The channel has been cleaning up for years selling wireline solutions from the major carriers, but selling wireless was an offering that solution providers have largely ignored.

Selling wireless has historically been more trouble than it’s worth. For a lot of hassle and only a one-time commission, most solution providers have kept their distance in favor of more lucrative solutions that promised monthly recurring revenue.

TeraNova Consulting Group based in San Diego, manages and supports mobile and fixed technology solutions for end customers. The firm also serves as a supplier partner to solution providers, helping these companies manage telecom expense management for their end customers. The company, led by managing director Natasha Royer Coons (pictured), has built a business around creating a recurring revenue component to wireless.

While that's been in possible for years, Coons believes the time is ripe for solution providers to stop leaving money on the table and take another look at wireless solutions. In this Q&A, she shares how TerraNova is helping the channel with the heavy lifting.

How is selling wireless different, or more challenging than selling wireline solutions?

COONS: In the wireline world, partners can work with [a customer] and source competitive pricing for them because you don’t work for a carrier. The customer can let the partner bring them the best, manage it, and they don’t have to pay the partner because they'll get a commission from the carrier and everyone is happy. The customer signs a 36-month agreement and the partner gets a percentage of that monthly recurring revenue. Partners can keep selling these kinds of accounts and they start to compound.

With wireless in the past, partners were just trying to light up phones for a one-time commission, and it's not even that much, considering how much work it takes to support phones. The agents just ran from it -- they thought it was crazy. They would touch it once and get burned so bad that they would never touch it again, especially when you could sell a wireline network in a 36-month agreement and take a residual. So, it was just so drastically different. [Partners] love residuals because you just keep adding revenue streams based on the needs of the client, but wireless was never like that.