March 1998

BY RICH TEHRANI

"No one has ever made a dime selling CTI." It’s difficult to imagine that a more negative statement can be made about computer-telephony integration. However, before you turn the page due to my perceived insanity, read on: there’s a method to my madness. Our most recent subscription analysis reveals that almost 50 percent of our readers are involved in selling, reselling, and developing telecommunications or computer products and services. CTI resellers have incredible potential to increase their sales dramatically in the upcoming years. CTI — and more broadly, voice and data integration — are among the fastest growing industries today. There are tremendous opportunities for resellers who target these markets, provided they realize how to position themselves and the products they sell.

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE
Our parent company, TMC, has first-hand experience in just how the reseller channel works. Two years ago, we needed a new PBX, as our aging key system was showing signs of deterioration. We were also ramping up for future growth and were concerned that the current key system in use gave the wrong image to incoming callers. We were the perfect company for an inter-connect to want as a customer. Due to our rapid growth, we have since upgraded our PBX almost every quarter, and the reseller has made great margins on most of the upgrades.

T M C had be publishing Telemarketing & Call Center Solutions ™ magazine since 1982, and as such, we were intimately familiar with the PBX market. We knew who the players were and looked at about five vendors very closely before making a purchasing decision. As we were gearing up to launch CTI ™ magazine at that time, we were very well versed in the market and knew what we needed to look for in a PBX. Three of our in-house computer and electrical engineers were given the task of selecting the best PBX for our company. The president, the call center management, and myself all met and gave general guidelines to the assembled buying team.

THE ART OF THE DEAL
Amazingly, the interconnects’ approach made or broke every deal. The buying team was not wooed by a description of the PBX’s features, but by presentation. The flashiest presentations lost the sale. Our engineers ignored the flash. One of the most suitable PBXs we were to buy lost out, due to a presentation by the reseller that did not fit the needs of our buying team. Let’s refer to this PBX vendor as vendor A.

TMC’s engineers made an appointment to visit vendor A’s reseller. Once they arrived, they were immediately brought to the reseller’s demo room. What followed was a sales presentation that explained that this vendor’s CTI was the best. The team was wowed with screen shots, screen pops, conference calls and other demos for over an hour! Vendor A had the BEST technology and the best presentation but still lost the sale. Having been in sales at a prior stage in my career, I sympathize with the interconnect who spent untold hours preparing this demonstration. As a businessman, it pains me to see a company devote large amounts of effort in the hopes of getting a sale, only to be rejected by the potential customer. In this instance, the PBX vendor A had prepared us to buy their product through excellent marketing and well deserved reputation. They lost the sale at the hands of the reseller.

Why Did They Lose The Sale?
When I asked the team why they decided to exclude vendor A, I was told that the interconnect focused 100 percent of their sales pitch on the CTI links and screen pops and not on the PBX itself. Vendor A has a great reputation but the reseller forgot to mention it. "If the presentation focuses so much on the CTI hype and excludes the PBX, what’s wrong with the PBX?" they reasoned.

Who Did Make The Sale?
Vendor B’s reseller had an easier job to do. Vendor B has been in business forever and has a truly great reputation coupled with great public relations and advertising. The reseller didn’t concentrate so much on reliability, and frankly, we didn’t need the reassurance. They too pushed their CTI links, which were first rate. This PBX vendor was so large, that they passed the expense of their tremendous overhead onto us. They were 30–40 percent more expensive than vendor A.

The interconnect for vendor C presented us with a methodical sales presentation. Initially, the interconnect presented us with the history of the PBX vendor in question. We were then presented with information on the PBX model we were looking at. We were made aware of the longevity of the specific PBX model in the marketplace. Finally, the interconnect stressed reliability and support. Pricing was similar to vendor A.

We had a tough choice ahead of us. Vendor B’s reputation was golden. They had huge market share and few problems we knew of in the field. Vendor C was much smaller. The interconnect for vendor B did a great job of assuring us that both he and the PBX vendor would be around for a long time to come. Vendor B got the sale.

Is TMC A Typical Customer?
Perhaps TMC is not the typical buyer. You must admit that the logical, methodical approach the engineers used was sound. Consider this story when developing your sales presentations.

LESSONS LEARNED
The most important lesson we can learn from this experience is to be careful what you say and how you present products to potential customers. You can kill a deal very quickly, without realizing it. Resellers need to come up with a methodology for selling a solution, not a product.

Furthermore, it is important to realize that the "T" in CTI stands for telephony. Telephony is mission-critical in every organization and in every situation. Regardless of whether you sell voice mail, unified messaging, IP telephony gateways, or PBXs, you must remember that these products must be 100 percent reliable and work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

First, Sell The Company
Then recommending to your customer that they buy a specific CTI product, place a great deal of focus on the reputation and installed base of the company in question. Referring to satisfied customers who are willing to give references is always a plus. Remember, the customer’s business stops working when the CTI product you sold them stops working. Assure them of the company and the product. Then, reassure them. If you are not completely certain of the reliability of the product you are selling, don’t sell it. There are so many products and so many companies rushing to get into the market that some products are released before they are ready. Make sure to consult a review from an independent source, such as a trade magazine or analyst, that is respected by the industry before carrying products from a new vendor that you are unsure of.

Second, Address The Correct Problem
This issue is somewhat tougher, requiring you to ask questions and then quietly listen and take notes. Customers buy solutions. Technology and products merely facilitate solutions to some problem that your customer has. First, both you and your customer need to determine if there is indeed a problem that needs solving. Then, once that is determined, the solution must address the specific needs of the company.

Here are some guidelines on things to look for in a potential customer coupled with some potential CTI products that should be appropriate for the given situation.

But...
What you would need, however, are numerous alliances with related resellers in your area. Find reputable companies in related markets and get together with the local resellers for those companies. The most immediate advantage will be the ability to share new sales leads with each other. Your new-found alliances will put you in the position to sell complete solutions. Customers loathe dealing with multiple vendors. The reseller that makes the purchase easy for the customer invariably gets the sale.

These are revolutionary times in telecommunications. You will soon be competing with companies who are not in your space today. Networking vendors may sell PBXs directly in the future. Microsoft might start selling NT-based PBXs at CompUSA. Remember that PC-PBXs are already being successfully sold through mail order. Properly targeting your customers and marketing to their real needs is what will allow you to compete. Allying yourself with other vendors with common goals will ensure longevity.

APPLICATION STORIES
To facilitate further growth in the CTI market, we will soon be devoting more pages of CTI ™ to application stories. It is our goal at CTI ™ magazine to help resellers and users of CTI understand the potential of the products in the market and help them make intelligent purchasing decisions through unbiased, in-depth editorial. We are also working to have every back issue of all our magazines on our Web site at www.tmcnet.com. Use our site as a sales and purchasing resource and send us your comments (to webmaster@tmcnet.com) on how we can improve it to help you even more.

CONCLUSION
In summary, make sure not to get too excited about CTI technology just for technology’s sake. Understand what the products can do for your customer. If you focus on the needs of your customer at all times, you will excel as a reseller and help this industry continue its dramatic growth. We at TMC wish you the best of luck and success in reselling or purchasing new CTI products.

If you have experiences that you feel will be useful to the readers of our magazine, please feel free to e-mail them to rtehrani@tmcnet.com, so that we can take a look at them, and even publish some as real-life examples for our readers to learn from.

CTI resellers are in high demand. Unfortunately, they are also in short supply. There are countless new prod-ucts and solutions that need a reseller channel. These products provide much greater margins than the existing com-puter/ networking market has to offer. The opportunities are everywhere. CTI EXPO, in Baltimore, MD, May 19–22, is the best place for you to learn how to profit on a grand scale from the latest developments in equip-ment technology and distribution. Our conference tracks will deal with a number of topics related to making you more money selling CTI. Experts from companies like Summa Four and Centigram Communications will be among the presenters of con-ference tracks such as:

• Profitable International Callback Systems.
• Cellular Development and Deployment.
• Creating Calling Card Applications.
• Choosing The Right Products For Resale.

Furthermore, Ingram Micro will sponsor a free session titled How To Become The Most Profitable CTI Reseller. They will share their front-line experience with resellers of all types. Whether you are an intercon-nect or a traditional VAR, you MUST attend this FREE session to learn how to become the profitable reseller ever.

For more information on registering or attending, visit our Web site at www.ctimag.com