The Definitive Guide to Reselling SIP Trunks 

June 3, 2024

SIP trunking is a growing market, and those in the business communications sector should have an in-depth understanding of its potential. Experts expect SIP trunking services to grow at a CAGR of 14.1% through 2031. That growth indicates a strong increase in demand. Technology resellers can either ignore the trend and see their clients switch to other service providers or incorporate SIP trunking into their product offerings and stay ahead of the curve.

If you want to adopt the latter strategy as a SIP trunk reseller, learn as much as possible about the technology, reselling strategies, and finding a partner to expand your business. 

What Do SIP Trunk Resellers Need to Understand About SIP Protocols and Trunking?

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

SIP Protocol

In simple terms, SIP facilitates the connection and disconnection of communication sessions (such as voice 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

SIP channels or trunks allow businesses to communicate over the internet using voice or video calls. A SIP trunk is a virtual phone line that makes and receives calls to any phone number, whether it’s via VoIP or Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). 

SIP trunks are like pathways that carry digital data packets from the Private Branch Exchange (PBX) through the network to their destination. Each trunk can be divided into an unlimited number of SIP channels (also known as sessions, lines, or concurrent calls). 

Many companies are migrating from traditional phone lines to SIP trunking with the help of a leading SIP trunk provider. This technology provides several benefits that are leading the evolution of business communications. 

SIP Trunking Benefits for Your Clients

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

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

In addition to being simpler to design and implement, SIP enables multiple digital streams with several advantages. For example:

  1. Eliminating overlapping networks and associated costs. Instead of operating and maintaining various telephone networks, a single IP-based network provides multiple digital streaming options. It eliminates scalability problems and offers more flexibility for additional users.
  2. Disconnecting local IP-PSTN gateways. Your clients can save on telephony costs and upgrades by eliminating the IP-PSTN. If you provide SIP trunking services, your clients won’t have to purchase hardware upgrades. All you have to do is help them assess and potentially increase their internet bandwidth.
  3. Removing BRIs (Basic Rate Interfaces) and PRIs (Primary Rate Interfaces). With SIP trunks, businesses eliminate the IP-PSTN gateway, so clients will only connect directly to the IP-PSTN provider. The subscription fees will no longer 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. Saving 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 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 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. Eliminatiing 800 numbers. Instead of buying more expensive 800 numbers that might water down their brand, your clients can acquire more local numbers quickly in each city where they operate. 
  7. Enhancing Office Communications Server. In addition to using existing services like E911, your clients can access new services offered by ITSPs without investing further. 

White-Label SIP Trunking

It’s important to understand the benefits of SIP trunking for your clients—but it’s just as important for SIP trunk resellers to understand the benefits for their own businesses. Ideally, offering SIP trunking services will:

  • Increase your number of clients.
  • Establish your current clients further within your product offerings.
  • Demonstrate your authority and expertise as a business communications solutions provider.
  • Increase your business’s profitability, not just revenue and workload.

The best way to guarantee that your SIP trunking services hit these four targets is to choose a wholesale white-label SIP trunking partner.

White-label providers allow you to sell services under your brand. Maintaining your image makes the services more appealing to your clients and keeps your brand center stage. White-label partners also give you more control over advertising, pricing, packages, and service experiences. Several factors influence your choice of a SIP trunking partner, but white labeling should stand out as a top requirement.

How to Find the Best SIP Trunking Partner

If you’re interested in adding SIP trunking to your service portfolio, here’s 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 can assist with technical issues.
  • Scalability: As your clients grow, they can quickly add more channels, often 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 networks 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 for a streamlined workflow.
  • Provider flexibility: Many providers won’t let clients choose their internet provider. Instead, the best SIP trunk providers work with multiple ISPs to give your clients more flexibility.
  • Platform Compatibility: The best companies integrate with all major IP PBXs, IP gateways, and open-source PBXs. 

Easy-to-Implement Add-On Services

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

  • Direct Inward Dials (DIDs): Employees can each have a SIP line, which provides excellent call flexibility. The best providers offer DIDs from all area codes in the United States and Canada, allowing your customers to pick local numbers.
  • 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 add-on feature is ideal for businesses with global operations. It allows per-location and per-minute charges coupled with security 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, even in the modern world. 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.

SIP Trunking Marketing Tactics

SIP trunking provides tremendous value to organizations that use these services. However, it’s a technical, behind-the-scenes solution. Prospective clients won’t be able to immediately intuit the value from the name alone or even the description. 

Your SIP trunk reseller role is to be the educator and consultant, not the hard seller. Incorporate the following tactics into your marketing processes to successfully take on that role.

Create Benefits-Focused Educational Content

When reselling SIP trunking services, you are a subject matter expert. But your clients won’t be, and that’s part of the value you provide. Fill your business blog and social posts with educational content. It’s helpful to have a few core overview posts covering topics like SIP Protocol, SIP trunking vs. VoIP, and so on. 

Most of your content should zero in on the benefits and provide clarifying how-to insights. Focus on your prospects’ likely problems and lead them toward a solution. Many of your non-technical clients will care about the benefits, such as cost savings, ROI, security, and customer experience, so highlight them.

Proactively Perform SWOT Analyses for Clients to See the Strategic Value

Not all of your clients will need SIP trunking, and marketing your new services to them, regardless of their needs, can hurt their trust in you. Instead, create a SWOT analysis of their business communications and network hardware. If they are already clients, you likely have most of the insights you need to run this analysis.

This strategy helps you identify if they need SIP trunking and what holes SIP trunking can fill—that’s great for preparing your pitch. If you also provide this SWOT analysis to them for free, they’re much more likely to agree with you.

Customize Every Pitch to Clients’ Needs

The SWOT analysis is just one example of an essential strategy: always customize the pitch to your clients and prospects. A restaurant’s SIP trunking needs differ greatly from an accounting firm’s, and some businesses will be fully in-office, hybridized, or remote. 

Customize your pitches to their pain points and use cases. This makes the service more appealing and mitigates the risk of overly technical jargon your prospects won’t find persuasive. 

Start With a Niche Audience and Expand

If you’re a new SIP trunk reseller, there can be a learning curve. The solution requires some technical knowledge and a thorough understanding of how different industries operate. Focus on serving a niche audience first. You can dive deep into their needs and implementation requirements and be seen as an authority. Over time, expand to the rest of your client base or geographic area. 

Five 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, some sales specialists have difficulty selling these SIP services. 

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

Mistake #1: You focus too much on the product, not its benefits

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

Every person you sell to will have plenty of questions about the product, but when it comes down to making a sale, what matters most is what the product offers.

Solution: Emphasize the fix

People look at SIP trunk services because they need a better way to manage their communications. Although cost, technical features, and management are essential, they aren’t as important as solving the underlying communication needs.

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

Mistake #2: Your pitch is too generic

At this point, you may be reciting your sales pitch from memory. That’s another mistake that SIP trunk resellers often make. Standard sales approaches 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 a SIP trunk service can outweigh the hassle of transition.

Mistake #3: You don’t let the client talk

Whether it’s a sales pitch or a sit-down meeting, you often talk a lot. When conversing, you don’t rush people, and you always allow time to ask questions. The problem may be that you’re always polite but tend to dominate the conversation. 

Solution: Practice active listening

Try timing how long you talk versus how long your prospect negotiates. If you spend all your time talking, you aren’t listening to your potential clients. A sales inquiry form won’t provide all the information your clients 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 prospects, let them do the talking.

Mistake #4: Conversations don’t evolve

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

Solution: Open varied communication channels 

One of the worst things you can do in sales is assume that people will reach out to you. Give them a way to contact you quickly, regardless of where they are in the sales funnel. Remind them by email on the day you need their paperwork. Ask them how their day is going and if they need additional information. 

An email can sometimes be enough to make a sale if it’s short and straightforward. Keep in mind that priorities change quickly in business, so it’s beneficial to stay top of mind in sales. 

Start Reselling SIP Trunks Today

Leading SIP trunk companies have SIP and VoIP reseller programs. Reselling SIP trunking can be an effortless way to make money and grow your business. You can directly offer clients the best SIP trunking services under your brand with white-label solutions.

As a SIPTRUNK partner, you can build a successful SIP trunking practice and generate regular revenue. A comprehensive solution will enable your clients to manage SIP trunks quickly. Get started by learning about our SIP trunk reseller program and how it can boost your revenue goals.