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!

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

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?

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

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

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

“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

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 »

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 »

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?

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 »

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 »

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 »

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

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 »

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 »