Earlier this year, MultiTech launched a product called the CallFinder®. In a nutshell, it bridges your phone system (on the trunk side) to the cellular provider. It sounds pretty simple, and it is..but when you start to consider how this can get your foot in the door, there’s a lot of possibilities.

First of all, if your prospect has several people with cell phones on the same network, say Sprint as an example, you can program your phone system such that anytime you call an employee (from your office deskset),  you won’t burn any minutes on your calling plan. That’s a very quick ROI when you consider it lists for around $600. One of the things cellular providers spend a lot of energy on is figuring out how to reduce the “churn” in their customer base. TIP: Why not partner with your local Sprint or AT&T sales rep and come up with a plan to market this widget into a base of corporate clients? You gain new customers while they gain extra “stickiness.”

Another angle that’s really nice is the idea of having a failover if the regular PSTN circuits go down. This could be a lifeline for businesses that have mission critical dial-tone needs.  A lot of organizations (especially healthcare, finance, and government) have business continuity plans. This is one tiny little solution, but it’s a foot in the door with a very broad audience. TIP: Almost every city has a number of disaster recovery consultants. For instance click this link on the DRII website (BC/DR website) to find consultants in the area who may have an interest in this. Once you have a foot in the door, we have a whole bunch of things to discuss with them including Juniper SSL VPN, IP Softphone, Avaya MCS (Mobile Communications System) and Quicksite (if these don’t sound familiar, please call me to discuss).

In light of these possibilities, I call this product the “new-customer-relationship-gateway”.