Definitive Guide to Reselling SIP Trunks


Index:

  • Introduction
  • What Are SIP Protocol and SIP Trunking
  • SIP Trunking Benefits for Your Clients
  • White Label SIP Trunking
  • How to Find the Best SIP Trunking Partner
  • SIP Trunking Marketing Tactics
  • 5 Common Mistakes SIP Trunk Resellers Make and How to Avoid Them
  • Start Reselling SIP Trunks Today

Introduction

Businesses benefit from SIP trunking because it offers more straightforward, efficient and affordable communications platforms to keep employees, customers, and others connected, regardless of how they choose to work.

Growth data on SIP market evidences the advantages companies are seeing from this technology, compared to traditional telephony:

  • By the end of 2020, the SIP trunking market in North America was valued at US$ 3,955.9 Mn.
  • Globally, SIP trunking services could grow at 13% annually between 2020 and 2030.
  • SIP trunking services in the cloud are driving growth, replacing traditional ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network).
  • SIP trunking market value was approximately US$ 10.6 Bn in 2020 and is forecast to reach US$ 35.5 Bn by 2030.

Using SIP trunks is becoming increasingly relevant worldwide. In addition to enhancing connection capabilities, SIP trunking has resulted in financial savings for many users, cost-effectively replacing the old and outdated PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

It is possible to get started in the world of SIP trunking by reselling the service to your clients. This eBook will be a valuable tool for you as an IT or telecom consultant who wants to offer this innovative service to your customers and meet their modernization demands while generating a new source of income. 

What are SIP Protocol and SIP Trunking

The first step in reselling SIP trunks is familiarizing yourself with two basic concepts. 

SIP Protocol

As explained by TechTarget, “It is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, modifying and terminating real-time sessions that involve video, voice, messaging and other communications applications and services between two or more endpoints on IP networks. SIP was developed by four people and later approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1996—and standardized in 1999. SIP was designed to address the evolving needs of IP-based communications.”

In simpler terms, SIP facilitates the connection and disconnection of communication sessions (such as calls) between two or more parties. You may often hear it mentioned when discussing IP telephony. 

SIP must be distinguished from Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP). SIP calls use VoIP to send analog call data over an Internet connection.

SIP Trunks

Businesses’ use of SIP channels or trunks allows them to communicate over the Internet using voice or video calls. A SIP trunk is a virtual phone line that you can use to make and receive Internet-based calls to any phone number, whether it is via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). 

SIP trunks are like pathways that carry digital data packets (voice, video, other data) from the Private Branch Exchange (PBX) through the network to their destination. To support one outgoing or incoming call, each trunk can be divided into an unlimited number of SIP channels (also known as sessions, lines, or concurrent calls). 

With the help of a highly regarded SIP trunk provider, many companies are migrating from traditional phone lines to SIP trunking. In general, this technology provides several benefits, which we will review in more detail in the following section. 

SIP Trunking Benefits for your clients

If you don’t fully understand the benefits of a product or service, it is difficult to sell it. With SIP trunks, your clients can gain in numerous ways, including:

  • Utilize directory assistance services
  • Make and receive local and long-distance calls
  • Access landline-based and mobile numbers
  • Access the Internet and use email and texting
  • Make 911 emergency calls

As well as being simpler to design and implement, it enables the use of multiple digital streams with several quantifiable advantages. For example:

  1. Eliminating overlapping networks and associated costs. Instead of operating and maintaining various telephone voice networks, a single IP-based network provides multiple digital streaming options. Furthermore, it eliminates scalability problems and offers more physical infrastructure for additional users.
  2. Disconnecting local IP-PSTN gateways. Your clients can save on telephony costs and further upgrades when eliminating the IP-PSTN. If you opt to provide SIP trunking services to your clients, they will not have to purchase hardware to upgrade from one E1/T1 to two or a higher service level with STM-1. All you have to do is help them increase their Internet bandwidth. They will no longer have to purchase hardware, install it, or maintain it.
  3. Removing BRIs (Basic Rate Interfaces) and PRIs (Primary Rate Interfaces). With SIP trunks, you eliminate the IP-PSTN gateway, so clients will only connect directly to the IP-PSTN provider. The subscription fees will no longer need to be included in their monthly budget. Replacing them is less expensive, and you won’t have to purchase them in blocks of 24 or 32. 
  4. Savings on long-distance communications. SIP trunking makes long-distance services significantly more affordable. Every call becomes a local call in terms of cost. A company can save more money if it outsources its PSTN connection to a top SIP trunking provider since SIP calls can be routed over the Internet or through the provider’s IP network. 
  5. Accessing ENUM (Telephone Number Mapping). SIP trunks use ENUM to locate known SIP addresses, so your clients can make more calls over the Internet without PSTN involvement or additional costs.
  6. Elimination of 800 numbers. Instead of buying more expensive 800 numbers, you can include more local numbers quickly in each city where your client’s company operates. 
  7. Enhancing Office Communications Server. In addition to using existing services like E911, your clients can also access new services offered by ITSPs without investing further. 

White Label SIP Trunking

Getting the most out of reselling SIP trunking is about finding a reputable and trusted wholesaler using a white labeling model. White labeling refers to a wholesale provider program that allows reseller companies to rebrand their products or services. The main advantage of white label SIP trunking is that your SIP trunk provider includes the equipment and support.

Although a wholesale company sells the product to you to resell, they still make a profit. As a reseller, you can operate with minimal oversight while increasing your sales volume by providing innovative solutions for your customers. As a result, both parties have increased revenue and income.

Trustworthy, safe, and secure white label SIP trunking services are available from reliable SIP providers. Using it, you can extend your product and service offerings without having to procure, store, manage, and service the technology.

How to find the best SIP Trunking Partner

If you are interested in adding SIP trunking to your service portfolio or just want to learn more, here is a list of the main benefits offered by the best SIP trunk providers:

  • Fast ROI: Compared to traditional PSTN lines, SIP trunks require a smaller initial investment from your clients and generate cost savings over time.
  • Quick implementation: Easy-to-follow setup instructions and customer service representatives to assist with technical issues.
  • More Scalability: As your clients grow, you can add more trunks and channels relatively quickly, in many cases within a few minutes.
  • Convenient Portability: Customers can keep their old phone numbers (local or toll-free) and use them with the new SIP service.
  • Easy maintenance: With an online control panel, you can assist your clients in managing, maintaining, and supporting their data networks.
  • Guaranteed Redundancy: Because multiple providers can service SIP trunks, your customers will be protected from power outages or connection downtime.
  • Unified Communications: SIP trunking unifies data, instant messaging, and video.
  • Provider flexibility: Many providers won’t let your clients choose their Internet provider. Instead, the best SIP trunk providers will work with the Internet service provider they prefer.
  • Platform Compatibility: The best companies should integrate with all major IP PBXs, IP gateways, and open source PBXs. 
  • Free Trial: The best providers in the business will offer your clients free access to the technology. 

Easy-to-implement add-on services

According to their unique needs, the best providers offer SIP technology with the following features and add-ons you can provide to your clients.

  • Direct Inward Dials or DIDs: Employees can each have a SIP line, which provides excellent call flexibility. The best providers will offer many DIDs from all area codes in the United States and Canada, allowing your customers to pick local numbers for every location.
  • Local and Toll-Free Numbers: Many local and toll-free numbers are available that point to the same SIP trunk. Your clients can have local numbers in any area where they do business, even if they don’t have a physical location.
  • Outbound International Service: This SIP trunk provider’s add-on feature is ideal for businesses with global operations. They allow per-location and per-minute charges coupled with toll fraud protection and the ability to set the maximum cost per minute per trunk.
  • FAX over IP Service: Fax remains a helpful communication method in many business scenarios despite the proliferation of SIP trunks. With a success rate of 100%, the best providers promise to send faxes over an IP connection.
  • Toll fraud protection: Exceptional providers have systems to monitor unauthorized calls, block suspicious activity immediately, and protect against potential fraud.

You can see that reselling SIP trunks from just any partner will not suffice. Choose a provider that offers your clients these features, benefits, and more.

SIP Trunking Marketing Tactics

Reselling SIP trunking services can save you both initial investment and risks for your business, as there are few start-up costs. Additionally, SIP trunking services continue to grow in popularity

To boost SIP trunk sales, there are several marketing tactics available. Here are three that have proven to work.

1. Market to a local audience

Consider your local audience when planning your marketing strategies. Marketing your products and services to existing customers, potential clients, and the local market is an excellent starting point.

Include hyper-local keywords in your marketing strategy to target audiences in your area. You can also advertise with location-specific keywords. Doing so will help you build brand awareness and introduce new services near you.

Using local marketing tactics will help you grow your customer base, raise brand awareness, and increase SIP trunk sales.

2. Implement digital marketing tactics

It can be expensive to implement traditional marketing strategies. For this reason, consider beginning with digital channels.

Using digital marketing to reach your target audience is a cost-effective technique. In particular, this is true for consultants that sell business-to-business (B2B). Social media and online advertising are just two of the many digital platforms you will access. 

Gather valuable information about your audience to understand better who your target audience is and how to improve your reach strategies. You can track customer analytics and data on many of these platforms, including Facebook. By developing content that interests your exact target audience, you’ll efficiently spend your marketing efforts.

You can also pitch tailored ads to your target audience using digital marketing. Through social media posts and direct emails, you’ll be able to control who sees your ads and learn more about your prospects.

When your SIP business starts to grow, you can expand your marketing efforts to a broader audience. As a result, you should concentrate on digital marketing tactics until you can afford traditional marketing.

3. Inform and educate your customers and audiences

SIP trunking is still unfamiliar to many audiences. They just know they need to modernize their current communications network to support a diverse workforce. Your responsibility is to identify their pain points and educate them about SIP trunks. Take the time to show that SIP services will meet your clients’ current and future communication needs by incorporating them into your marketing strategy. 

Additionally, you can direct prospects and customers to your website to view blogs, videos and guides on educating themselves. By utilizing these types of content, your business will also improve its search engine optimization (SEO), which will increase traffic to your website. Consider adding a specific landing page on your website to give your audience detailed information about the different services you offer, how they work, and why they should care, all from one place.

Using social media to increase awareness and views of your blog posts is crucial. Don’t forget to share helpful tips regarding SIP services in your emails as well. Use social media to share images, videos, and technical guidance about the benefits of SIP trunking.

5 common mistakes SIP Trunk Resellers make and how to avoid them

Currently, the resale market for SIP trunks is booming. Users are replacing traditional telephone lines with more modern means of communication. Despite this technology becoming so popular and reselling SIP becoming an essential part of many IT or telecom consultants’ business models, some sales specialists have difficulty selling these services. 

You can make every sales pitch a closing one by learning about the following mistakes and their respective solutions.

1. You focus too much on the product, not its benefits

Using a SIP trunk service will raise some concerns in people’s minds. Whenever you try to sell something to a customer, the first thing they will ask about is the cost. A savvy customer will be concerned about ease of setup, management, and features.

You will find that every person you are selling to will have plenty of questions about the product, but it is not really about the product when it comes down to making a sale. What the product offers is what is most important.

Solution: Emphasize the fix

The reason people look at SIP trunk services is because they need a better way to manage their communication needs. Although cost, technical features, and management are essential, they are not as important as solving the prospect’s underlying communication needs.

You should mention the product information in the course of your sales presentation, but the bulk of your pitch should be about how your SIP trunk service can meet their most pressing needs and solve their problems.

2. Your pitch is too generic

At this point, you may be reciting your sales pitch from memory. Your goal is to maintain consistency from client to client so that you don’t change too much. That’s another mistake that SIP trunk resellers often make.

Standard approaches to sales are promising, but not adjusting them for each client could lead to problems when it’s time to close. 

Solution: Personalize your pitches

You can still use the same sales pitch but include elements that matter to each client. An organization that operates on a shoestring budget and communicates with people around the country may need to hear why the overall savings of utilizing a SIP trunk service can outweigh the hassle of transition, for example.

3. You don’t let the client talk

Whether it’s a prospecting call or a sit-down meeting, you often talk a lot. When conversing, you do not rush people, and you always give people time to ask questions. The problem may be that you are always polite, but you tend to dominate the conversation and steer it the way you want. 

Solution: Practice active listening

Try timing how long you talk vs. how long your prospect negotiations the next time you pitch. You aren’t listening to your potential clients if you spend all your time talking. You should not expect a sales inquiry form to provide all the information you need. 

Clients who speak directly with you provide valuable information about their unique communication needs. Learn how to overcome this SIP trunk reseller mistake by actively listening. When you meet with your prospects, let them do the talking.

4. You can’t connect with your prospects

It is probably challenging to find someone about SIP trunking services. One of the main issues is that they don’t seem like the right people to be talking to. Some of the people you spoke with don’t understand their needs and may not even be aware of the concept of SIP trunking. 

When you email other people after receiving an inquiry form from them, they seem to be hardly interested in SIP trunking services and might even be confused about what you’re asking.

Solution: Create an efficient inquiry form

In the beginning, if you ask the right questions, you will have a more accessible time vetting prospects. Inquiry forms on your website should ask for more information than basic contact information. Find out more about their industry and how they currently handle calls, and ask why prospects are reaching out to you today. 

5. Conversations don’t evolve

A prospect has been engaged in several excellent conversations with you, you have outlined a preliminary setup plan for their business, and you have even sent them pricing information. Despite all that effort, they disappear. In addition to not getting a phone call, your inbox is empty, and you are unsure how they managed not to follow up after appearing ready to begin.

Solution: Open varied communication channels 

Assuming that people will reach out to you is one of the worst things you can do in sales. Give them a way to reach out to you quickly, even if you feel you are very close to making a sale.  Make sure you remind them by email on the day that you need their paperwork. Ask them how their day is going and if they need any additional information. 

An email can sometimes be enough to make a sale if it’s short and straightforward. Just keep in mind that priorities change quickly at work. It’s beneficial to stay top of mind in sales. 

Start Reselling SIP Trunks Today

Leading SIP trunk companies have programs through which they partner with resellers. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best SIP trunk provider, continue reading to find out what their program can offer you.

  • No paperwork: Partners do not need to submit any paperwork to sign up, begin selling, and start earning commissions without any physical paperwork required.
  • No IT background needed: Resellers don’t need any IT or telephony expertise. They can do an excellent job with just a little bit of telephony knowledge and the support of an experienced partner who offers several benefits to their end-users.
  • Guaranteed income: Your monthly recurring revenue stream and growth potential will be assured by a top-notch SIP reseller program.
  • Cutting-edge technology: You should be able to sell your SIP trunk provider’s product using state-of-the-art software. Using a robust platform will allow you to deploy SIP solutions quickly for your customers, with the confidence you are offering a high-quality communication service.
  • No contracts: Premium providers offer SIP trunk services without requiring long-term contracts or significant upfront investments. Customers and resellers can pay as they go. 
  • Support: When you need a little extra push to close a sale or solve a technical problem, you are not alone. You, your leads, and your existing customers will all have access to telecommunications experts with the best SIP partner.
  • Easy billing and taxes: If you select among the best SIP trunk providers, they will care about customer billing and taxation. 
  • Commissions: A good partner will provide transparent commission reporting each month, with automated payouts directly into your bank account and a detailed breakdown of earnings.

Reselling SIP trunking can be an effortless way to make money. You can directly offer your clients the best SIP trunking services with SIPTRUNK. Contract-free Internet telephony is available to end-users immediately after signing up. 

As a SIPTRUNK partner, you can build a successful SIP trunking practice and generate regular revenue. You can straightforwardly offer SIP trunking services. A comprehensive solution will enable your clients to manage SIP trunks quickly. Get started now.