Tom Walker

Archive for the ‘"Foots in the door"’ Category

Skunk Works

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

“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, Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

1800 reasons your clients are considering moving away from Cisco..

In "Foots in the door" on October 6, 2009 at 8:20 pm

Thanks to Jill Kepler at Extreme Networks who pointed out this article that appeared in Network World today. Many partners wrongly assume the Cisco machine is too powerful to confront; however, this article is one small example that the pendulum is swinging the other way. Years ago, IT managers took pride in their ability to master multiple IOS’s because it meant they were valuable to their employer. Smashcut to 2009, and there are simply too many versions of IOS out there for IT professionals 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.

Set your sales on fire with ice.

In "Foots in the door" on September 21, 2009 at 6:51 pm

Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but this is the perfect topic to weave into your conversations about Biz continuity, pandemic planning, etc. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see my post from a couple weeks ago. Especially those of you in Southern California, this is an imperative that has bucks behind it.  What’s new on this front to warrant a new post? Juniper is offering additional discounts to make this even more attractive for your clients. See here for more information.

Good Selling,

Tom

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

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 »

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 »

SIP Trunking: The ultimate foot in the door?

In "Foots in the door" on September 1, 2009 at 3:50 pm

I wanted to share some observations regarding SIP Trunking. First, I’m amazed at how many partners aren’t getting into this yet. I guess that’s good news if you’re ahead of the curve right? Second, I think SIP trunking represents the single best lead gen hook right now. For partners that have an inside sales arm or are in the process of building inside sales, this is the perfect hook. There’s a lot of different providers out there and there ARE differences. I’m putting together a matrix that compares all of these SIP trunking providers which will be available soon. Until then, let me share my two cents on a company called Bandtel. Bandtel is a “Pure SIP” provider which is a Read the rest of this entry »

The lost art of prospecting…

In "Foots in the door" on August 28, 2009 at 7:23 pm

I highly recommend you make plans to participate in Jim Sevier’s next webinar in the Avaya Business Building Series titled “The Art of Prospecting“. I’ve had an opportunity to see this particular training done previously in a limited release and found it chock full of not-so-intuitive ideas to make prospecting much more efficient/productive. Almost every partner principal tells me their sales people don’t prospect for new business as much as they would like. Many sales people have either forgotten how or think it’s simply easier to go back to existing base customers. Jim will show sales people how to prospect smart, not hard.

Click HERE to register for this webinar Sept 16th at 8am Pacific.

Generate sales leads from the comfort of your car.

In "Foots in the door" on August 6, 2007 at 11:56 pm

Here’s another idea as part of the “foots in the door” series. I’d like to offer a prize to the first person who tries this and provides feedback. Bluesocket is a great wireless vendor (and Avaya DevConnect) whom Catalyst distributes and supports. I won’t go into their complete story in this post but I’ll give you a nutshell as I see it. For customers who have a wireless network today but aren’t able to effectively manage it, secure it, or provide guest access – Bluesocket allows Read the rest of this entry »

Gateway to a new customer relationship.

In "Foots in the door" on July 13, 2007 at 10:27 pm

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”.