. September Promo - When Your Top Client's Network Goes Down...
6. Partner Training - Take the Next Step with Global SD-WAN: Become Your Client's Global SD-WAN Advisor
7. Visit AireSpring at These Events
8. Partner Spotlight -Tim Basa, President, Telegration
9. Meet the AireSpring Team - Howard Friedman, Tier 1 Tech Lead

 When Your Top Client's Network Goes Down...

Visit AireSpring at these Coming Events:

CHANNEL PARTNERS EVOLUTION
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washington, D.C.
September 9-12, 2019
REGISTER HERE for FREE PASS
Visit AireSpring Booth #534

CHICAGO DATA CENTER TOUR & LUNCHEON
Digital Realty Data Center
Chicago, IL
September 18, 2019
10:30am - 1:00pm (CDT)
REGISTER HERE (RSVP REQUIRED)

INTELYSIS CHANNEL CONNECT
Monterey Conference Center
Monterey, CA
September 25-27, 2019

TELARUS TECHNICAL
INNOVATION CONFERENCE (TIC)
Nashville, TN
October 10, 2019
REGISTER HERE

TELARUS TECHNICAL
INNOVATION CONFERENCE (TIC)
Chicago, IL
October 17, 2019

TELARUS TECHNICAL
INNOVATION CONFERENCE (TIC)
Los Angeles, CA
October 22, 2019

TELARUS TECHNICAL
INNOVATION CONFERENCE (TIC)
Boston, MA/Newport, RI
November 7, 2019

Welcome to the latest edition in our series of profiles, shining the spotlight on AireSpring’s amazing partners. This month, we’re speaking with Tim Basa, President of Telegration, Inc.

Hello Tim, thank you for agreeing to speak with us. To begin, please tell us a little about yourself, your agency and your professional background.

My story starts when I graduated college in 1994, when I received a simple newsletter, the Kiplinger Washington News. It highlighted two industries, insurance and deregulation of telecom. I immediately started studying those industries and realized that they both had some unique qualities. One was residual income, and beyond that, there was an ever-present need for them. People had to have insurance products and they were cost conscious. They needed insurance for their car, home and health, and at the same time, people had to have phone service. I thought insurance was boring, while telecommunications had a market that was evolving, and I saw that telecommunications was more than long distance services. I went out and interviewed in as many places as I could, and took a job with a long distance broker called Preferred Telecommunications, what we would call a master agency today. It was 100% commission, no salary, going door to door selling long distance services.

Because of my role at Preferred, I connected with Denis Raue, the CEO and Founder of Telegration. He hired me to be a Sales Manager. We originally developed our agency to be a direct sales company, rather than a master agency. We eventually grew to 13 sales offices and it was going great, but the industry was changing. I was young and ambitious and wanted to learn different products and distribution methods, which inspired me to think about ways to branch out. I was able to interview with a lot of great companies, and found one based right here in my backyard in Detroit, called BullsEye Telecom. The CEO and founder, Bill Oberlin was a "been-there-done-that" telecom leader. I started with him as VP of Sales and we found a unique niche where we could sell to multi-location companies. We then started building out the agency program, which was going really well. In the meantime, I had developed  a relationship with Rick Stern, CEO of Nitel. He had an opportunity to really grow his company with his business partner Ron Grason, and I decided to accept a position there as the VP of Sales and Marketing.

I learned a lot about scaling a business working at Nitel and BullsEye. Both are aggregators like AireSpring, where you’re bringing multiple underlying providers together and you’re creating a really awesome end result for a business. I saw a lot of value in that, and at the same time, I saw that working for a single carrier was in many ways limiting. It was clear to me that the master agent model was changing, so that traditional circuit slingers and cost reduction guys had to evolve.

I thought there was a unique opportunity to get back into the channel with a master agency, where we could help empower agents to evolve with next gen services and cater to them in a specialized way so that they could focus on selling. We could be their back office providing services like marketing, demand-gen and a project management team, and giving them tools and people to drive their business. I started looking around and thought I would start my own agency. One of my friends, Denis at Telegration—my big brother in the business—and I went to a Michigan football game. On the way home I told him of my idea. He invited me to come back home to where I started, at Telegration.

We locked arms and together with Dan Williamson, COO at Telegration, and the great team here, we’ve transformed the distribution methodology. We eliminated our direct sales. It was tough to do, but we helped the top direct sellers transition into channel partners, and they’re doing fantastic. We’re doing great by providing the right tools and great products to our clients.

What makes Telegration different from other master agencies, according to what I hear from our partners, is that we take a very hands-on approach. We assign each new partner a team of people, so they have a marketing contact, a quote team, a technical sales consultant (TSC) when needed, and a commission specialist. Another differentiator for us is that we audit commissions in near real time, so we’re constantly checking that they are being compensated correctly. The worst thing for a sales partner to deal with is a commissions issue.

Telegration turned 29 years old this year. We may be the oldest in the industry. We’ve been doing this for so long, we know how to navigate the market and its changes. Our experience helps our partners. They have a dedicated support team around them, beginning from presales through commissions. We also offer a project management team that can help when they request it. We have a unique type of account management team. A lot of our sales partners are really busy, they’re solo entrepreneurs. They may have just two or three people in an office and they’re focused on selling. Sometimes they can’t keep up with their accounts, so we help them with the account team who call their base to do upgrades, renewals and cross-sells. Partners who work with that program have a less than 1% customer churn rate and they all add revenue every year.

We’ve made big investments in systems. Most notably, we've made a big investment to standardize on SalesForce (SFDC). SFDC helps our team to manage thousands of tasks in a very organized, automated way. Because of our commitment to systems, we've been able to scale and maintain a personal touch that’s needed with Sales Partners nationwide. We see a lot of companies with quote tools. Some of those tools are really good. However, automation might not provide the best pricing or configuration. That's where the Telegration team's human touch comes in. Our team provides guidance on all the components, rather than just giving a quick automated price. We will also create marketing materials to give our partners so that they can add their own logos.

People do business with other people who are fun and easy to work with, and who are helping them to generate profits. So Telegration also works to create the right supplier relationships for our Sales Partners. We help them by doing matchmaking. The process allows a Sales Partner to be aligned by geography, goals and personality.

When we create a good fit, we create a team. For instance, an AireSpring channel manager that works well with a particular Telegration sales partner, and we know they’ll do great things together, we’ll pair them together. Creating these kinds of synergies around the business niches also helps to make a great partner.

How long have you been working with AireSpring?

We’re so happy to have AireSpring in our portfolio. We did not have a direct relationship in the past, but have started working with AireSpring over the past year. I’ve known Avi [Avi Lonstein, AireSpring CEO] and Daniel [Daniel Lonstein, AireSpring President & CRO] for years, as well as Ron [Ron McNab, SVP Channel Sales] and now Shane [Shane Speakman, VP Channel Sales & Operations], whom we knew before he joined AireSpring. It’s a great team of people that we’ve been excited to work with.

What do you like about working with AireSpring?

When it comes to working with a carrier, partner or aggregator like AireSpring, we  have a specific set of criteria that have to be met, including people, products, delivery and ease of doing business. AireSpring checked all those boxes, plus there was strong demand from our partners who wanted us to bring AireSpring into our portfolio. That’s our number one gauge before bringing in a new provider. Then, we ask does the company attract great people, are they easy to work with, experienced and do we know them? We’ve been in the business for 29 years, so we know the family at AireSpring, and we knew they were a great fit. It’s the culture, AireSpring isn’t a giant in the industry, but when you know who they are, what they’re trying to accomplish and the niches they work in, they check all the boxes and we were anxious to advance the relationship.

What would you say is the secret to being a successful agent?

Being adaptable to change is a Telegration Value. Technology continues to change, but so does the way people view our industry. There’s never been a better time to be in the space that we call essential business services, with telecommunications, telephone, internet, cybersecurity, 5G and internet of things (IoT) all converging. What partners absolutely have to realize is that they can’t know it all. They need to know very strategic things, for example, the companies they can partner with that have resources they can bring in on an account, like at AireSpring, where they can get a solutions engineer involved in a sale. You can’t be an expert on everything, so you need to learn the high-level solutions and have the humility to know that it’s ok not to know it all and to bring in resources from carrier partners or a master agency to help you work deals.

You can no longer have a giant ego, where you do it all, saying “no one talks to my customers.” That’s a scarcity mentality and it won’t work long-term. The worst thing you can do is to be over-protective and not allow the carriers who are very friendly to help you. If you don’t do that, someone else will, and they’ll come in and beat you. You have to be aware, be humble and proactive, and have an abundance mentality.

When a sales partner has a book of business, we tell them there are only three ways they can grow their business and profits: 1-they can add new customers, 2-they can sell more to an existing customer, or 3-they could raise prices. Most of our partners can’t raise prices, they can go out and get new customers, but that’s the hardest thing to do, or they can focus on number 2, enhancing their current book of business.

Today, we also have a large contingent of agents that are new to the business. They need to be trained. We have a process for training everyone, whether people are new to the industry or not. The training process helps us learn about them and learn what they need, so we can funnel them into the best experience, whether it’s an AireSpring training or something else they need to become as successful as possible.

What is the "next big thing" you think agents should be aware of in 2019?

I started a basic framework for my kids when they were little, something for them, as well as for me, that would be a guide for their life. Using our last name, Basa, as a framework, I outlined the pillars of Belief, Attitude, Strategy and Action. There is a lot of attention on the US economy right now. So following the BASA framework, there’s Belief—for the future, I believe that just as before, there will be some type of market downturn. In every situation I’ve experienced, when there is a downturn, a lot of businesses, whether suppliers or agencies, thrive in that kind of chaos. Even in our most recent financial crisis, 2008-2009, many companies in our industry were thriving, growing not shrinking, because big change creates change. Change is good for our business. Big changes and challenges are coming. Both challenge and change will fuel the next wave of innovation and growth for our industry.

Next is Attitude—I’m not going to approach it with fear, I’m going to approach it with a positive attitude. As partners, Telegration and AireSpring should look for opportunities in both a downturn and an upturn, and whether it’s an expanding market or not, you can look for the silver lining. Strategy—at Telegration we’re discussing both sides of the coin—if there’s a downturn, what are we going to do, and if there’s an expansion, what are we going to do? Let’s plan a powerful strategy. Last and most important is Action—what are the actions we’re going to take? What can we measure in our corporate KPIs that is meaningful and that we can rally our team and our partners around? Is there a niche we can go after if things go a little sideways? We can be ready to go headlong into that niche and we’ll thrive when others won’t, because we were prepared.

Look at the mortgage industry during the last downturn. People were losing jobs everywhere. There were just a few companies that didn’t do the wrong thing, they did the right thing, and today they’re thriving. It goes to show that nothing bad happens from planning ahead. If you do a good job as a steward of the business every day, partners will flock to you, clients will seek you out.

There are legacy agents out there that don’t want help and fear the help that suppliers like AireSpring or master agents like Telegration offer. In reality, they should fear not having a conversation. They should fear not having a planning session, jointly workshopping solutions and implementing the best practices we see. The folks that are cooperative and adaptable to change are winning business. They're winning new clients. They're winning cybersecurity business and contact centers, and moving MPLS onto SD-WAN. They’re not just talking about it, they’re installing IoT solutions, acting as a hub of knowledge, an expert resource and bringing in people to engage with their clients. They function more as a quarterback than a salesperson. Our best partners don’t really sell anything. They’re advisors and provide professional guidance to achieve great business outcomes. We teach that you can’t be all things to all people, but you can be the right thing to the right people. Figure out where you belong and make yourself a specialist. We have one partner who focuses exclusively on pizza franchises and he’s very successful because he speaks their language and knows their business.

What are some of your hobbies and interests outside of telecom?

I have a great family and a wonderful wife, Stacey, who is my best friend. My two awesome kids are Adam who is 18 and my daughter Madeline who is 15. Madeline is a competitive swimmer, so we spend a lot of time at pools. Adam and I love fast cars. We love to do car stuff together as father-son activities. A few years ago we connected with an organization here in Detroit called Rally Kings. They invite people to go on road rallies and our first included 35 cars driving from Detroit to St. Louis. This spring we did one with 55 cars going from Detroit to Pittsburgh. The commonality is that people like cars and spirited driving, flying down the highway with a group. Everyone has CBs so there’s a lot of chatter going on. It’s a fun time, and usually there are a couple of events you can participate in. The most recent event we did was to rent a dragster for the day and drive at a drag strip. My son drives his own car now, an Audi A5, which he is diligently working on to make it go faster. The rallies include many makes of cars, from exotics like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche, to a lot of domestics, since we’re here in Detroit, like Dodge Hellcat Demons, Corvettes and Camaros. There was even a Cadillac Escalade on the last rally. We drive 4-5 hours a day together on the rallies, which gives us a lot of quality time. I played basketball in high school and college and now I occasionally coach high school teams who may ask for some help. I work a lot, but when I’m not at work I want to spend time with my family.

Tim, thank you for taking time to talk with us today.

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 team. This month we are talking with Howard Friedman, Tier 1 Tech Lead.

Hello Howard. To begin, please tell us about your professional background.

I’ve been with AireSpring over seven years, and before that I worked for more than 15 years with AT&T. I’m originally from Santa Monica and grew up here in Southern California. I had been in the restaurant business for 22 years, both working with my father in his restaurant, Orville & Wilbur's in Manhattan Beach, CA, and in Carson City, Nevada where I moved with my first wife shortly after we were married, and had our first child. We had our second child and eventually left Carson City for Plymouth, Massachusetts, where my wife was from originally. We stayed on the East Coast for 15 years, brought up our two kids, and I started working for AT&T in a warehouse position. That gave me a great opportunity to get to know the products, and work my way up into a tech position. I achieved Fiber Optics certifications as well as Lucent OC48, OC12 and other certifications, and got to work with some huge enterprise clients like State Street Bank and Fidelity Investments doing fiber optics infrastructure. My first wife passed away from ALS in October of 2011 and I eventually moved back to Southern California. In 2014 I met my current wife. We've been married three years now. After taking some time off, I applied to work at AireSpring, landed a position in the support team, and have been here ever since.

Tell us about your role at AireSpring.

I started out as a Tier 1 Tech with AireSpring, then moved up to Tier 1 Technical Lead, supervising the Tier 1 Techs. Tier 1 takes care of customer calls that come in for technical assistance, answers their questions on best ways to handle various issues they may be experiencing with their phones, or internet or network issues. I may redirect them if the answer to a question is hard to identify, which may involve referring them to the Tier 2 team, or beyond that, to the Network Operations level. Tier 1 takes the inbound calls and opens a trouble ticket when customers encounter an issue. Our specialized function is to clear Layer 1 concerns, which include anything physical on the circuit, such as cabling or equipment. If it’s a “hard down,” we contact the carrier and push them on the customer’s behalf until the circuit is back up. We troubleshoot any way we can, checking and pulling data from their routers and switches. If we can’t fix the issue in Tier 1, we then push it over to Tier 2 and let them know we need the next level to look at the situation. They have next level access to equipment and places that Tier 1 can’t reach. If they in turn can’t fix a problem, they refer it to Network Operations for higher level resolution, and they typically fix every issue that reaches their level.

Much of my time is dedicated to reviewing the team’s tickets and making suggestions. Our firm rule for down hard customers is to provide the customer an update every hour until their issue is resolved. We also open pro-active tickets and strive to be the ones to reach out first before the customer has to come to us with an issue. They really appreciate that level of communication, and we want to avoid letting a problem escalate. Trouble tickets can originate for all kinds of reasons. Some days we experience internet issues. Microsoft may be doing an across the board software update that eats up bandwidth in the customer’s system, causing their internet access to be slow, which can cause latency on their cloud communications applications like Meta. We work with a variety of tools, including our own AireNMS product for network monitoring, so we can stay on top of every situation.

After a ticket has been resolved, we may assess the need to refer a customer to their authorized AireSpring channel partner to explore alternative solutions, or if appropriate, to account management. This step typically comes up if we can see shortcomings in the customer’s current installation, for example, if their circuits are maxed out and they need additional bandwidth due to the addition of new cloud communication applications, or just business expansion. If there is an issue with a circuit provided by an existing carrier, we may be able to push a carrier for a replacement circuit to help solve the issue.

What do you enjoy most about working with AireSpring?

I truly enjoy working with the people here. I get along with everyone and I really love being in this new building. It’s a beautiful, safe environment the company has provided for all of us. I’m known for wearing plaid shirts—every day. When I went on vacation for a couple of weeks recently, the day I returned, my entire department wore plaid shirts! The owners are awesome, and Avi [Avi Lonstein, CEO] is a pleasure to talk with. He is very approachable and often visits our department to talk with the team. The customers are also awesome to work with. We have quite a few that are large enterprises with hundreds of locations, which means we get to know them well, talk with them regularly and when an issue does arise, it can be much more complex. But that’s what keeps my job interesting.

What are some of your hobbies or interests outside of the office?

I am a surfer and I try to surf as often as I can. I have four or five surfboards, and as I am getting a little older now, I’m slowing down a little bit. That means I mostly use a longboard. I also love hiking and I play disc golf, which is a rapidly growing sport worldwide. The sport is very similar to traditional golf except that instead of a ball and a hole you have a disc and a basket. You carry a bag around with you, with different types of discs. They’re even named like golf clubs, with putters and drivers. When you throw the disc it will curve off at the end of an arc, so you have to throw in a way that anticipates that curve. The rules are just like golf, you plan your “lie,” you count your strokes to make the hole, there are “pars” and it is really fun. One of my favorite places to go is up to Wrightwood in the nearby mountains, where there’s an incredible 27-hole disc golf course overlooking the whole Antelope Valley—it’s beautiful! disc golf is now my passion.

Howard, thank you for sharing your story with us!

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:

• AireContact Cloud Contact Center
• AirePBX Cloud Phone System
• MPLS Mesh
• SD-WAN
• SIP Trunking
• Managed Connectivity
• Managed Failover
• Dedicated Internet Access
• Wholesale Long Distance

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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