Cox Business is a Full-service Provider

Cox Business is a full-service telecommunications and managed service provider, with a focus on complex solutions and customer excellence. The company is family-owned and privately-owned, investing in high-growth areas like RapidScale, Logicworks, AI, ML, and Cox private networks. They emphasize a customer-centric approach, high customer satisfaction, residual commissions, and Cox Private Networks for connectivity challenges. Success stories include solving connectivity issues in warehouses and manufacturing settings, with an emphasis on preparedness messaging for disaster season and offering disaster recovery solutions. Cox Business also highlights the importance of building relationships with various stakeholders within a customer’s company and encourages advisers to think broader and be more valuable to their customers.

Well, Telarus advisers, I have to tell you something. There is more to Cox business than meets the eye. In fact, more and more Telarus advisors are utilizing Cox business as a full service telecommunications and managed service provider because of their intense focus on helping clients design and implement these very complex solutions and their commitment to customer excellence.

Here to shine a here to shine a spotlight on Cox business and the voodoo that they do so well is our good friend, John Muscarella. John, welcome welcome to the big show. We got a couple minutes together finally.

Finally, Tim. Yes. I know. We’ve been traveling in circles, and sometimes, you know, cross paths for a while. So good to see you.

Really appreciate it appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and talk to all the advisors out there. So exciting stuff going on at Cox Business Rapid Scale and the family of our family companies.

Yeah. Look. There is a lot going on, but I know we have a limited time together.

So let’s get really focused on Okay.

What’s really what’s really making you guys shine? What’s making you different from from all the noise out there? Because there there is some special things that have been happening. I’ve this wave of momentum for many months now. Let’s shine a big spotlight on it.

You know, Tim, great question. I think you gotta start with where we’re coming from. We’re a family owned business. We’re a privately owned owned company that’s been around for a hundred and twenty five years. So we have a different perspective on what success looks like. We have a longer term view on growth and growth strategies, and we are extremely customer centric.

As you’ll know, we have our own resources and field people in the markets we serve, and they are there to help the community at large, as well.

And then you think about how we’re investing our money in high growth areas. Obviously, a number of years ago, we bought RapidScale, Then we purchased Logicworks. We’ve invested in AI and ML. And now recently, we’ve really fully launched Cox private networks, which we’ll talk about as well.

So we are both customer centric. We’re looking long term. We’re investing in high growth areas.

And then with that, you get a high customer satisfaction rating. You know, customers who join us tend to stay longer. Yeah. And that makes our advisors jobs a little bit easier, but they’re selling a supplier that is gonna make their customer happy.

And we think all those things go together, make us different in the space, and that’s why more and more advisors are engaging us.

Yeah. I wanna I wanna talk about Cox Private Networks for sure, but I wanna rewind back because you announced some big news. You talk about investments that you’ve made in products and services and customer sat, all very important, but you also made an investment in in the channel and in in commissions.

So I I I I think that we’d be remiss not to mention you made a pretty monumental change maybe six months ago now. Right? But it’s pretty, made the headlines.

It did. You know, beginning of the year, we launched residual commissions, and we’ve been messaging that throughout the community, throughout the industry. And, really, thanks to the family of Telarus as well for helping us get that right and launching it.

And we’ve seen a tremendous uptick both in interest in our program, leads, revenue growth, all those things go hand in hand. So you’ve gotta have a good product and portfolio to begin with. You have to have the right commission model, which we’ve launched, and we still have the upfront. We still have a lot of agents who like the upfront commission, because they’re picking their business model best.

But now with the residual, we really, also check the box in something that’s been asked for for a while. So we’re excited about the results that we’re seeing there.

Look. Partners were smiling from ear to ear, no doubt, but it also shows an investment in the long term success of the channel.

The advisers who are making an investment in their clients now can can help afford to do that or be further supplemented to do that with the residual. You’re staying top of mind, which is great. But let’s switch gears because you mentioned, Cox Private Networks. It’s it’s super exciting.

It’s a great product. It’s starting to resonate as you roll it out. Let’s talk about that a little bit. What are you most excited about there, and and what are advisors doing to really, see success in the marketplace with their clients?

Great question. You know, when we launched Cox Private Networks, it’s part of Cox Communications.

It’s a delivered a private wireless network solution.

It’s really designed for those unique customers that have connectivity challenges that you can’t solve a traditional network media alone. Yeah. So think about it as far as we’re tailoring or building tailored solution with a mix of wireless technologies like private LTE and five g, a millimeter wave spectrum, and offering fully managed solutions from design to deployment at these locations. I always like to talk about, a large beverage provider, that gives you wings.

They had a warehouse issue, and they couldn’t Really subtle, John.

Very subtle.

That’s right. That’s right. We won’t mention any names, but, they were having issues in their warehouse with propensity, you know, wireless propensity and getting the signal across to the point where they couldn’t control their their forklifts. They couldn’t control their scanning devices.

They’re having issues with just even phone reception, so they couldn’t do nine one one calling and things like that. So we’re able to come in, deploy a solution in that type of environment that was a a economic solution, affordable Yeah. Was we can manage it for them as well, and it solved the customer’s needs. So we’re seeing more and more of opportunities like that in hard to reach warehouses, in manufacturing settings, in new warehouse development.

It’s a unique opportunity. It’s really resonating with the advisers out there who have customers in the space, and our team is fully equipped to start having those conversations with them. We’re doing it now. We’re building this huge port opportunity funnel with a number of advisors across the country that can that we’re offering the Cox private network solution to their customers.

And you’re managing it end to end. Right? Design through deployment end to end.

End to end, and it’s available nationally.

This is not That’s great.

You think about a cable company and their Yeah. You know, franchise markets. Cox private network solution is deployed nationwide.

So any place we wanna go solve this problem, we can take it on their own.

That’s great. So that’s that’s exciting. And then we’re just crossing over, into the second half of the year. So you’re gonna huddle up for halftime.

There’s gonna be lots of things that you’re probably gonna announce or just the momentum you have. Mhmm. What’s the most exciting thing or things that are happening at Cox as we go into the second half of the year? What what are you and your team most excited about?

Let’s let’s get the word out right here, on this video.

Well, Tim, I gotta go back to where we started, residuals.

Residuals are huge. We’re gonna keep messaging that for the remainder of the year to continue to build out momentum with advisors who maybe didn’t wanna work with us before because of that. So we have it now, and you’re gonna see us continue to message that. That’s huge. That’s a big opportunity.

Hundred percent.

Yeah. And you’ll see you’ll see messaging from us now about preparedness.

You know, we’re in disaster season, hurricanes, tornadoes. You’ve seen that in the Midwest. And, yeah, obviously, the cybersecurity threats that are out there as well. So we’re pushing a lot of messaging out to our advisers right now about helping their customers be perfect prepared for disaster.

Whether it’s backup as a service, whether it’s battery backup, LTE backup, disaster recovery as a service. We offer a full portfolio solutions that your customers or the advisors can take to their customers to help them be prepared.

Look. You you said something that I’ve seen from you and your team for many years now, which is helping advisers help their customers. I think you do that as good or better than anybody in the channel.

One thing that you and I both have unique opportunity to to do is interact with advisers all over the country. A lot of these videos, I end with the same question when the opportunity arises, especially with someone with your experience. Is there ever a a time when you get on a plane or you jump in an Uber or you get home after a long trip of interacting in the field, and you think, man, if they would all just do this one thing, these advisers, like, there’s some obvious things out there. And if they the one thing that’s the most important, what’s the one thing in your mind, John, that you see as a best practice that can be transformational for some of the advisers that you interact with?

You know, I think why why I see really successful advisers do well is they’re not comfortable with their current they’re not comfortable with the single threaded in a relationship.

They’ve really gone wide within a customer that they have, built the relationship, not just with the IT procurement group or the telecom manager. They built the relationship with the CFO, the CEO, the CIO, the marketing people so that they’re high and wide in the company, and then they’re selling and tracking the inventories of products they have with those customers.

Yeah.

So if they’re single threaded into connectivity, we know there’s another adviser or another sales team coming in, selling them security or selling them mobile or selling them Wi Fi.

Why isn’t that why aren’t all advisers thinking broader should be thinking broader and how to be more valuable to that customer that they have. Because it’s a lot easier to sell more products to existing customers, as we will talk about that, and sometimes onboarding a new customer.

Yeah. For sure. I I I love that you said that. And for those of you who’ve watched many of these videos, you’re seeing a trend here.

Right? You have to be known as the obvious expert to the whole buying community inside your customer. So whether that’s a c suite or the operators right below or even with the people in accounts payable, like, spread your knowledge around. Be known as the obvious expert.

Don’t be single threaded. It’s great that you have a specialty, but you should think more like a general contractor than a specialist. A general contractor has access to all the best services. Right, John?

And then you could bring all those things to the table. And when you work with partners like John and his team at at Cox Business, they’re gonna help you win your unfair share in those accounts. So, John, thanks so much for your time. Great to great to see you, my friend, and we’ll I’m sure we’ll see you out out on the road as our, as we traverse the country helping advisers all over the place.

Tim, thank you as well, and thank you to all the Telarus advisers that we work with every day to be successful. We couldn’t do without you guys, and we really do appreciate your trust in Cox Business. You guys have a great day. Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it.