sip for dummies

SIP Trunking Explained: What You Need to Know Now

You’ve seen the term SIP trunking or ads for SIP trunking services. You know that it could be a great business opportunity. The problem is that you don’t understand what SIP trunking is or what you need to provide the service. You need SIP trunking explained in non-technical terms.

The first thing you should know is that you don’t need a degree in technology or years of experience in the telecommunications field to sell SIP trunking services. You simply need to find and partner with the right provider. That allows you to offer clients an economical Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology solution while earning a consistent revenue stream for your business. Now, let’s get started learning about what SIP trunks are, what customers are looking for from SIP sellers, and how to choose reliable and qualified SIP trunking providers.

SIP Trunking Explained: A Smart Guide

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking is a technology that allows clients to conduct multiple communications sessions through the Internet. SIP works with VoIP technology to send or receive voice calls, data, or video through one SIP trunk line. Each SIP trunk contains several SIP channels. Think of these channels as the virtual version of traditional phone lines. 

Key Benefits of SIP Trunking

  • SIP is cost-effective – SIP saves organizations money. They can make local and long-distance voice calls, access email, send and receive text messages, and use the internet with one subscriber account. No need to pay for additional accounts with SIP trunks. Reselling SIP trunking services requires little initial investment and no expensive hardware.
  • SIP trunking is scalable – SIP trunk services can scale up or down as business needs or goals change. If the company is growing, adding new channels is as easy as logging into your administrative dashboard. Seasonal companies can take advantage of SIP trunking’s flexibility to scale up for busy seasons and back down during the off-peak season.
  • SIP trunking is portable – Before SIP trunking and VoIP, businesses had to invest in physical phone lines and a limited option for service plans and, depending on where they moved, get a local phone number. Whether to expand, downsize, or take advantage of a better price or location, moving required more expense to shut off service at the old location and add enough phone lines in the new location to accommodate their communication needs, and, depending on where they moved, change their phone numbers. With SIP, there are no restrictions when the customer changes their physical location. They can keep and use multiple phone numbers no matter the geographic location.

Why Provide SIP Services?

If you’ve ever sold physical products or equipment, you know it’s not easy to gain consistent monthly revenue. In contrast, SIP reselling provides a steady monthly income. While it can be challenging to predict your monthly income for other products and services, SIP trunking gives businesses an additional income stream that helps mitigate other markets’ variability, seasonality, or customer purchasing habits. The more subscribers you have, the more repeatable, predictable income you earn.

Related: How to Help Your Customers Understand SIP Trunk Channels

Selling SIP trunking services isn’t like selling high-cost products. Businesses today must communicate internally and externally to survive—this is an essential service. The quality of these services is vital for acquiring new clients and maintaining customer loyalty. The low investment and flexible monthly plans mean greater profits for you and a competitive advantage for your clients.

How to Be a Successful SIP Trunking Reseller

Just like any good salesperson, you need to understand your clients’ needs to be successful at sales. You must have insight into your clients’ challenges, fears, pain points, and business goals. You must also be able to demonstrate how your product solves their problems and addresses their concerns. In short, you must be able to communicate your value proposition. 

Your customer will also need to have SIP trunking explained in a way that is easy to understand and relates directly to solving their business problems. They want to know that you can provide a custom solution that assists them in accomplishing their ambitions. When you align SIP trunking with your customers’ goals, you can dramatically enable them to improve their business model, create profits, and refer you to their business associates. 

So, what motivates your prospective subscribers to choose you as their SIP trunking provider? Let’s look at the top concerns your customers may have and how your services can solve them.

Price

It’s no secret that price is often the client’s main concern. They want a SIP trunk solution that saves them money and positively impacts their bottom line.

Here are some pricing benefits of SIP trunks you can communicate with clients:

  • No continuous maintenance charges
  • Free calls between offices and extensions
  • No rental costs for additional lines

These points make a good argument about why businesses should change from traditional, outdated telephone communication technology to sip trunk technology.

Reliability and Quality

There is nothing worse to a company than telephone communications downtime. It’s a business nightmare. Think of all the business you do on the phone from networking to making important changes and updates. Downtime damages business relationships. You can allay customer fears with SIP trunks because the technology’s design is resilient.

To keep your customers satisfied, you need a network that delivers expert audio quality and system reliability. When your SIP services run on a Tier-1 network with built-in redundancy and real-time replication, there’s no better technology. Make sure your service offers outage detection and equipment backups. When selecting a company to partner with, check out the quality of the system.

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Becoming a Successful SIP Trunks Reseller

Your clients want to minimize downtime that could impact their customer service and brand reputation. With the right partner, you can assure them that your resilient system design can accomplish this goal with a Tier-1 network. Furthermore, SIP enables calls to be automatically rerouted within seconds, and the technology balances call loads. That means if there is any issue, your clients have built-in business continuity. 

Security

Your clients want to know their digital communications services are secure. They want to see that you provide fraud detection that can prevent unauthorized users from accessing the system. However, system security is only as good as the protocols for managing and maintaining software and firmware updates. When you have a good reselling partner, you can assure your potential clients that all security is kept up-to-date as threats and solutions emerge.

Flexibility

Every business owner wants flexibility in their services. Not only can you explain how easily customizable SIP trunking can be for them, but with the right provider, you can assure them that they will never be locked into a contract with you. Furthermore, they won’t have to pay fees upfront for their service, and they can choose their own internet service provider.

How To Choose a SIP Reselling Provider

The next step for you is choosing a SIP trunking reselling provider. We’ve made it easy by creating a quick checklist of features to look for in your future reselling partner:

  • Platform compatibility – Compatibility with all major IP PBX, IP gateways, and open-source PBX projects is key to being useful to the greatest number of clients.
  • Private labeling – Build your brand identity with a provider that allows you to white-label their services. Your clients will associate the great service with your brand name, not that of your reselling provider. 
  • Easy administration – Look for a control panel that allows easy quotes, provisioning, and management of the services.
  • No contracts – None for you, none for your subscribers. Period.
  • Best-in-class support – Protecting your brand means finding a provider that offers easy access to expert help when you or your customers need it. 
  • Hands-off taxes and billing – The best reselling partner will handle monthly customer invoicing and complex state, federal, and other phone service taxes.
  • Automated provisioning – Look for a provider that allows automated account creation and service provisioning in less than 10 minutes from start to finish.
  • Transparent commissions – Your reselling partner should provide transparent monthly reporting, including detailed invoicing with your earnings breakdown, and automated commission payouts directly into your bank account. 

Reselling SIP Trunking Services Is Easy With the Right Provider

Now that you’ve had SIP Trunking explained in plain terms, it should be easy to see how it is a valuable addition to your business offerings. When you work with the best network and SIP trunking providers, you adopt a system that offers reliability, quality, scalability, and security. That means you could have customers waiting in line to order this cost-saving telecommunications technology.

Want to learn more about SIP trunking and becoming a SIP trunking reseller? SIPTrunk makes becoming a reseller easy. We provide a convenient and simple SIP trunk solution that makes it virtually effortless to sell to and manage your customers. Contact us today to learn how you can get started selling SIP trunks.