Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathen Marder.
Jonathen, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I originally started working in the telecommunications industry in 1988 for US Sprint. In less than 3 months, I became the companies top outbound sales representative. I held the status of “Top Outbound Sales Representative” for over a year. After having my compensation plan changed on two separate occasions I decided to move onto a management position with MCI. There I managed the company’s agent program for the Western Region consisting of California, Hawaii & Nevada. Once again, within only a few months my region was tops in the country. Eventually, I was asked to assist in training and support for the company’s other 5 regions. This all happened at the time I was starting a family and decided traveling and being away from home once a week wasn’t for me. Rather than taking a territorial sales position I choice to move on to AT&T. Although I was extremely successful there as well, I could not take the commute to Woodland Hills every morning and hated the way we were “micro managed”. As a manager myself previously at MCI, I understood the need for accountability but felt If I was always producing more than what was required I shouldn’t be managed in the same fashion that others that weren’t producing were. At this point the industry was growing very rapidly and there were far more competitors in the business other than the original “Big 3” of AT&T, MCI and Sprint. Rather than requesting a transfer within AT&T or potentially moving to a 4th provider in 7 years in decided to start my own business, Carrier Consulting.
Carrier Consulting was formed in 1995 with the primary purpose of assisting business of all sizes in securing the most cost effective and reliable phone service for their specific needs. Initially, we accomplished this by becoming “Authorized Agents” for over 10 different long distance providers. As the industry evolved and there became competition in the local market we expanded our portfolio to over 15 providers of both local and long distance service. Then the introduction of the internet and data, which changed the landscape for good. No longer were we quoting a “cost per minute” but bandwidth speeds and other data services. Today Carrier Consulting has over 30 carrier agreements with the likes of 8×8, AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier, Level 3 and Spectrum just to name a few.
Our sales force that started out in 1995 with just 2 representatives in the Los Angeles market now grown to having over 40 nationwide. Our company slogan, “We Shop So You Don`t Have To” allows our customers to focus their time and energy on other aspects of their business while we handle the voice and data piece for them. Essentially Carrier Consulting is like having a telecommunications manager on your staff but not on your payroll.
Has it been a smooth road?
Nothing in life is ever smooth. With customers’ needs constantly changing, service provider’s programs changing it almost requires a full-time person just to keep up. All the acquisitions and mergers don’t make things any easier either.
So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Carrier Consulting story. Tell us more about the business.
Carrier Consulting is an Authorized Agent for over 30 of the country’s largest Voice and Data providers. Not only do we represent almost every major player in the industry but more importantly every type of access methodology from traditional copper, cable, fiber and fixed wireless technologies. We broker all of the industry has to offer from local dial tone, long distance, hosted VoIP, broadband, cloud and security services. Our representatives are unbiased and have all been trained to “put the customer where they will be the happiest and stay the longest” Of all of our consulting services are provided FREE OF CHARGE to the end user. We make our money buy receiving a small residual from the providers for the establishment and maintenance of the services we establish. Each one of our customers are assigned to an account manager who confirms the contracts accuracy, helps in the provisioning of the new services, provides bill reviews and proactive customer support. In an industry where the average customer changes sales representatives every 2 years our average customer has been with us for over 9 1/2 years. In addition to saving our customers the time and aggravation of having to manage their voice and data needs, we save our customers an average of 30% over what they paid prior to becoming part of our family.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Cloud services and virtualization.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.carrierconsulting.com
- Phone: 3106401920
- Email: [email protected]
