Tom Walker

Opportunity Radar

In "Foots in the door" on January 14, 2010 at 11:28 pm

A quick glimpse at the SOUP (Sales Opportunity Unification Potentializer) tool reveals some potential opportunities..

  • An oceanographic institute that just got 8M to build a new R+D lab (I bet such a lab would need a heavy duty data network, no?)
  • A video delivery technology company in San Jose moving into a new facility in August of 2010 (new phones, data network,..?)
  • A Kansas City weapons component manufacturer planning on relocating into a new location
  • Several companies in Colorado just received 87M to develop biofuels.
  • A home health services company just hired a new COO (new COO could mean changes)
  • Equifax just got a new CIO ( if you look at what this company does, they look like they could benefit from reducing human latency with Avaya CEBP)

Good Selling,

Tom

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Best Soup from 2009! A year in review..

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy, Operational Excellence on January 12, 2010 at 12:52 am

I should have done this a couple weeks ago, but it occurred to me today that it would be worthwhile to review Convergence Soup’s 2009 highlights. If you haven’t followed CS or haven’t followed it religiously, I bet you there’s some good ideas you missed that could help you grow your business in 2010. Here’s a look at my favorite Soup entries. You can find all of these by hitting the “archives” link above.

1. 12th Century Stone Mason’s Guide to Selling Technology (Okay, not 2009, this is just last week) We look at how we could apply the strategies of a stone mason to find new sales opportunities in technology infrastructure.

2. Biz Dev Idea 11/14/2009 — How to expand your market reach by building a partnership with executive recruiters who specialize in CIO’s.

3. Skunk Works 11/5/2009 — This little RSS feed I built announces fresh new opportunities every day for convergence resellers.  http://sites.google.com/site/consoupskunk/

4. If Sun Tzu were a VAR 11/4/2009 — Beat Cisco where they cannot defend by showing your client how they are buying expensive switched ports they don’t need.

5. Timing is Everything 10/29/2009 — How to make friends with new CIO’s when the ink is still drying on their business cards.

6. Sales Lead Hack 10/22/2009 — How to get sales leads in your email inbox every day, automatically.

7. 1800 Reasons Your Customers are Considering Moving Away from Cisco 10/6/2009 — How to shatter Cisco’s illusion of simplicity to attract new clients.

8. Godin Gazpacho 9/23/2009 — Ideas inspired by famed author Seth Godin to help you envision exciting new partnerships that could expand your reach with less effort.

9. Avaya Owns Nortel..What Now? 9/15/2009 — One Avaya Partner took my advice and got a head start on capturing the attention of Nortel customers.

10. Linkedin IS a sales tool 9/10/2009 — How to use Linked in to protect your customer relationships and find new opportunities.

Those faves don’t even include the infamous soup strips!..more to come in 2010.  Also, Convergence Soup will be rolled up into Catalyst Telecom’s official social media initiative so keep your eyes peeled for a new look and feel.

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These are the Glengarry Leads (maybe)..

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on January 8, 2010 at 9:38 pm

Back in the day, I’m sure many of you recall if you’re an Avaya partner, Avaya Financial Services used to provide partners with leads in the form of customers whose leases were getting ready to expire. Back in the day, these were known as the “Glengarry” leads.  Recently, it’s come to my attention that a lead source exists that allows partners like you to search a database (geographically organized) of leases that are getting ready to “expire”. Apparently, any time equipment is leased, there is an official UCC filing which is public information. The service I’m speaking of uses sophisticated data mining to capture and catalogue all of this information so it can be utilized to identify ripe opportunities to displace equipment near end of lease. The beauty of this is that you can search keywords like nortel, cisco, etc..  I’ve played around with this service through the free trial and it appears to perform as advertised (so far). The name of the service is Proven Prospects. I’d recommend giving the free trial a whirl. As of today, it’s only available for the state of California but I understand that they are getting ready to go national. Michael Roberts tells me that as of today, the service is not widely used among telephony resellers (used more by other industries like copier resellers) which I took as good news since it could be a real competitive advantage for you.

Good Selling,

Tom

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