LIVE STREAM Comms Business Live
“Connectivity is key, owning your own network doesn’t eliminate the fact you can still have outages. Having
decent connectivity is also a lot more affordable than it used to be”
Ian Rowan, Channel Manager at Wildix UK
Comms Business Live
In a recent Comms Business
In the latest episode of Comms Business Live David Dungay was joined by three prominent hosted suppliers to
talk about the challenges for partners differentiating their offerings in the market
Survey 76% of respondents
indicated that the biggest
challenge they face in selling
hosted telephony is the race to the
bottom on price.
COMMS BUSINESS MAGAZINE
(CBM): HOW CAN PARTNERS BREAK
AWAY FROM SELLING ON PRICE?
PAUL GIBBS, HEAD OF UCAAS
AND MID-MARKET AT GAMMA
(PG): e answer is not just
having hosted but many other
applications and then blending
those together to dierentiate
yourself. Asking the end user
what they want and what they
already have is important. A lot
of the people that sell purely on
price ask the same questions,
how many extensions have you
got? What connectivity do you
want? Here’s my price! ey
don’t really engage with the
customer.
A lot of the end user market
have been around the hosted
carousel once already. ey
bought on price the rst time,
had a nightmare for three
years and are now looking to
engage on what partners can
deliver, how can they deliver,
what is the service like, what
is the quality like? en you
drive loyalty from the customer
for more than the three years,
perhaps six, eight, nine years
plus. We tend to patronise the
end user a little bit sometimes.
ey are well educated in what
they want but it is on us to let
them know what else is out
there, what we can provide and
the benets that will give them.
I think it’s about what the
reseller does and how they
skill up and what they are
getting from their providers.
It’s about how you shape your
(l-r) Justin Blaine,
Paul Gibbs, David
Dungay, Ian
Rowan
proposition to the end user as
a reseller. A lot of the time the
day to day takes dominance
and I hear things like ‘we have
to sell x-number of seats this
month otherwise we won’t
make our target.’ But they (the
reseller) have a huge established
base and that is really the low
hanging fruit. We are working
at Gamma to see how partners
can engage with their existing
base and what applications or
marketing materials we provide
the partners.
IAN ROWAN, CHANNEL MANAGER
AT WILDIX UK (IR): It’s hard when
it’s a product online because
where do you add value? e
reseller has to become the value
in that proposition and not
just be another product. We
partner with a company with a
company called Value Selling
who do value proposition
sales training, we provide that
to our partners so they can
learn to provide value in those
solutions and not just sell
another product.
Connectivity is key, owning
your own network doesn’t
eliminate the fact you can still
have outages. Having decent
connectivity is also a lot more
aordable than it used to be.
Broadsoft has done wonders
for the market because they
have opened everyone’s eyes to
hosted telephony. However, it
is hard when you are ghting
against three or four other
resellers (selling the same thing)
to dierentiate yourself, which
is one of the benets to being a
smaller company as opposed to
Gamma.
JUSTINE BLAINE, CHANNEL
MANAGER AT NTA (JB): I think
resellers aren’t just in the
telecoms space now, they are
also in IT sector. ey have got
to put their own service wrap,
or even a managed service wrap,
around their products and
services. I don’t think you can
just go in with telephony only.
It’s all about that service wrap
and adding value. If you just
sell one product then they (the
customers) are going to compare
it on price.
I think some partners have
managed to sell applications
and not just telephony. ey
aren’t just asking ‘how many
extensions and lines do you
require?’ ey are looking
at the business benets on
hosted telephony and what it
can deliver to a particular end
customer. Others aren’t, they
are at the end of the market that
are just selling on price. To be
fair to some of those resellers,
some of those smaller customers
are only going to buy on price,
they aren’t going to buy on
functionality.
58 | Comms Business Magazine | August 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.commsbusiness.co.uk
