Tactic 13. Demonstrate Leadership

Following are a few concrete steps to achieve leadership, and I recommend all of them.

• Publish white papers. Research and document interesting and undocumented aspects of peering. For example, as next-generation switching technologies are deployed, writing white papers and contributing articles regarding the deployment and operational experience would send the dual message that you have an IXP, you are operating leading-edge gear, and you are contributing what you learn back to the community. This scenario engenders support in the community and provides an “in” into otherwise congested avenues into the community.
• Promote peering with your customers by your side using any communication mechanism available (newsletters, speaking at conferences together, etc). If the information is valuable to your target customers, your message will reach prospective customers and provide another reason to interact with you.
• Develop peering discussion lists. These are used not just for peering announcements but also for events, outages, etc. These lists constitute a forum to build the community and obtain valuable feedback for growing the IXP business.
• Lead peering forums. In the Equinix days I chaired the first bunch of Gigabit Peering Forums that eventually morphed into what is now known as the Global Peering Forum. By leading the forum, I had an excuse to engage the peering customers and prospects, not to sell them but to ask them to contribute their expertise to the cause. This process provided not only the collegial relationship necessary for building a community but also insights into the key pain points and issues that need to be addressed. The point is, by leading these forums, you have access to critical information that your competitors who do not run forums do not.
• Get key staff onto program committees and steering committees for operations forums. Similar to leading peering forums, joining committees provide insight into the community mindset.
• Speak at conferences and trade shows. Develop your technical staff into effective public speakers. This type of visibility, not to sell but to contribute and participate, aids in the acceptance of new IXP offerings.
• Continually build and maintain a marketing information base for peering. When you are in the field and learning about the competitive landscape, it does no good unless you capture and store that information. I used to think I could keep it all in my head, but after many mind-numbing presentations and after many conversations, the details can get very foggy. Develop a system, even if on paper, for capturing what you learn during these interactions. In this process you develop leadership on the inside of the company when you give the company actionable information.
• Communicate key milestones, and track and communicate progress to the field. The ISPs are keenly interested in learning about happenings in the industry, so come to conferences ready to lead discussions in the hallways about the key objectives and where the company is heading. Note that we are not talking about “pitching” the company but rather, sharing with the community specific numbers and information about the metrics the community tends to care about – the number of customers, amount of traffic exchanged, new sites, outage experiences and lessons learned, operations procedures instantiated, ISO 9000 certification, etc.

The leadership tactics have many benefits:

• Greater stickiness
• Better market information
• Follow-up opportunities
• Customer loyalty
• Attendance at the next event
• Salesperson calls returned
• More public speaking opportunities

In general, it is easier when others find you than for you to have to chase down others, because no one knows who you are.