Lonnie Domnitz, from LANgineers, posted this on LinkedIn yesterday. For any of you agents that want to talk to Lonnie about working with his organization, you can email him here: Lonnie Domnitz

I can’t figure out why anyone wants to mess with SIP residuals. Here is the way to make money with VoIP:

For hosted customers, we pay 4x MRC to the reseller (you), if they do the installation and training. So a small 5 phone customer pays $245/month on a 36-month term contract. Dealer makes about $1,000 up front if they do the install which entails connecting the phones and installing the router and PoE switch that we supply. Add training and it is a 2-3 hour gig.

Here is the kicker: The customer buys nothing because we lease the phones to them, so they have no up-front costs. And at $245/month for unlimited lines and unlimited calling, they SAVE money over what they pay some ILEC or CLEC. They bring their own bandwidth, and we like a single healthy DSL or cable, or dual “average” DSL lines. We setup the load balancing and failover in the router. So here is a summary of how we compare from the customer’s viewpoint:

Other dealers:
Phone System: $2,500
Installation: $500
Total up-front Cost: $3,000
Monthly service from LEC for 5 lines, LD, and DSL (low end) or T1 (high end): $350-$650

Our dealers:
Phone System: $0
Installation: $0
Total up-front Cost: $0
Monthly service from ILEC: $100 (fax line with DSL)
Monthly service from LANgineers: $245

Which dealer would you rather be? The one peddling the $3,000 phone system and $350 service plan or the one with the free phone system and $350 service plan.

Residuals:
It’s simple. If the customer signs a new contract after 36 months, they get new phones and you get paid AGAIN. If not, they don’t and you don’t.

Q: Why does the customer want to sign a new contract?
A: New phones. We are re-signing our original customers and replacing their 9133i phones with 57i phones with BLF. In three years we will be replacing those 57i with 6739i… you get the picture. Works just like cellular contracts. The feature set is also evolving and improving, as we now offer BLF functionality and full time call recording.

Final Note: Everyone wants this, not just people buying new phone systems. Only 10% of our customers need or want a new phone system. What could be better than selling cost savings and great new features in a recession? Phone service is a commodity, so sell cost savings. Or sell features. Or both.

Just my two cents about how to make residuals in the world of SIP…