The Channel Partners Exhibition, the pinnacle conference for those in the business of telecommunications, took place March 1-2, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Everyone from ShopforT1 made their way there by bus, train, and plane. The Draper, Utah office mates (me, Adam, James, Aaron Jay) rented a brand new Suburban and had a great road trip. We stopped in Beaver, Utah to buy some fresh cheese curds and in St. George, Utah to see some interesting folks shopping in Wal-mart. We arrived later that afternoon and enjoyed a dinner buffet at the Excalibur with some of our early-arriving agents. The next day was very busy, starting with the ACC Business awards banquet in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. After a delicious meal we were delighted to be named to the Platinum Club for the second straight year, and even more amazed to see that ShopforT1 was the #3 T1 sales agency in the nation! Adam, James, Lance, and I were almost in shock to hear to our agents had produced more than the likes of other, well-respected, master agents like Microcorp, Intelysis, and PlanetOne. In fact, the representatives of these companies were dining at tables in the immediate proximity of our table. Most of them had never heard of ShopforT1 before, so I took the time to go over and congratulate them on their being named to the Platinum Club and to introduce myself. Only Brad Miehl, president of Microcorp, had any idea who I was since we worked together a while back when I was running PK Communications. PKCOMM ran all of our Cable & Wireless business through Microcorp until Brad terminated our contract when his crew provisioned one of our customers to the wrong rate plan and refused to reimburse the customer $20, which resulted in an FCC complaint. But that is ancient history - it was just a thrill to be included in the same group as these industry heavy weights.
After the ACC Business awards banquet concluded, we rushed over to the Excalibur to begin the official ShopforT1 Annual Training Conference and Awards Banquet. I presented to our closers the newest piece of technology created to facilitate new relationships: the Master Agent / Sub-Agent modules. These web sites allow our agents, many of whom have employees and/or subagents of their own, to set up, manage, and pay their people using one easy-to-use master control panel.
In addition to the new Master Agent modules, we also rolled out our new GeoQuote XML plug-in. This will allow any agent, anywhere, to add real-time pricing to their existing web site(s). The software was authored in Cold Fusion and PHP, which covers 90% of all hosting types. Our goal is to have millions of GeoQuote plug-ins deployed on the internet by this time next year.
After the new technology was unveiled, we rented the entire Italian restaurant on the second floor and had a fantastic meal with our agents. Once the meal concluded, our awards ceremony began. The top closer of 2005 was Tim O'Rourke, of Spokane Washington. Tim was our most consistent agent and he works the business on a full-time basis with the support of his wife Lori. In fact, we recently hired Lori to work as our Commission-Zsar, and what an excellent job she does to make sure all of our agents are getting from the carriers what they deserve!!
Once our meeting concluded, we brought in the chocolate fountain and invited ALL of our carriers to come and socialize with our agents. At one point, over 100 people were mingling and comparing notes during the evening. Adam and I just sat back and marvelled at all of the great people we work with. It is truly humbling and inspiring to see all of the people benefiting from our hard work. Likewise, it also gives us motivation to wake up each morning and continue working to build this one-of-a-kind system that benefits so many people on so many levels. Helping these agents achieve their dream is the stepping stone to allowing us to achieve ours. May we never forget it, and may we never forget our humble beginnings in Adam's one-bedroom apartment on the beach in San Clemente.
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