I recently had the privilege of hosting the Go-To-Market track at this year’s CPaaS Acceleration Summit (CASA24). Our goal? To provide service providers with crucial insights on how to drive innovation, create customer-centric products, and enhance their sales and marketing strategies.
The sessions offered a roadmap for CSPs (Communications Service Providers) and MSPs (Managed Service Providers) looking to offer more solutions and services, and ultimately accelerate their growth.
We kicked off this track by setting the tone for the day: how to bring innovation to market and enable sales teams to engage customers effectively.
"It's not just about building solutions, but about how we engage buyers and enable growth." The GTM track at CASA24 emphasized that every service provider must embrace customer-focused innovation to stay competitive.
Enabling Innovation: Why It’s Essential and How to Achieve It
Fostering innovation within a telco environment can be especially challenging.
We explored why enabling innovation is so difficult, and why it is the key to unlocking new growth opportunities during the session “Creating Products Your Customers Actually Want to Buy."
Why Innovation is Critical
Customer-Centric Solutions: Ralph Page of Radisys pointed out, "If you don’t know what their problems are, you can’t help them." Telcos need to dive deep into the real pain points of their customers to deliver solutions that matter. Sabeeh Hameed of Sabrhub explained how his company solved the problem of cumbersome SMS registration by simplifying the 10DLC process—turning a customer frustration into a competitive advantage.
Tailored Products for Vertical Markets: The service providers who are driving the most success are going deep into specific verticals like healthcare, finance, or retail. Ralph Page shared, “Telcos often struggle to understand the pain points of vertical industries." By focusing on vertical markets, telcos can tailor their solutions to address industry-specific problems and create deeper customer relationships.
Why It’s Difficult
Traditional Telco Structures: Telcos are historically slow to innovate due to bureaucratic processes that focus on scale rather than agility. "If you think you're going to have lots of APIs and people will come to build stuff, they won't,” said Ralph. Telcos must overcome these rigid structures to enable innovation at the speed of customer demand.
How to Drive Innovation
Get Close to the Customer: Mark Wesselink of Venturerock shared a story about sitting down with a pizza shop owner to observe his day-to-day operations. Only then did he realize the owner didn’t need more communications capabilities. He needed operational efficiency - leading to the creation of a solution that solved the real issue. Service providers must spend time with their customers, ask the right questions, and design products that address core problems rather than pushing pre-packaged solutions.
In-Person Engagement: Dan Jenkins of Nimble Ape added that true innovation happens when teams engage with customers face-to-face, observing their challenges firsthand. "You can’t figure out the problem from a video call," he emphasized. Understanding customers deeply through direct interaction is critical to fostering innovation.
The CPaaSAA Service Provider Playbook: A Blueprint for Growth
For CSPs and MSPs, figuring out what solutions to offer and how to bring them to market can feel overwhelming. That’s where the CPaaSAA Service Provider Playbook comes into play. This comprehensive resource is designed to help providers streamline the process of launching new solutions and improving customer engagement.
Why the Playbook Matters
A Massive Opportunity: With 1250 mobile operators, 80 operator groups, and over 150,000 managed service providers worldwide, there is a massive opportunity for CSPs and MSPs to offer more than just traditional UCaaS or CCaaS services. The playbook helps them seize this opportunity by offering a blueprint for product selection, market engagement, and sales enablement.
Time and Resource Efficiency: Instead of each telco trying to figure out their strategy from scratch, the playbook provides 93 ready-made solutions across 12 verticals and 11 solution types. It guides CSPs and MSPs through the process of identifying the best solutions for their customer base, building a go-to-market strategy, and aligning their teams around a common goal.
I shared an example of a mid-tier CSP in the U.S. that was primarily selling UCaaS. By leveraging insights from the playbook, they were able to layer in advanced services like virtual agents and omni-channel communication, providing more value to their customers and accelerating their growth.
Core Benefits of the Playbook
Insights from Industry Leaders: Developed in collaboration with leading analysts and industry experts, the playbook provides 80 pages of market insights and two hands-on business templates to help service providers make informed decisions.
Plug-and-Play Demand Generation: The playbook includes an optional plug-and-play demand generation add-on, allowing telcos to launch effective marketing campaigns with minimal effort. This tool is especially helpful for companies new to digital marketing or those with limited marketing resources.
As a key contributor to the CPaaSAA Service Provider Playbook, Creo Solutions helps CSPs and MSPs leverage its in-depth insights and 93 market-ready solutions to drive exponential growth.
The New Realities of Growth Marketing
We brought everything together with a session on the new realities of growth marketing. John Common of Intelligent Demand discussed how B2B marketing has evolved. He offered invaluable insights for service providers looking to drive growth in today’s buyer-led market.
Key Insights
Buyer Behavior Has Changed: "70% of the buying journey is over before buyers engage with a company," John explained. In addition, 84% of buyers choose the first vendor they contact, making it crucial for service providers to engage potential customers earlier in their decision-making process.
Siloed Efforts Are Failing: John emphasized the importance of aligning marketing, sales, and product teams to avoid what he called “siloed heroics.” Service providers need to execute integrated growth plays that address the entire buyer journey, from awareness to post-sale engagement. "You need a cohesive strategy that pulls all teams in the same direction," he said.
Focus on the Long Game: Marketing is no longer just about closing immediate deals. It's about building a brand that resonates with your customers over the long term. Telcos must focus on creating campaigns that engage buyers at multiple touch-points and provide value throughout the customer journey.
How Creo Solutions Helps CSPs and MSPs
For CSPs and MSPs looking to unlock new growth, Creo Solutions offers the expertise and resources to help you succeed. Our services enable you to:
CREATE New Products with Speed and Quality: From developing user interfaces to integrating APIs and cloud infrastructure, we help you bring new solutions to market faster than your competitors.
ELEVATE Your Sales Conversations: Our team helps you move beyond transactional sales to engage customers with the art of the possible, showcasing how your solutions can transform their business.
ACCELERATE Buyer Engagement with Breakthrough Marketing: We deliver marketing strategies that engage buyers early and often, ensuring you're top of mind when they’re ready to make a decision.
Are you ready to create exponential growth?
Contact us today and let's get started!