The Economy: A Curse and a Blessing (Utilizing Social Media)

Today's extremely competitive economy is both a curse and a blessing. For those who want to run their business on an antiquated model, a decade behind the times, it is a curse. Those who are taking advantage of new technology and learning a more personalized way of of doing business are seeing it as a blessing. The Internet and social media have changed the way we do business. We are now connected to one another in a variety of mediums which are able to communicate data in a very personalized manner. No longer do we have to fly all over the country to introduce ourselves to prospects. It no longer takes millions of dollars for a start-up company to compete against the big boys. Now you just have to be smarter, more creative, and more personable.

Every day you wait to engage in social media, you fall behind your competition. Devote an hour a day to Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, Linkedin, and YouTube. Write interesting articles that offer value to people, and create videos for YouTube so people know who you are and can identify with you on a personal level. Find ways to add value through these avenues and find ways to be creative in making new contacts with people. Remember, be personal. Tweeting out advertisements for your business all of the time is not a great way to build rapport with people. It would be like you going to a dinner party and and blabbing about your company and product all night to everyone you meet.  Once they know and like you, they will know what kind of business you have, and be willing to do business with you when the opportunity presents itself.

Is a Hosted PBX Solution Really Your Best Value?

IP-PBX VS the Average Cloud Product

The Dilemma

Many companies today are faced with a dilemma of sorts in trying to decide what direction to take their business communications in. Do they go with a premise based IP-PBX solution, or do they take their company in the offsite hosted direction? Hosted marketing material boasts a low monthly cost and a low maintenance model, while the premise based solution boasts more control and the advantage of not being tied to a monthly cost for the life of the business’s communications needs. In order to make a good choice based on the facts, we must closely examine the real cost, features, and benefits of each. 

Are You In Control?

As soon as you make the decision to hand off your communications needs to a hosted company, you are no longer in control. Although your hosted company may boast of having essentially no “downtime” you are still at the mercy of the hosted provider’s connections, data center issues and your local internet company. Also, you are not able to troubleshoot issues as easily as you can with a premise based system. Having a hosted solution adds another layer of support to your model; just like calling the phone company. That means you have to rely on someone who may be located halfway across the globe to help you troubleshoot your problems. Your local IT group or local communications vendor can be available in person to troubleshoot your premise based solution. Finally you can customize and make changes to a premise based system much easier than a hosted. You control the system, its upgrades and growth. The key question is, do you want control? 

Is Hosted Really A Better Value?

The short answer is no, it is more expensive. To start with, in order to compare apples to apples we are going to break both solutions into a monthly cost. The one misleading marketing tactic that the hosted providers do is compare a large upfront cost of a premise based solution vs. an apparent low monthly cost of the hosted. They also fail to tell you that you are going to be paying their monthly cost forever, as long as you use their service. The truth is, once you break the IPitomy premise based solution down to a monthly payment, the hosted solution begins to lose its shine. Additionally, when you begin to compare them feature for feature, the IPitomy premise based system for example, really leaves the hosted competition lacking. 

Is Hosted Really Invincible?

A hosted PBX runs over the Internet! No Internet, no phones! Are you really going to forward all of those lines to cell phones while the cable or Internet company fixes that outage? On a premise based system you can have two service providers. A traditional PRI for example, and Internet based SIP lines. Why put all of your eggs in one basket when you can diversify? Can a premise based system crash? Sure, save your backups and use a RAID drive and a redundant power supply to drastically reduce your chances of an outage. If you have a reliable interconnect, you will have the proper backups and replacement equipment available to get back up quickly in case of an outage. Finally, one good reason to use the Cloud, is for backup. You can have your IP phones hit the Cloud in an emergency if your premise based system completely dies. To sum it up, a premise based system gives you more options for system redundancy that a pure Cloud solution. 

Well What About Service Costs?

The great pitch of the hosted salesman is to tell you that you never have to worry about service again! Even with hosted, phones still go bad, and if you have a bad one, you have may have to wait to get a new one mailed to you. If you are experiencing problems, dropped calls, buttons not working, etc., you have to call someone on the phone and haggle with them to determine what the problem is. Then you may still be wrong and find out you have a network problem! Is it really worth paying all of that extra money every month to have to do the troubleshooting yourself? Why not save those hundreds of dollars a month, and when you have a problem, someone can actually come out and talk to you personally and solve it for you? I guarantee that the amount of money you will spend on service will not even come close to the money you are wasting every month for that “invincible” system that you still don’t own. Looking at the comparison example, which you will see on the next page, once the equipment is paid for a business would save close to $4000.00 a year for a small 20 phone system. 

IPitomy Wild West Part I Marketing Video

Keep checking back to the saga of John!

Sales tip #5: It is Not About Statistics and Features, It is About Personalization

One of the major mistakes sale people make, is that when they have the first opportunity to speak to a prospect they quickly tell them as much as they can about their product or service. It is like a fire hose gone wild! No one wants to waste a valuable opportunity, and we certainly want to make the most out of it. Unfortunately rattling off all of the features and statistics about your offering is not really making the most out of your opportunity, its wasting it. There are a few key rules to keep in mind when you make a sales call.

Do They Like You?

People don’t usually buy from people they don’t like. If at the first opportunity you start listing off every feature you can remember about your product or service, they probably are not going to like you very much. They think you just want to sell them something, and that is usually a big turn off for people. Be friendly, ask questions so you can learn about your prospect and start to build rapport with them. As you begin to understand who your client is and what his wants, needs or desires are, you can then begin to advise him on how your product or service could benefit them.

Do You Personalize Your Product?

Prospects don’t necessarily care about features, they want to know what value you can provide. For example, I work in the telecommunications industry. Instead of telling a prospect that your phone system can have remote phones, why not personalize the feature for them? For example, do they ever wish that their key employee who is home with their sick kid could answer some important calls instead of being completely out of commission for the day? Have they ever considered letting some employees work from home to save costs on office space? Personalization is extremely important.

Do You Know Your Prospect’s Motivation To Buy?  

What idea does the prospect have in mind when considering this new purchase? It is important to determine why your prospect wants to buy. What benefits do they perceive, and what outcome do they desire? When you go shopping for a car don’t you normally picture yourself driving that shiny new cool BMW or Lexus before you buy it? Then you decide test drive it, and finally you desire to have that imagined outcome become a reality and then you buy. Everyone who buys something has an outcome in their mind which motivates them. If you do not know that motivation or desired outcome you will have a hard time selling.

If you keep these three questions in mind when you approach new prospects you will have a much better shot at completing the sale.