01732 759725 36 Q&A With Mark Pillow and Paul Gibbs of Voip Unlimited Paul Gibbs (PG): We’re in a minority now of companies that own and run their own network. The benefit for resellers and potential new channel partners is the fact that because we own and run our own network, we can shape products and services in line with market changes and market tailwinds. We look at what’s happening in the market, what the requirement is, and we work with resellers to try and build products that are slightly different from the norm. Mark Pillow (MP): We run our own dev team, our own voice developers, our own web developers, our own platform developers. We’ve got our own network engineers, sys admins, DevOps, the whole kit and caboodle basically. My provisioning manager has got over 25 years’ experience and knows the industry like the back of her hand, so we are our own provider when it comes to number porting. We run our own porting codes. We can pretty much do whatever is required of us. TR: I know from speaking to you before that another big benefit for partners is the ability to access a wide choice of products and services through a single portal. PG: One of the biggest things we hear from new partners, and our existing resellers, is they really like the fact we’ve got one portal and that one portal serves all of our products. That really does differentiate us because you’d be amazed how often customers of a company that might have grown through acquisition have to go onto different portals. With us, you don’t have to do that. We spend a lot of time building APIs into providers and making sure our customers can really self-serve. Our vision is to enable you to trade with us on our portal at any time of the day. That said, we are not like certain people that have really majored on selfserve. We want our portal to be self-serve, but we don’t want to lose that personal touch. We’re not the biggest company and I think people like the fact that they can get all our products and services on our portal but also know there’s someone on the end of a phone. They can phone me, they can phone Mark, they can phone anyone in the organisation and we’ll pick up the phone and have a chat with them. That, in this day and age, is a big differentiator. TR: You mention feedback from new partners. Are you actively expanding your reseller base? PG: Yes, very much so. Quite aggressively. We’re a channel-only business and historically that’s been built around the dealer channel – people that trade with us, IT companies that come to us and that we work with as dealers. We’ve really built our portal for resellers, the wholesale community, and that’s grown exponentially. Since just before I joined, we’ve enjoyed double-digit growth in reseller recruitment every single month. TR: Is that because Voip Unlimited has a higher profile now or is it because connectivity has become so essential? PG: Brand awareness has been a big thing for me. I joined Voip Unlimited about a year ago and at the time people’s perception of who we were and what we did was probably not correct. So we have spent a lot of time shaping our outward offering, making sure people understand that we are a channel-only wholesale provider and that we offer a range of products and services in one place. We’ve spent a lot of money on advertising and events and we’re starting to reap the rewards now, which I’m very grateful for. TR: Meanwhile technology keeps moving forward. Are you continuing to add to your portfolio of solutions? MP: Yes, we’ve got a lot of products in the pipeline. We ask resellers we are close to what their needs are and what trends they’re seeing and we play around with technology. We like to push technology to the limit. I love to learn and we love the difficult projects that dealers bring to us. We do some really Voip Unlimited, the channel-only wholesale provider of UC and connectivity products and services, has been signing up resellers left, right and centre. In this Q&A, Founder and Managing Director Mark Pillow and Head of Sales Paul Gibbs explain why. From ownership of its own voice and data network to a 24/7 online partner portal and great choice of products, Voip Unlimited gives partners everything they need to stand out in a competitive market. Backed up by in-house development capabilities and a real love of technology. As Mark says: “We love the difficult projects that resellers bring to us.” Technology Reseller (TR): Voip Unlimited provides a range of voice and connectivity solutions, including UCaaS, SIP, broadband and Ethernet. Since it was established in 2006, it has prided itself on being a very technical business and that includes having its own IP voice and data network. Why is that important for your channel partners? Q&A Mark Pillow
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