When is a Phone not a Phone?
- How do you truly differentiate your Unified Communications solution?
- How can you create an addressable market 5 times bigger than the current PBX marketplace?
- How can you guarantee to outsell you competition and create unlimited budgets for telecoms investment?
When you realise a phone is not a phone, when it’s an IP phone!
For a number of years, I have been training and consulting with sales teams across EMEA on the sale of Unified Communications solutions. Yet it still surprises me how many people don’t really understand the power of IP (Internet Protocol). It still surprises me how many people only look for sales opportunities in the replacement of PBX’s or in “Greenfield Sites”.
Question: What has CPU, a Screen, Memory, a keyboard, a Network Interface Card (NIC), an Operating System and runs software programmes?
Answer: An IP phone
So the answer to the question, when is a phone not a phone is “When it’s a PC, cunningly disguised as a phone”. Be honest, how many of you were reading that question and thinking the answer was a PC? The thing is you’re obviously right, but this is the change in mindset that needs to take place to truly understand the POWER of IP Telephony and Unified Communications.
The phones on the market today have magnificent capabilities including built in switches, colour touch screens and full alphabetic keyboards. Unified Communications systems support XML applications right to the telephone end point, creating the most cost effective and seamless Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) the world has ever seen. XML brings all the power of the Internet and the integration with any back end system right to the phone.
With all that said however, it’s not actually about the phone, that’s just the pretty device that sits on the desk. So you ask me, “OK, what is it then that’s going to create unlimited sales opportunities with no competition and unrestricted purchasing budgets?”
Is it the applications? Of course it has to do with the applications. Especially when XML based applications are so cheap and easy to create. Especially when the Soft keys on your IP phone can adapt to work with the application, delivering productivity enhancements the World of Voice has never seen. Bringing Unified Communications, media rich Video and real-time data right to the fingertips of the powerhouse of all businesses; it’s people.
With all that said however, it’s not actually just about the applications. So you ask me again, only a little bit more frustrated by now, “OK, so what is it that will truly differentiate my Unified Communications solution and make me the Ninja of Voice Solutions sales people?”
Is it the ROI (Return on Investment), is it about centralised management, is it Convergence? Yes, Yes, Yes but……
So why the “but”? Because as compelling and advantageous all these features and functionality are, at the end of the day, they just that; Features and Functionality.
So I hope you are ready for the answer; the one thing that’s going to truly differentiate your IP Telephony solution, create an addressable market 5 times bigger than the current PBX marketplace and guarantee to beat the competition each and every time while creating unlimited investment budget. I hope you’ve got a pen and a piece of paper ready to write this down….
So here it is the only true differentiator in any sales situation; YOU and more importantly, the way you sell.
The way you sell, not what you sell does sound so simplistic, but actually it’s not. It takes a very different mindset.
The fact is, it’s not about the technology, why, because every vendor has IP Phones, they all have access to XML if their phones support it, they all offer “Productivity Solutions”, UC by it’s nature offers all sorts of cost savings in infrastructure and management etc, so how different can your product ever get? Unless you’re in R&D or a Product Development Manager, you can’t impact the features and functionality of your solution.
If you try and compete on price, again there are always limitations to how much “discount” you can get from the vendor or give to the customer and you only reduce the profitability of the sale anyway. Yet this is where most sales people compete and look to differentiate; features and price.
Now I know you probably don’t. Most people on our courses as we run them through some of our sales simulation activities always tell me just after they’ve done it, that “they wouldn’t do that in the real World”. Yeah right!!
The good news in all of this is of course that the one thing that you have total control over is you and the way you sell. So how do you differentiate? The key is creativity. You have got to think “Outside the Box”. Like the original question about the phone, we could ask “when is a Telephony sale not a Telephony sale” the answer would obviously be “when it’s a Unified Communications sale”, and thereby lays the challenge. What makes a UC sale so different?
Unified Communications is different because there are no limitations on what it can do. Customers will identify a need, create an RFP and you with many others will bid to win the business. But your job is to not only to just manage that sales process, but to add creativity, to look at how the infrastructure can be used differently, who else could be impacted, what other uses of the IP network can be leveraged, what applications could be run on the phone, what business issues might be addressed through your solution?
Creative thinking is the key to unlock the power of IP communications. Don’t ask yourself what features have I got, ask what does the business need. Don’t ask what discount do we need to win the business, but what premium can I add for the uniqueness of our offering.
It’s this that will change the perception of Unified Communications from PBX to business tool. It’s this that will move you out of the $6 Billion annual PBX replacement market in to the $30 Billion Convergence arena. It’s this that will open up access to budgets outside Voice Communications and IT departments and provide funding for your solution.
Think differently; when is a phone not a phone? When it’s a LIFESTYLE!
Check out this YouTube video on this very subject http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UtgaX2FM_0
Brian Conway