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By Dan Foster, MegaPath

Let’s talk about the value you provide to your customers. In other words, your secret sauce. If I asked you to use just one sentence and describe that value by beginning with "We help customers..." How would you articulate your company’s approach in a way that breaks from the crowd? And how would you ensure that one sentence isn’t so ethereal that your customers would be confused, or wouldn’t be able to recognize it’s your company disguised in that lofty language? This is an important exercise for every growing company, regardless of their size or industry. It’s a critical way to level set with your team “here’s who we are, here are the customer types we serve, and here are the problems we help them solve.” When you can make this statement confidently, it’s clear that someone has put time into the necessary big thinking, and with it, your team – however small or large it is – can communicate with customers, knowing what you’re working to accomplish. Done correctly, this exercise sets your company on a collective right path for all potential customer conversations that should follow. And especially for all of you running agent organizations, you know that it isn’t wise to get pigeonholed into being the commodity product middlemen. You’ve got to be able to provide something more tangible and valuable to your customers, and they need to view you in the same way.

Now don’t get me wrong, I often cringe at the thought of heavy-handed marketing approaches to answering the secret-sauce question. It doesn’t take much to overbake these things, so let’s lighten it up a little. Remember the HBO series, “The Larry Sanders Show”? It was a backdoor view of what the Johnny Carson show would have been like day-to-day. In this episode , Larry (Garry Shandling) accepts an invitation to host the People’s Choice Awards, but unfortunately he agrees before knowing the full story. In reality, Larry signs on to co-host with Superman and Rita Moreno. For a successful late-night talk show host like himself, this was a dumb move and his agent, Stevie Grant, lights into him for agreeing to it. To drive his point home, Stevie makes Larry repeat out loud: "Co-hosting detracts from my essential specialness in the marketplace"! Talent agent speak to be sure, but it’s situationally funny for many reasons, including the fact that Stevie’s advice is spot-on correct. Bad gets worse as Larry ends up in the not-so-glowing position of sharing the stage with his two co-hosts, including a dance routine with Rita Moreno. Bottom line -- know how you’re unique, and don’t mess it up.

Back to providing telecom services. Here’s an example that I’ve noticed several times in the last couple of months. “How to be a managed service provider” seems to a popular topic. First, an MSP of what specialty? Second, do you have a team skill set for that specialization? How does it compare with the competitive landscape for that service? And what about the front- and back-end infrastructure needed to manage the service and commit to the SLAs that your customers will require? These are not quick hurdles. In fact, at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Vegas, MegaPath’s own Bernie McGroder spoke on the “Is Managed Services Right for You?” panel. Because Bernie leads our sales engineering group, he can truthfully state that there isn’t a managed network services issue that his team hasn’t tackled. In fact, we blogged about that panel discussion. And because we’ve been providing 24x7x365 network, voice, and security services support for years, we realize that much of the value in the service we provide comes from the strong technical teams we’ve built across the company. While customers may not realize their issue or project is being handled by a team of CCIEs, CCNPs, and CCNAs, we’re confident in our team’s unique ability to deliver the services that our customers value. It’s definitely part of the secret sauce. I encourage you to invest the time to know your “essential specialness in the market” and to use it well!

Dan Foster is the chief sales and marketing officer for MegaPath Inc., where he manages the company’s sales, marketing and channel organizations. He has been instrumental in driving MegaPath’s rapid growth to become the leading provider of managed IP communications services in North America with 20,000 customers. He is also a member of the 2009-10 Channel Partners Conference & Expo Advisory Board.