This past month, I had the opportunity to present along with the Girl Scouts at a Business Education Technology conference. I was able to tell my Girl Scout story on how I went from a top cookie seller to becoming the owner of InteleCONNECT. It was fun to reflect on how the Girl Scout Cookie program truly developed in me lifelong skills that helped me get to where I am today.
I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to not only tell my story, but it also gave me another insight on why we started InteleCONNECT over 10 years ago.
You see, much like the many flavors of Girl Scout Cookies, each business has a multitude of options to choose from making it difficult for the decision maker to decide which one is best. And, sometimes you need to mix the flavors together to achieve the desired end result.
When I worked as a direct sales rep for carriers in the past, I only had one flavor to sell. That one flavor had to fit all my client’s needs. Sure, I could be creative and think outside the box as much as possible, but I still only had “Thin Mints” to sell. Sometimes we had to break open our box and only sell a portion of the overall solution. Then, we had to make sure that the other carriers involved would blend well with the overall desired result. To top it off, many times as a direct sales rep we then turned over our customer to be handled by an inside sales person to handle any future needs for the customer, and this inside customer service/sales person may not understand or know the customers’ needs as well as I did after working with them.
The idea to become an independent broker and represent ALL carriers seemed like a novel idea. As an added bonus, as an independent broker we will get to grow and adjust with our customers as their needs change over the years! There were no other telecom brokers located in Central Minnesota doing this at the time, and so InteleCONNECT was born. Now I could sell the “Thin Mints, Caramel deLites, Peanut Butter Patties, Lemonades, Thanks A Lot and so much more”! Just like the flavors of the Girl Scout cookie, the telecom solutions and carriers are continuously changing. Sure, there are still the old standby favorites that are tried and true, but we need to expand and try new flavors to see if they are better suited to meet our client’s needs.
Also, we have the cookie bakers in our office to make sure that those recipes are followed through from the order process all the way to the customer satisfaction in the end. I hate to brag, but we really do have a top-notch team with individual strengths who mesh well together at our new “bakery” office in Sauk Rapids. Always keeping your needs at the forefront as we sit on hold, so you don’t have to and take care of any service needs your business may have.
So, do you know what flavor or flavors of telecom carriers are the best match for your business? If not, or even if you would like a second opinion, we would love to sit down, review your recipe, and go over the options. You never know what new flavor we may uncover together.
