When I started the discussions with babyTEL about a position in sales, I did some research about SIP trunking services and tried to evaluate the opportunity. I had some questions to answer before I could accept this new challenge.  Could I make a living building a sales organization that would be selling SIP trunking services?? Is it going to fade away? And finally, if this technology is so great, why is it that the Tier 1 carriers I was working with were not selling it to their own customers. Why were customers not asking for SIP trunks? The answers came quickly.  Customers are not asking for SIP because they don’t know it exists or they have been told it was not a reliable service. Service providers are mostly interested in selling full T1s, MPLS links and high priced network connectivity services not low priced SIP trunking services… What is the incentive for them to offer SIP trunking or even talk about it to their customers? None. They don’t like selling plastic into a customer account because the margin is not high enough.  T1s, PRIs are cash cows for them… How will they position their new SIP services? I guess they will try to offer it on dedicated links like T1s and PRIs.

So what’s next? Well, customers need to hear that SIP trunking is reliable, that they can reduce their telephony costs by at least 40% and that it can coexist with traditional phone lines. But they need to turn it on!!  Resellers, agents and phone system manufacturers need to beef up their confidence in SIP trunking and think out of the box. Bold thinking is what fosters innovation. Coming out of recession this should be an easy pitch right? I’ll let you know in my next blog post…