Steve Davis, Sales and Marketing Director at VoIP Gateway firm VegaStream, says that resellers need to follow the marketers and ‘Cross the Chasm’ into the world of VoIP opportunity.“Over the past seven years I have been privileged to be involved in the introduction of VoIP as it has evolved into a ‘real’ technology with many benefits. I have been involved in its introduction in many parts of the world including a 38,000 port roll out in Asia and some major wins in the US and Europe.
"However when I look at the adoption in the UK I am disappointed in its take-up by channel partners. I see VoIP adoption in other parts of Europe at a far higher rate than the UK and I believe we are falling behind.
“In the 1980s Geoffrey Moore wrote a book called ‘Crossing the Chasm’ which has become the bible of technology marketers across the world. In it he describes the problem in getting end-users to adopt new technologies and that in particular there is a gap or chasm between what he called early adopters (technology enthusiasts) and the early majority (pragmatists). I believe this is exactly where we are in the UK market, particularly in the SME marketplace today.”
So – how do we bridge this gap and make money out of selling VoIP? These are Steve Davis’ Top 10 Tips:
1. Make the selling of VoIP solutions a real priority in your company – make it one of the top 3 items you discuss and plan at your weekly/monthly management meetings.
2. ‘Eat your own dog food’ – use VoIP yourself in your organisations – use SIP trunks or hosted IP services from a reputable provider.
3. Use a solid network provider for the DSL services – in my experience this is where the majority of problems lie in the delivery of VoIP services.
4. Use a dedicated DSL service for Voice – do not try to mix voice and data on the same circuit until you are very experienced in the deployment of VoIP.
5. Target customers with a number of branch offices – sometimes called Distributed Organisations. These typically have a high level of inter-office communications which can really benefit from VoIP – they are the ‘low hanging fruit’ in the market today.
6. Ensure that your first installation goes well by planning for it and make sure that your top engineer carries out the work and is well trained before going to site. I am always amazed the number of calls we get from engineers who are at a customer’s site and have not been trained on the hardware they are installing or the SIP service they are connecting.
7. When you have successfully connected your first customer and they are happy then ask them for referrals and if they will be a case study for you.
8. Increase the commission you pay salespeople on VoIP solutions by 100% and reduce it for sales of CPS and TDM equipment. I can already hear the ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’ from sales people but I am convinced that your top sales people will see this as a great opportunity to earn more money. Those who don’t – well frankly you are better off without them.
9. The Resiliency Question – be prepared to answer this and have a number of different strategies in how to provide it. One of the more common is what happens if the broadband link goes down. Whilst this is becoming less of a problem some end-users are still concerned. Fortunately it is now an easy engineering task to provide PSTN backup for a couple of months whilst the customer becomes more comfortable with VoIP.
10. Some of my channel partners really see VoIP as a fantastic ‘Recession Proof ’ product which can significantly reduce costs for your customers and increase your margins. These partners have invested heavily but are now reaping the rewards. You need to do the same.
Origingal article courtesy of Comms Business
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