CHANNEL
FEEDBACK
Pushing for Value
Selling on value rather than
How do partners sell on feature sets and functionality when so many customers are price driven? How do you
push customers out of that ‘price-first’ mentality so they focus on the bigger picture? And after all that, do
partners still want to own the customer?
price presents challenges at
dierent stages of market
development – at some
stage there is frequently a ‘race to
the bottom’ on price which can
result in the channel scrambling
to put together their set of value
propositions. When it comes
to IP Telephony how does that
work?
Justin Hamilton-Martin,
Director of Centile, says there
is a huge opportunity here to
push the total-cost-of-ownership
message.
“Business customers who
have already moved from
legacy on-premise and ISDN
solutions to cloud-based IP
telephony are already enjoying
the lower on-going cost base.
For organisations making that
switch right now, there may be
some initial up-front investment
— for instance, headsets,
equipping sta with better
Wi-Fi routers — but they will
soon start to reap the nancial
savings. Other cost savings may
come through reduced oce
usage, though equally, rms may
require larger oces to support
physical distancing between
employees.
How else can customers be
pushed beyond a ‘price-rst’
mentality and focus on the
bigger picture?
Dave Reynolds, Managing
Director of Xelion says that
when we think about IP
Selling on value rather than price presents challenges at
telephony and UC, it is natural
to focus on communications and
collaboration
“But they also have
the ability to transform
productivity and accountability
- particularly important when
sta are working remotely,
and to contribute to digital
transformation. Integrating
video, voice, diaries and
collaboration features into CRM
and ERP is a game-changer.
For example, here at Centile we
have our own UCaaS platform
integrated with Salesforce, and
it gives the potential for deep,
real-time insight into sales and
customer interactions.
Also, without getting too ‘Big
Brother’ about this, platforms
like ours allow businesses to see
activity across devices (including
whether the network is being
different stages of market development
used to support personal devices
and apps), so companies have
better visibility over usage and
sta activity.
Reynolds says that we’ll never
go back from this to the old ways
of working.
“ere are certain parts of
the business where an oce
working environment works best
– customer service for example,
but sales and management sta
will now demand home working
– it will become the norm.”
According to Reynolds
people are trying out products
more frequently.
“Because there are so many
collaboration applications that
are available for free download
that are being used by business
customers it’s apparent that any
given organisation is using as
many as they need to in order
to stay in touch with their
customers and using the same
apps that their customers are
using.
Maybe too, people will be
nicer to each other which is
obviously not a bad thing. For
instance, in the last four weeks
I have spoken to more of my
competitors than ever previously
and had really good constructive
discussions.”
Peter Oosthuizen, London
Partner Sales Manager for
Spitre, says that any solution
will oer a balance of price and
features, but it is also important
to add quality into that
equation.
“A feature rich telephony
system with poor quality will
only cause headaches. However,
when the service is built properly
there should be no need to
compromise on quality when
looking for a lower cost solution.
We have developed a CLEAR
methodology to help our
customers/partners visualise
the route a voice packet takes
from ear to PSTN network and
the importance of this route
when it comes to voice quality.
is methodology clearly
demonstrates ‘the bigger picture’
and reinforces the value of wellengineered
voice solutions over
providers that do not consider
the end to end journey of the
voice packet when selling voice.
CLEAR stands for Customer,
Link, Exit, Arrival, Route.
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