Tom Walker

Archive for the ‘Business Strategy’ Category

The Wordperfect Axiom and UC

In Business Strategy on March 10, 2010 at 6:15 pm

Seth Godin wrote another insightful entry today which tells us a lot about where our industry is headed. In the early days of the PC, Wordperfect had the word processing market virtually locked up for everyone using DOS. When Windows came long, the WP people took their time porting over to that new O/S platform. As a result, customers chose MS Word and Wordperfect was obliterated in short order.

When the music industry shifted to a new platform, from record stores to iTunes, many of the historically successful music labels quickly faded into the sunset.

When the platform changes, opportunities exist for new innovative players to shake things up and beat competitors stuck in their old ways.

Unified Communications is changing before our very eyes. It used to be about proprietary voice platforms: Nortel, Avaya, Siemens, NEC..even Shoretel. Customers would select a vendor and use all of their fancy applications to communicate and collaborate. That’s changing and fortunately, Avaya has provided you with the ultimate game changer: Aura. If the past teaches us anything, the voice platform soon won’t mean too much. Customers will pick and choose UC applications that are best for their business. What type of phone or phone system they have will be as irrelevant as what kind of television they watch Mad Men on.

The question is, who will empower them to have that kind of flexibility. Session Manager (whether it’s Cisco’s, Siemens, or Avaya’s) is the new platform. Lucky for us, Avaya has the best story here.  And yes, as the customer picks the UC apps that fit their business, Avaya’s at the top of the foodchain. My guess is the really clever solution providers will sell the client on this new architecture that gives them more power and flexibility first while the competition dukes it out on applications which will probably be commoditized eventually. The trick is to build a business that unlocks the value of this platform for your customers.

Good Selling,

Tom

Something BIG is coming…

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on February 16, 2010 at 12:27 pm

This year, ScanSource is making a big investment in our partners and it’s called SUMO. SUMO is the channel’s first online network designed to help technology companies form partnerships. What do I mean when I say “technology companies”?  I’m talking about resellers, integrators, ISV’s, manufacturers and software companies. To put this another way, it’s kind of like a Match.com for technology solution providers. The goal is to help YOU extend your reach into new markets and geographies by partnering with others. The trick, is to tell a story about the niche that you play in and make your company attractive to others.  In a subsequent phase of SUMO, we will open the site up to end users and make investments to push customers to the site so they can find companies like yours. You heard me correctly, we’re going to use this network to push you leads! Stay tuned for more information but for now, I’d recommend putting some thought into what your profile will look like on SUMO!

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.

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

12th Century Stone Mason’s Guide to Selling Technology

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on January 5, 2010 at 12:39 am

It seems like once I get an idea in my head, it keeps revealing itself in several areas to the point that it solidifies my belief in the original idea.  So recently, I’ve been reading Ken Follett’s book, The Pillars of the Earth — amazing book if you haven’t read it. The main character, Tom, is a master builder, a very skilled stone mason who aspires to build a grand cathedral. He travels all over England during the 12th century looking for the opportunity to build a structure that will bring him pride and wealth.

Tom encounters two huge problems. First, he has a horrible spell of bad timing. Each new fiefdom that he visits is either at the final stages of building or rebuilding a castle or cathedral, or short on money for such an undertaking. The second challenge he has is competition. Although he holds his talents in high regard, there’s many other stone masons competing for the same jobs. Tom continues to travel the countryside throughout the winter fighting starvation (for him and his family) and eventually gets work with an Earl who has no intention of hiring a stone mason..Tom almost walks away rejected as the earl tells him he has no need for a stonemason (I suspect similar to the reaction we often get by asking if a prospect has any UC, IPT or infrastructure projects planned). Tom says, “I hope you’re not planning on doing battle anytime soon.” Immediately the Earl changes his attitude and perks up (he’s planning on overthrowing the current king through a revolt). The earl asks, very concerned, why Tom would say such a thing. Tom goes on to mention several different examples of shortcomings in the Earl’s defenses, and problems with the physical structure that make him vulnerable to attack. Immediately, Tom is hired because he understands the castle’s weaknesses and has specific ideas on how to fortify the structure. Yeah, I know..Sales 101 right? Nonetheless, a good reminder on how to approach opportunities. What is your prospect trying to do in the next year? While they may not plan on overthrowing a King, maybe they are planning on expanding into new markets, or launching a new product, consolidate an acquisition, or comply with new regulations…

I’ll spare you the details, but that job didn’t pan out for Tom as the Earl’s plans for rebellion were discovered before Tom could get to work on castle fortifications. But get this — he hears about a cathedral at Kingsbridge where the prior (the monastic leader) has just passed away. He makes it a priority to visit Kingsbridge because he knows there will be a new prior and that person will have their own plans of how to run the priory –ie. changes. The new prior, elected by his peers, doesn’t typically see himself as a caretaker. Rather, he has his own ideas of how he will expand the priory and leave his mark. This reminded me of a post from yours truly about using google alerts to find out when a new CIO or CFO is hired. Tom was right, the new prior did have big plans, and was disgusted at how his predecessor caused the priory to decline. As a result, Tom found a job by going to Kingsbridge at just the right time.

Tom used two basic sales strategies to find work — timing his approach with the arrival of a new C-Level (the prior), and understanding the customer well enough to ask the right questions– questions his competitors weren’t asking. Who would have thought Ken Follett knew so much about sales?

TAS-mania

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy, Operational Excellence on December 11, 2009 at 4:10 pm

What do you do when you come across a large complex opportunity that requires weeks of time consuming, deep pre-sales professional services in order to win the deal? If you’re like many partners, you’ll go after the deal but not quite spend the amount of time necessary to really tailor the perfect solution that can clearly pay for itself. You look at the opportunity and say, “how much of my resources can I really afford to pore into this opportunity without any guarantee that I’ll win the deal?” A balancing act right? What if you could increase your odds of winning the deal without having to chew up all of your resources for several weeks?

Enter Avaya TAS (Technical Account Services). This is a program available to Avaya partners for the most application rich opportunities you find. So I know what your next question is.. how much does it cost? The good news it doesn’t cost anything if you don’t win the deal? This means there’s zero financial risk for you. If you win the deal, you pay Avaya for the professional services already completed. Of course, you could position it the same way with your client so his/her expectations are aligned with yours. Or, maybe you do charge the client 25% of the eventual feeup front so they’re invested and you  guarantee yourself some revenue. Here’s the benefits I see from this.

  • Maximize your account control — if the client commits to this level of engagement, you’re in the driver’s seat.
  • Much more application rich sales. I like to think application rich is a euphemism for “margin rich”.
  • You can triage your finite engineering/PS  resources where they capture revenue most quickly.
  • Dramatically increase your conversion rate — I seem to recall the closure rate is somewhere in the high 80’s%.

This could represent a major shift in how you approach these larger complex opportunities. Instead of selling the customer a very complex solution that solves all of their needs, you are selling them on a no risk opportunity to develop a tailored solution that pays for itself and helps them grow their business.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Tom

Section 179 Snert

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on November 19, 2009 at 5:06 pm

BTW, “snert” is a thick pea soup from the Netherlands consumed mostly in the winter (yeah, yeah, I know.. the soup thing is getting out of hand)  Likewise, Section 179 stimulates consumption of technology projects by your customers and prospects this winter — specifically before the end of the year.

Thanks to Stephanie Meek, Channel Account Manager for Extreme Networks for giving me a primer on this. If you know about it already — congrats. If not, you need to get your arms around this. Section 179 is an IRS tax code that allows businesses to deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment purchased or financed before the end of the tax year.  I’m simplifying, but businesses can take up to a 250k deduction and a bonus depreciation of 50% on the amount that exceeds the 250k (Barack added that little part).

Check out http://www.section179.org/index.html and http://www.crestcapital.com/tax_deduction_calculator.

Good Selling,

Tom

 

Biz Dev Idea..

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on November 14, 2009 at 4:22 am

Why not partner with a recruiter who specializes in senior IT placement — for instance CIO’s? Work out a partnership with them where they get to provide their clients (the companies looking for a new CIO for example) a high level (and most importantly objective) assessment and map of their communications network (security, wireless, switching, routing, IPT, etc.) provided by your company. This way, when the new CIO arrives for his first day on the job, he has a concise, unbiased report sitting on his or her desk compliments of your company. This could be a great way for the recruiter to differentiate themselves (in a cutt-throat market), and for you to get quick PS business and build a lead gen engine where you have the inside track. Again, am I naive, or is there something to this? I’d like to hear from you if you have an opinion..

Thanks!

Tom

Sip, Soup, Sipera..is there a connection?

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on November 13, 2009 at 5:53 pm

I think there iiiiiss! First person to tell me the John Hughs film reference gets a nice Catalyst logo’d goody. Just had a deep dive on Sipera and when my head had a chance to stop spinning, I was able to mentally net it out for you. Here’s the top things I absorbed:

First, they have a sophisticated threat lab called VIPER. This group works around the clock to determine day zero security threats in the UC/Voip arena. Since nobody else is doing this, you can sell their vulnerability assessment to large clients and show them pretty quickly a number of vulnerabilities they have but aren’t even aware of. Apparently, they’ve had some big wins in this area alone. In my opinion, this is a great foot in the door with large enterprise, government clients and call centers and gives you a unique angle.

Second, you can offer a managed security service around UC/VoIP to mitigate threats in real time. SIPera goes to the application layer and mitages a whole bunch of threats that aren’t being addressed today. Managed Services in Security is a big play and this gives you a chance to get into a margin rich annuity business. BTW, the traditional security guys aren’t offering this, IPT guys aren’t either. Nice to fish where the other fishermen aren’t right?

Third, a lot of customers buy an SBC and think it provides adequate security – Sipera mitigates a whole bunch of threats since it works at the application layer unlike an SBC which is only at Layer 3. Sipera has a bunch of examples where the customer incurred a wrath of security issues because they thought their SBC had them covered.

That’s probably the tip of the ice burg, but my major take aways. Call me if you want to explore this since Sipera since it gives you a trojan horse into new accounts and a means to build nice annuity revenue.

Good Selling,

Tom

To Quote Flavor Flav…

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on November 12, 2009 at 5:09 pm

flaver

“Don’t believe the hype!” Cisco, in their latest effort to keep pace with Avaya,  just announced on Monday their own version of session manager, titled “ORO” — the spanish word for gold and also suspiciously close to “AURA”. Okay, so I just made that part up — but they really do have their own session manager now. Given the strength of their marketing machine — we can expect them to peddle this story with vigor.

To help you head this off at the pass, Jim Sevier has put together a podcast so you can keep your customers informed of the dramatic differences between Avaya and Cisco as it relates to Session Manager. Click Here http://cnvrg.com/cag/?p=238

Good Selling,

Tom

Skunk Works

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy, Uncategorized on November 5, 2009 at 11:43 pm

skunk

“Skunk Works” was (still is?) the official name for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs. Since then, the term has been frequently used to describe “off the grid” hit or miss, bold experiments.

Convergence Soup has started it’s own Skunk Works program designed to go outside the box for Catalyst partners to find new opportunities. SSW may not be as audacious as the program that produced the U2 aircraft (considering it took me 3 minutes to get it off the ground); however, sometimes the best ideas are the simplest, right?

Today’s results from Soup Skunk Works, while primitive, produces one potential Juniper or Extreme opportunity and 2 or 3 Nortel/Aura migration opportunities. Results will change daily because it’s a snapshot in time. Eventually I’ll figure out how to put these into some sort of RSS feed or something.

Check it out!

Good Selling,

Tom

If Sun Tzu were a VAR…

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on November 4, 2009 at 7:31 pm

This week, I spent some time with Matt Rupert, the Aruba CAM for the Southwest. I’ll make this post a two-parter since I got a couple of great gems out of my time with Matt. First is this: Aruba is evangelizing the concept of “rightsizing” the network.

The idea is that hundeds of thousands of organizations that have adopted wireless networking are duplicating ports needlessly and spending more money on their network than they need to.  While Cisco needs to keep refreshing their wired switched ports to continue to meet the expectations of Wall Street, you the Read the rest of this entry »

Timing is everything..

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on October 29, 2009 at 12:56 am

Think about this:  If you are trying to find new customers, what are the chances you find a prospect that is looking to move some projects forward? The timing is the toughest part right? Sure, you can always find some way to wiggle your way in and start the relationship and that’s great, but sales cycles are long enough as it is.  What if you get a decision maker right when he’s new on the job? Okay..maybe he or she is too overwhelmed and is still figuring out the lay of the land.. but what if you can help him figure out the lay of the land as an unbiased third party. You put together an audit or assessment of his network, telecom Read the rest of this entry »

From the “If I were an Avaya Partner” Files..

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on October 27, 2009 at 5:55 pm

I would strike up a relationship with a commercial real estate company and develop an initiative to help companies “right size” their facilities. Hold a luncheon, webinar or event that shows companies how they can reduce real estate expenses, implement a telework strategy, preserve local presence through SIP trunking (for closed offices), negotiate more flexible terms for the future, etc. I know some partners  do this from a primitive lead exchange standpoint, but why not make this a branded service/capability? Sounds like a win-win to me..am I crazy or naive?

Sales Lead Hack

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on October 22, 2009 at 10:10 pm

news

What if I told you you can use the internet to learn about new sales opportunities for the cost of zilch? What if I further told you that these leads could be automatically emailed to you every day? Here’s the drill:  go to google and click on “news”. Here’s some different ideas for searches:

  • For company moves and relocations: relocate, chicago, headquarters…etc.
  • New facilities: Chicago, new facility, new building, new campus..etc.
  • Decisions and Decision Makers: CTO, CFO, Chicago .. etc. (If one of these people are in a news article, it usually means something is going on in the business which means an opportunity somewhere)

To automatically get emails every day with Read the rest of this entry »

Are you selling what CIO’s want?

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on October 15, 2009 at 5:36 pm

Channel Insider featured a summary of a survey conducted by the Society of Information Management (SIM) to determine budget priorities for 2010. This study provides valuable insight you can use as a sanity check, or an opportunity to re-calibrate your focus.

  • Below are the top spending priorities which I’ve put into the context of an Avaya Partner:
    1. Business Intelligence – Avaya CMS, IQ, Operational Analyst
    2. Server Virtualization – Avaya Virtualized Aura UC Appliance, Carrier Grade Wide Area Networks (Juniper)
    3. Customer and Corporate Portals – Avaya Dialog Designer, Interactive Response, Voice Portal Read the rest of this entry »

SIP Trunking and Avaya

In Business Strategy, Uncategorized on October 8, 2009 at 5:52 pm

So many partners are trying to figure out which ITSP’s and Carriers’ SIP trunking services are tested/approved to work with Avaya IP Office and Avaya Communication Manager. As you may know, SIP is a surprisingly loose standard so interoperability becomes pretty important to pay attention to. I’m not sure Avaya does the best job of making it known which providers have a green light, so it took a little digging around for me to cobble together a matrix of approved SIP trunking providers for IP Office and ACM — by the way, some are approved for IP Office and not for ACM (and Read the rest of this entry »

#2 Problem Solved

In Business Strategy, Operational Excellence, Uncategorized on October 5, 2009 at 8:08 pm

According to the partners I speak to, the second biggest challenge (btw, the #1 challenge is finding good sales people) goes something like this:

How to get sales people effective training that:

  • Isn’t marketing “fluff”
  • Doesn’t take them out of the field for too long
  • Can be replicated and is consistent
  • Gets results Read the rest of this entry »

The Quick and the Dead

In Business Strategy, Operational Excellence on September 24, 2009 at 3:23 pm

That’s how I would summarize the IP Office sales cycle. We have found through experience with our partners that speed is a critical factor in being able to win IP office deals. Many partners are still relying on their design engineers to put together IP Office designs. This is not only a not-so-good use of that expensive resource’s time, it’s also a sales obstacle since it adds time. There’s no reason why your sales people shouldn’t be putting together their own quotes with Catalyst’s IP Office Quoting Tool.  A few partners have asked me if this tool will be around since Read the rest of this entry »

Godin Gazpacho

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on September 23, 2009 at 7:21 am

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 Read the rest of this entry »

Strategic Partner Stew

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy, Uncategorized on September 22, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Today it occurred to me that some of Avaya’s strongest value propositions require partners to have competencies or expertise that are just out of reach to most of us. Avaya can do some really cool things but in order to do some of these things, you need to be more than an Avaya partner. So here’s food for thought. What types of partnerships might you forge to capitalize on Avaya’s most advanced, margin rich solutions? Partners tell me all the time that partnering doesn’t work and I realize this is all easy on paper but much harder in practice. I think it’s worth it if you can figure some of these out.

CEBP – Communication Enabled Business Processes. In order for this to work, you have to integrate unified communications into Business Process Management. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a single Avaya partner with expertise in this area. Below are some good organizations to explore to strike up partnerships.

Split P-Sector Soup

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on September 18, 2009 at 4:54 pm

Yep, I’ve resorted to adapting the titles of these postings into fictional soups and I’m just getting started. Many of you are already entrenched in the public sector but many are still scratching their heads trying to figure out where the stimulus money is landing and how to go get it.  Catalyst just launched today a Public Sector Program to help you navigate the bureaucracy and confusion that sits between you and stimulus funded projects. You need to register to be a part of this program.  To do so, click HERE.

This valuable program was conceived and launched by Thomas “Bootstrap” Turner, our Public Sector Specialist. Please reach out to him if you have any questions on this program or the public sector in general–thomas.turner@catalysttelecom.com

Good Selling,

Tom

Nemertes Bisque Soup

In Business Strategy on September 17, 2009 at 6:03 pm

Irwin Lazar with Nemertes Research recently posted an insightful blog on No Jitter. In an nutshell, Nemertes interviewed IT leaders from 200 companies earlier in the year. Nearly 100% of the participants said they expected flat or falling budgets for 2010. They were asked (a) what would they be forced to cut; and (b) what would they cut last. The results were perplexing as Voice and UC topped both of those lists. What?!?

Irwin explains the logic behind this: Voice is one of the larger budget items while at the same time mission critical to the business. Net/Net – IT leaders need to cut costs and are looking at Voice and UC more tactically than strategically. Whereas in the past they were interested in leveraging UC to improve processes and drive competitive advantage; in the near future they are looking for Read the rest of this entry »

Sales Autopilot

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy, Uncategorized on September 16, 2009 at 4:03 pm

That’s what this blog is. Every day I see more and more people visiting my blog.  So, all I have to do is come up with one good idea every day, one gem of insight that my customers and partners will benefit from, and I’ve gotten their mindshare. How many other mediums allow you to touch so many customers in so little time? Right now, there are a lot of opportunities for you to do the same thing with your clients. Your clients have so many questions swirling around in their head.

-         What’s the future of Nortel (see my previous blog)?

-         What does Avaya Aura really mean?

-         How can I meet the IT demands of my company without adding headcount? Read the rest of this entry »

Avaya owns Nortel..What now?

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on September 15, 2009 at 4:46 pm

So what does this mean to you, the business partner? In my mind, this is good news because there is an amount of uncertainty that has been removed — finally a vague direction. The flip side to this is that there is still a lot of uncertainty as to what this really means to the end user. Some of these questions include:

-What does the new product road map look like for Nortel customers?

-How do Nortel customers continue to get the most out of their investment?

-Which Nortel products will survive? Which won’t? Read the rest of this entry »

Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail

In Business Strategy, Uncategorized on September 15, 2009 at 4:28 pm

For those of you that are beginning to plan for 2010, now’s a good time to figure out where you want to get and how you are going to get there. What activities will be required to hit the revenue targets that you have?

sales lead calc

Read the rest of this entry »

Linkedin IS a Sales Tool!

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy, Uncategorized on September 10, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Like most people, sometimes I have to remind myself why social networking tools like Linkedin and Facebook are valuable. It takes a little extra effort to keep up with these but I think it’s well worth it. I wanted to share some examples of how Linkedin has helped me which you may not have thought of. I try to connect to all of my vendors, business partners and prospects as soon as I meet them (again, I’m not perfect here).

One way this becomes valuable is the Linkedin updates. I get to see who everyone is connecting with which is very useful information if you really think about the possibilities. Here’s some examples of information I’ve benefited from. Read the rest of this entry »

Ice, Ice Baby…

In "Foots in the door", Business Strategy on September 2, 2009 at 5:54 pm

This blog is supposed to be all about opening doors and finding opportunities. One of our strategic partners is Juniper Networks and many of our partners are successful selling their switching, routing and security solutions. But many have not been able to figure out where to dig in since their solution portfolio is so broad. Another challenge some of the Avaya partners have had is really finding some relevance or synergy with the solutions they are talking about every day. Enter Juniper’s SSL VPN which is a function of the Secure Access appliance. In a nutshell, it’s a clientless VPN that gives remote workers access to the corporate network through their web browser. Customers like it Read the rest of this entry »

“We are carrier grade.”

In Business Strategy on September 8, 2007 at 12:22 am

Have you seen the commercials on TV about GMC trucks that say “We are professional grade?” It’s a simple way of telling the consumer that their vehicle meets a higher standard. In this case, the term “professional” likely refers to a construction manager, contractor, field engineer, or the like. You can imagine people like this needing heavy payload, tough shocks, and a lot of horsepower. You can also imagine their trucks have to take a beating and still perform on a daily basis. You would also infer Read the rest of this entry »

Looming Disasters Present Opportunity

In Business Strategy on July 20, 2007 at 10:17 am

A week ago, we touched briefly on the topic of business continuity and disaster recovery. This is a topic that I keep coming back to with a lot of partners — especially those located in California (epicenter for fires, mudslides, earthquakes, etc). Considering the list of potential threats out there, there’s a tremendous opportunity for Avaya partners to find a niche in disaster planning. Not to say that there aren’t other companies out there that specialize in this area. Quite the contrary, it’s a cottage industry but one with room for new entrants- especially ones with a different approach and unique expertise (did you know that AGS has a professional service in this area?). Frankly, this is a conversation I have had with partners repeatedly that strangely has not led to much activity. So let me share my line of thinking here, and you tell me what you think. There’s a couple of things going on. First, we’re seeing a critical mass of impending disasters and emergencies: natural disasters, terrorist disasters, school shootings, Pandemics,.. this list goes on. At the same time, we’re all talking about how to differentiate ourselves and approach customers with solutions, not products. Many partners are trying to crack the code on how to charge for the up-front design work that goes into the solutions they propose. Might this not be a way to provide extremely valuable consulting that (a) customers are willing to pay for; and (b) allows you to pull through significant constructs? The exciting thing is that Catalyst supports you in providing a number of solutions that solve very real problems that public and commercial organizations face. Here’s some of the big ones:

  • Avaya is providing a lot of innovation with it’s Communication Enabled Business Processes. Simply stated, “A holistic combination of software, consulting, and support services that integrate Avaya Intelligent Communications into business processes, making it possible to sense events in real-time and then orchestrate and track enterprise-wide actions – creating a more responsive organization.” Avaya accomplishes this with a software component called Communications Process Manager which integrates with your clients existing business applications and processes.
  • Mobile Communication System (MCS) and Quicksite are ruggedized Avaya systems that can be quickly deployed in the field by first responders.
  • Juniper SSL VPN includes an option for ICE (In case of emergency) licensing so your client can pay only for the ability to use licenses less expensively in the event of a disaster. This clientless VPN allows organizations to send people home and still have access to the corporate network without any tricky client software — just a web browser. It’s also a great compliment to IP Softphone..
  • Avaya IP Softphone and EC 500 give users the ability to operate remotely if need be in the event of a disaster. Both of these have value on the main system or resident in an MCS or Quicksite.
  • Computer Instruments (an Avaya Dev Connect) has a number of canned applications like loved one finder, community notification and others that play well in this space.
  • See my previous post which highlighted the very simple virtues of MultiTech’s Cellular Gateway – Call Finder.

So we know that we have great solutions in this space, how do you build a consulting practice around BC/DR? First, you can explore Avaya’s professional service offers through AGS. See this link for great information. If you’re looking to keep all this high margin profit to yourself, you might consider sending one of your sales people or engineers to a certification course for business continuity. The Institute for Continuity Management has a 5 day accelerated track next month. Might this be a new niche for your business?

Forget parachutes, what color is your ocean?

In Business Strategy on July 13, 2007 at 9:51 pm

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading a book called Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. In a nutshell, the book shares how many companies (Southwest Airlines, Yellow Tail Wine..) have beaten their competition by creating “blue oceans” of uncontested markets. I think it applies very well to the business of selling IP telephony and convergence solutions and it really gives you a blueprint for differentiating your business from your competition. Anyone that is seeing declining margins, increased competition, and difficulty growing their business will appreciate BOS’s lessons in creating a new story. So here’s the question: are you swimming in blood red, shark infested waters where you compete with Cisco, Shoretel, and even other Avaya partners on price? Or have you found a blue ocean of uncontested waters where there are more opportunities and competition is irrelevant. You know the old saying, “fish where the other fisherman aren’t” (yeah, really milking the whole ocean/fishing metaphor).  Here’s a good test to see which waters you’re swimming in: http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/about/test.html

How can we differentiate your business? Create a new set of ground rules which customers use to base their decisions? Let’s sit down and create what BOS calls a “value curve” for your business. This helps you reorient your focus from competitors to alternatives while shifting from customers to noncustomers.