VOIP OUTSIDE OF THE BOX - A NEW WAY OF THINKING?By Don Panek, TelephonyWorld Editor
One of the parts of my job that I've always been fondest of is the many conversations I get to have with people from all over the world and from all manners of business. I get to discuss everything from problems setting up small office and home office phone solutions, to multi office worldwide call centers. I've been in heated round-table discussions about what emerging technology will have the shortest ROI and provide the longest overall cost savings for years to come. I've hosted webinars, seminars, demonstrations, and spent countless hours at trade show booths extolling the virtues of telephony and VoIP till my throat was raw. But I love every minute. I guess you could say that beneath everything, I have a pure desire and passion for sharing, teaching, helping and problem solving. And that's really what selling Telephony and VoIP to businesses is all about. It's about problem solving.
I came to this sort of realization recently while giving one of my usual speeches about VoIP and how together with an integrated CRM solution is a killer call center/helpdesk application. During the Q&A session, there was an overwhelming theme emanating from the crowd that implied VoIP was predominantly associated with making cheap or free phone calls. After the session, I was feeling a bit frustrated as I wasn't quite sure that the message I was trying to send about the "application" of VoIP was being heard. It was then that I realized how many of us in the industry have it all wrong.
For years we've been talking about the technology, the platform, the transport, the protocols, the quality of service, the security, reliability and so on. We discuss these terms and relate them to phone calls. Services have been priced and bundled around cheap VoIP phone calling. Companies have been built offering cheap VoIP phone service. So it's no real wonder that our potential customers, business partners, business owners, and end users are thinking in the same terms. This may be fine for the consumer market where the real concern at the end of the day is the homeowners' phone bill, but doesn't quite work for they typical business.
Business owners and executives today are not sitting around board room tables discussing their existing phone systems, services, or expenses. They're not thinking about VoIP or Telephony and what it can do for their bottom lines. They're discussing real business problems and looking for real solutions to those problems.
Problems like how do I best enable my remote sales force to be able to service our customers and prospects in the most efficient way, and then how do I enable them to quickly and accurately communicate that back to the rest of the team in the office?
How do I enable my growing telecommuting workforce with the most secure, cost effective, and productive communication solution without the need to install loads of hardware in their basement and pay their long distance phone bills?
How do I make vital customer data available to everyone in my organization who needs access to that data whenever they need it and where ever they may be at that time?
How do I gain competitive advantages with my new and existing customers when all I have to differentiate myself is customer service?
How do I spare my I. T. department from the mounting islands of disparate information that is stored on terabytes of network storage devices that needs to be sanitized on a regular basis and then sifted and served up to marketing teams and executives in some meaningful manner?
The answer to all of these questions and many more like them is with applications and/or solutions. It just happens that all of the solutions or applications that will solve these problems in a fantastic way also include VoIP or Telephony. But we really don't ever need to make mention of it, and certainly shouldn't "lead" our sales pitches or discussions with it.
Bundle up a VoIP enabled PBX with an integrated CRM solution like a Vonexus EIC and Microsoft CRM, together with MS Office professional and you have a killer application/solution that will solve just about all of the problems I mentioned extremely well. But how many of us are engaging customers and prospects this way?
I think the time has come to stop talking about VoIP and Telephony and start talking about applications and solutions. Solving problems. And at the end of the day after the order has been signed, we can then mention that all the phone calls will be free or virtually free! And how is that done? Well the solution has VoIP built in!
See ya next week!
