Godin Gazpacho

Seth Godin just wrote an insightful post on business development that is extremely relevant to yesterday’s Convergence Soup post, Strategic Partner Stew. It talks about extending your reach into new markets by partnering. The part I love, “the best deals have never been done before”.  Godin provides some excellent tactics on how you could go about striking up partnerships. What deals could you be striking up?

• A partnership with a leading Business Process Management Consultant to marry Avaya CEBP with their services?
• A network of risk management and business continuity certified professionals who you can work with to sell professional services around BC/DR?
• An alliance with a major virtualization integrator to include voice/UC in their data center consolidation practices?
• An green outreach to local businesses in partnership with State and Local Government to promote telework?
• A partnership with non-Avaya partners who sell SIP based applications to distribute and manage those applications via Aura Session Manager.
• An application for the iPhone that shows real time stats on an IP Office call center so business owners know what’s happening when they’re away from the office?

The whole idea behind “business development” is to find a smarter way to reach to new customers with less effort. Don’t let the fact that it hasn’t been done before dissuade you!

Good Selling,

Tom