Tom Walker

Archive for the ‘Operational Excellence’ Category

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.

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

#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 »

Turn “On” Your Data Network Capabilities

In Operational Excellence on August 2, 2007 at 2:36 pm

This week I was at the Comptia Breakaway event.  In the booth next to ours, there was a company called OnForce which describes itself as an online marketplace for on-site technology services. In a nutshell, their site allows you to shop for subcontractable (I think that’s a word) engineers who can perform technical services. One of their reps explained to me that they have 11,000 people listed. Each engineer has a profile that includes his/her Read the rest of this entry »

Let if flow (cash that is)..

In Operational Excellence on July 16, 2007 at 12:17 pm

Let’s face it, the business of selling IP telephony solutions has a good amount of complexity to it – particularly when you look at implementing these solutions. Aside from the time it takes to get the network tuned up for voice traffic, you also have to take the the voice system and program a growing breadth of applications to meet the customers needs. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it right? A growing challenge I’m seeing with my partners is the challenge of managing cash flow. Since implementations are taking longer and customers aren’t paying any quicker, something’s got to give right? This is one area where partners need to look at what their distributor can do to shorten the time from shipment to successful implementation. A big thing that Catalyst is doing is providing System Integration and programming on the IP Office system. Aside from loading cards, upgrading software and testing the system for DOA, we actually program the system to your customer’s specs. By the time the system arrives at the customer site, it’s rack and stack and training (which Catalyst can do remotely). If you’re like most partners, you ship the system to your facility to put on a bench to do  staging/programming in-house before sending it out to the enduser. This typically takes at least a week and in some cases causes you to incur freight charges. If you happen to have some DOA materials, it could take much longer. So, from a time from shipment to install, your interval is shorter by outsourcing to Catalyst which allows you to pay your bills timely without having to borrow from your bank. This also helps you maintain the best credit score with all of your vendors which ultimately helps you negotiate the best discounts in the long term. As for your technicians, this is also a great opportunity to evaluate how you use those resources to drive revenue. Could they be generating higher margin professional/ billable services? Going out on sales calls to close deals? Providing network consulting (for fee)? Just as exciting, in the coming months, you’ll see Catalyst announce the same program for Avaya ECG Communication Manager systems. The good news is these services are sku’d and easy to price and order. Click this link or call me to learn more.