Changing the Way You Buy and Sell Satellite Services
by Howard Farr
Imagine your first day on the job. You’re new. No one knows who you are. In fact, you’re a new company, facing uncharted territory. You need satellite space, but perhaps before that a managed service? You don’t know the industry players. You’ve got a big, cumbersome directory full of lists. You have found the satellite operators and the managed service providers in their respective categories. You’ve done some research. You know the names. You may have even met some of the industry professionals at a trade show or through contacts of contacts. You peel back the layers: the various platforms and technologies, the satellite fleets, the types of satellite, the frequency bands within which they operate. You have a growing stack of business cards and from these, e-mail addresses.
Before you start to contact the e-mail address or telephone number to etch out your service enquiry you wake with a start. You’re not new at all. You have been doing this for ages. You are a character in this industry. People know you. Before the coffee has brewed you remember that you did not receive back that call about some hotly-contested, high in demand satellite space capacity that you desperately need. It’s not that your supplier is a sloth: he’s very busy; he’s on travel in another time zone; everyone wants a piece of him or her; you are not the only game in town.
What if, notwithstanding corporate customer intranets, the labyrinth of opportunistic resellers, you had an interactive window display, a postings board that complemented your usual day-to-day trading activity?
Growth in the Reseller Market
In the current economic climate an increasing number of parcels of satellite space are being sub-leased as organizations trim costs, aim to increase EBITDA and make efficient use of contractually committed resource. You hear stories of the major players having to track down and buy back their own capacity from other parties in order to satisfy their customer order book. How do they get to correlate where all this type of trading activity occurs? How do the new entrants know where the reseller capacity is? How do they find the available inventories for sale without trawling through multiple avenues of enquiry?
Accelerate the Handshake
How is the buying and selling of satellite space and managed services changing? Is it purely transactional and becoming more commoditized? Will a no commission, web-based marketplace catch on where the buyer and seller can find each other instantaneously and for a much reduced cost of sale?
SatServMarket (www.satservmarket.com) envisions that when the majority of buyers and sellers of satellite space and managed services are using the web-based marketplace, it will serve to reduce costs and greatly improve the time historically required to find new trading partners, and close the deal.
SatServMarket is a complementary sales and purchasing channel, one that reinforces sales team activity. The deals are made directly between the buyer and the seller. SatServMarket facilitates the contact and does not charge a commission. When you search a Satellite Space or Managed Service Offered ad on SatServMarket, you open the View Ad window to provide you with the satellite operators’ own coverage map link and the direct e-mail contact details of the company e-mail address that placed the ad, whether a salesperson or the web marketing team.
What about Relationships?
In my career I have worked for many burgeoning carrier services providers and satellite operators and have extensive experience of building relationships with major channel partners in the mobile/cellular and land/maritime VSAT markets, as well as smaller, niche players. The relationship is key, no doubt.
SatServMarket looks to reinforce the relationship. During market research, an industry expert stated that we will never replace the human relationship. That is true and not the mission of SatServMarket. Many service requests are certainly non-trivial in their need for the most skilled and professional expertise. Others, well-known in the satellite industry, have complimented some of their suppliers with their consistency of good sales and purchasing response times. These same individuals have too often reported supplier complacency, arrogance, a lack of response and an environment of dealing with ‘corporate ghosts’.
SatServMarket is simply an additional sales and purchasing tool that can be used by large corporates, resellers, smaller start-ups and as a first-stop shop for those new to the myriadnetwork of service providers and suppliers. SatServMarket has handled the more transactional side of business already with capacity sales both on satellite spacecraft and on established managed services platforms. The most prominent organisations in our industry recognize the existence of a second-hand and even a third-hand market. SatServMarket can accommodate these and the prime market all under one site.
‘Where Serious Buyers Meet Serious Sellers’
Take a look at www.satservmarket.com and register as a Trading Member. Join the authorized, registered user community. Upon registration and authorization as a Member of the Trading Group you will be issued with unlimited use of the site in the introductory period: you can post a Corporate Advert and quickly compose Selling Adverts offering Satellite Space and Managed Services. The bulk of the FSS fleets is already loaded into the ad composition piece of SatServMarket. Post “unloved/unwanted”, inclined orbit and premium services. Check it out, give it a try. It’s not as if you are exposing your entire unutilised inventory. Which salesperson continually pushes “unloved/unwanted capacity”? How does that salesperson reach those new companies he or she cannot possibly know about? SatServMarket has members from the UK, Israel, the USA, France, the Netherlands, the UAE, South Africa, Germany, Eqypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Indonesia, Canada, Jordan, Belgium, Nigeria, Australia, Italy and Slovenia.
You post your ad. Sellers and buyers deal direct. There areno Third Party commissions. No pricing is displayed. Satellite Space & Managed Services Offered. On-line Members' Directory. Suppliers & Equipment listings.
View available inventory on-line. Reduce your cost of sales. Reinforce Sales Team activity. Maintain backlog revenue. Connect more quickly and efficiently on available capacity and services.
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Howard Farr is a carrier services and satellite communications executive with over 30 years international field and management experience in markets across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Russia and the CIS. He can be reached at: hfarr@satservmarket.com
