The Conference Coach™

Carolyn Bradfield

One of the most profound decisions an entrepreneur or business leader can make during the course of running a business is the decision to have partners.  Partnerships can have a downside that comes with the complications of having to collaborate and compromise.  They can lead to power struggles and a lack of understanding about how to share responsibilities.  In the extreme, they can destroy relationships and friendships.

However, from my perspective, despite the downsides, it’s never as much fun or as rewarding to go it alone as it is to have partners.  Early in the company’s history, Copper Conferencing made the decision to find business partners that could extend its reach to companies where we had no relationships.  The business partners not only brought conferencing to their customer relationships but a range of related telecommunications and data services that added value to the company.   Maintaining a great partnership starts with trust.

The conferencing marketplace is vast with most companies using some form of audio and web conferencing.  If and when Copper and one of its partners pursue the same company for conferencing, we always recognize that the partner’s relationship with that customer usually supersedes our own.  Conflicting over an individual account is just not worth damaging that trust we have worked hard to build.

Partners must also trust that Copper will be there for support and advice.  We’re experts in what we sell and our partners are generalists in many, many products and services.  We don’t expect partners to know everything about conferencing and are always available to answer questions, jump on sales calls, or act as a consultant in this area.

Our partners have to trust that we will maintain a high level of customer service and support in managing the accounts that they have entrusted to us.  We rarely represent the most significant revenue that this partner has with the customer and we’re always cognizant that we must represent ourselves well so that the decision to use Copper reflects well on the partner.

I often wonder how the larger industry players such as InterCall who dominate the conferencing market maintain the same trust level with their partners.  They field a behemoth direct sales force that seem to act like a plague of locusts in the market, calling on whatever accounts they find seemingly without regard to those that are best pursued by partners.   Locusts just simply live to eat whatever is in their path.  They move from one meal to the next one and rarely worry about what they have already captured and killed.

We believe in partners and that requires communication, collaboration and building trust.  Getting business at any cost, undercutting a partner, and living to eat vs. eating to live seems bad for the industry.  After all, once the plague has moved on, often the landscape is never the same.

Fun facts about locusts: Visit National Geographic – Locusts or watch these videos:

Plague of Locusts – BBC

Locusts in the Congo

Willow, CA – Locusts