If You Don’t Sell, What Then?

So, you’ve gone through the evaluation process and have decided, for whatever reasons, that you’re not going to sell your agency.  Now what?

First decision is whether or not to transform your company into a state of the art telcom/IT/cloud trusted advisor.  If you don’t transform, the options are pretty straight-forward – you can stay the course as a telcom-centric agency and continue to earn residuals for some period into the future.  Who knows how long that will be?  Three years?  Five years?  Longer?

Regardless of how long the revenue stream will last, it’s a given that it will decline.  At best, renewal write-downs will eat into your finances.  At worst, customers will go elsewhere for their more comprehensive needs and the race to zero will be on.

There is no question that in today’s business environment, customers are faced with an incredibly fast pace of change AND overwhelming choice in solutions to their challenges.  Companies are desperate for advice on cloud computing, security, UCaaS, SD-WAN as well as legacy telecom connectivity.  To be a successful trusted advisor to your existing customers and potential new customers, you have to somehow offer value in all these disciplines.

One of the main reasons that successful legacy telcom agency owners have decided to sell is because they don’t want - or don’t know how – to make the leap from being an expert on connectivity to being knowledgeable on these next generation services.  Its very complicated and expensive to add the needed expertise to your team.  Yes, you can lean on one or more Master Agencies, but at best, those resources will focus on selecting the best two or three providers in a particular space.  You’ll still have to be competent and comfortable with the topic in order to hold your own in complex customer conversations.  It’s just not as simple as asking a few qualifying questions and then going to a matrix to determine the best solution.  You still have to walk the customer through a very involved decision-making process to get to closure.  And unless you’ve invested heavily in new staff or educated yourself to unheard of proportions, it’s just not a simple as it might seem.

If you’ve decided not to sell, either prepare for a declining revenue stream over short and mid-term future OR be ready to invest more and work harder than you’ve ever done before, as that’s what’s required to successfully transform your agency in today’s business environment.