Many UK telecoms companies use third-party telecoms providers to sell and maintain their fibreoptic, phone and broadband connections, at a profit to both companies. This is known as telecoms reselling. Many different business models deal with reselling, but all involve purchasing the rights to provide brokered Internet connections to business and home customers. Telecoms resellers have the potential to make a lot of money from reselling, but several challenges can get in the way. Even with ‘white label’ base service telecom provision only, you can still encounter significant problems and issues. Here’s our short guide to overcoming the most common obstacles in telecoms reselling.
1) LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
Telecoms can be an extremely complex business. ISP and mobile data provision is technically daunting, requiring massive networks of machines and knowledge of national-level IT infrastructure. Thankfully, resellers don’t have to deal with most of these technical issues. You’re handling the marketing side of things, the extras, and the customer database – not the network itself.
Your master provider and operator (the companies you purchase connections from) will give you technical data, sales and marketing support, and a clear overview of what to expect from their product range. Some major ISP providers offer a commission model – meaning that they’ll take on your confirmed clients right from the point of sale.
2) INADEQUATE IT INFRASTRUCTURE, STAFF & HARDWARE
As a reseller, you’ll need to on build an efficient business-to-business office-based platform, as well as keeping track of vast amounts of customer data, and providing remote support to your customers.
If you’ve run a more technically-based company in the past, it might be worth reviewing your setup to check whether it can cope with high volumes of calls, emails, and support requests. Depending on the scale of your reselling, you might have to factor in the cost of new support and customer service staff.
3) HIDDEN COSTS
Often, reselling involves adding extra services (such as customer support) to the price of the resale. It’s important to budget in advance to make sure that your connection reselling is profitable and productive, once all of your costs are factored in.
4) IDENTICAL SERVICES
It can be tricky to repackage and sell a near-identical product in a crowded marketplace. If you’re selling an identical package at a higher price than the source company or other third-party providers, you will struggle to establish a foothold.
Can you offer a business model that delivers faster, more reliable connections than your competitors at a cheaper price, or a wider variety of services? If not, can you offer enough additional, quality extras and services per month to make paying a bit more worthwhile for your customers?
5) BILLING
This is a big stumbling block for many IT companies due to the variety in different packages and minute details that need to be individually billed to each customer. At Sysconfig we have over 20 years of billing experience, and we are partnered with Billing Booth to help make the process as simple as possible.
TELECOMS RESELLING FROM SYSCONFIG
Sysconfig is a cloud-based, multi-platform telecoms broker. Our personalised online platform is built to handle mass calls, recording, meta routing, and much more. We work in the UK as part of a wider network of telecoms wholesalers and resellers. Call or email us today to find out more about what we do for white label resellers to support every aspect of telecoms resell.
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