Friday, October 23, 2009

Summary of 2nd Annual "Agent Day"


I've visited with many agents and sub agents over the past year and I must say that Ron Dunworth and Hilary Fox of Advoda are making a very strong claim to the title "best back office" for a telecom master agency.


I first met with Ron and Hilary earlier this year on a trip to Denver to see other TA vendor members. I was quite amazed at their operation and published the following in an earlier TA post:


"The Advoda meeting was one of the most eye-opening for me. In addition to being one of Qwest's biggest Colorado master agents and a master agent for TMC, they've got something really special going on with their enterprise customer facing, multi-vendor project management tool. 


While many agents focus on small customers, Advoda appears to focus on the needs of enterprise customers and their need to constantly be informed about the status of hundreds of MACD ("move, add, change, disconnect") orders in play at any one time. 


Advoda has 15 employees in their office with three computer monitors each that seem to do nothing but ensure everything is known, managed, monitored and reported about every order in process - kind of how NASA would do telecom project management. An extremely impressive operation!"


Well what I saw at their office in the Spring was confirmed by the Advoda vendors and agents I met at their second annual "Agent Day" yesterday. Advoda's vendors and agent partners see what I saw for the first time last Spring - a unique master agent offering in "their bullet-proof back office". 


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY?  As an agent myself, I'm attracted to master agencies that are peers and can be mentors. When you meet Ron and Hillary, your first impression is "I want these two to be my sales manager". In speaking with the two of them about their own mid-market and enterprise deals, you can't help but think, "I want to sell like they sell." While many master agencies take pride in the claim that they have no "house accounts" that also might signal they have no in-house closing expertise. Ron and Hilary have the confidence, experience and back-office necessary to close any deal of any size anywhere. That's a powerful message.


Click the following images to view TA's first three videos from Advoda's 2nd "Agent Day". We'll have the rest of the videos rolling out next week.




Ron and Hilary's "Welcome Message" to TA Members







Blake Wetzel, Qwest VP Sales on the Qwest / Advoda Relationship







Bill Ward, FRII President and CEO on the FRII / Advoda Relationship







Were you at the Advoda event? Please click "Comments" below and leave you thoughts on the event.

2 comments:

  1. This was great! ADVODA really brought together some power players with execs from a dozen providers there. We got some inside information on Qwest's new ethernet product coming out.

    ADVODA is always working to help support us as agents and find ways to help close more deals. This was a great way to find out straight from the providers what we should be looking at in the market. I got some great ideas that I think will help me close more business before the end of the year.

    I'm looking forward to the next event!

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  2. It was a privilege to be part of an ADVODA day of training. The turnout of agents wanting to expand their knowledge and skill set was stunning. ADVODA's support of their agents has produced a very ambitious and well informed army of telecom and data professionals. I can tell you, from SimpleSignal's perspective, we love working with the ADVODA agent.

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