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Despite appearances, Timmy was not Avaya Lab’s best and brightest..

“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

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 trusted advisor can help these customers find the right balance between wired and wireless ports so they can save money and be green.

A state university system recently used StatSeeker monitoring software to discover that a whopping 40% of their patched ports had ZERO usage for a period of 3 months.  The next time they refreshed their network, they were able to buy more than 2,000 802.11n AP’s with the money they saved in right sizing their wired ports.

If Sun Tzu were a business partner, this is precisely where he would attack Cisco who isn’t going to think about cannibalizing their sacred cash cow (switched ports). As Matt pointed out, you could build a whole business practice around this concept.

Good Selling,

Tom

Post Script: The above could be combined with my previous post to produce new client relationships.

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 architecture, call center programming/vectoring, business continuity plan, network services, etc? Different discovery results for different decision makers of course. The thing is, if a new CFO, CIO, CTO, COO, CRO comes on the scene — they’re not looking to be in “caretaker” mode. They see themselves as coming in and fixing or improving things and all they have is the biased, self preserving story they get from their people in- house.  So you hit these guys when they’re fresh on the scene and you help them figure out what they’re really dealing with. If you do that, I would think you’ve got a ironclad partnership with a new client, no? 

So how do you build a systematic approach to hit these guys when the ink is drying on their business cards? If you read my post a couple days ago titled Sales Lead Hack, you probably know where I’m going with this. Build a google alert that emails you press releases and news flashes on new C-Level decision makers (and promotions). I built a google alert with the search terms ““new cio”, OR “new cto”, OR “new cfo” and got an email telling me about several new hires. One is a new CIO for an regional electrical/cabling/building contractor. The article says he wants to find new revenue streams so I’m going to see if he wants to build a wireless networking practice. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t..but I like my odds.

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?

Hopefully these are as insightful/useful as they are humorous. Feel free to share with your clients..

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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 these types of articles and press releases, click on “create an email alert..”. Result: free leads emailed to you every day. With a little practice, you can tweak the searches to get the best results.

Good Selling,

Tom

As per usual..

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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
  4. Enterprise Application Integration and Management
  5. Continuity Planning and Disaster Management – Avaya Mobility Solutions (One-X, etc), Juniper SSL VPN, Meeting Exchange, CEBP, SIP, etc..

• Top CIO concerns are as follows (also with my suggestions):

• 1. Business Productivity and Cost Reduction – Avaya CEBP, Self Service Applications, Unified Communications
  2. IT and Business Alignment – Depends on the business unit, Sales may want to enable remote workers and traveling sales people with Avaya mobility applications for example.
  3. Business Agility and speed to Market – Avaya CEBP, Meeting Exchange, Unified Communications..
  4. IT Cost Reduction – Managed Services, Virtualized Aura UC, Single OS for Juniper or Extreme (vs. 1800 versions with Cisco)
  5. IT Reliability and Efficiency – Modular OS based, carrier grade network with Extreme and/or Juniper
  6. IT Strategic Planning – You!
  7. Revenue Generating IT Innovations – Avaya Proactive Contact Centers, IP phone ads, XML applications, etc..
  8. Security and Privacy – Juniper, Sipera..
  9. CIO Leadership Role

Good Selling,

Tom