[Asterisk-biz] Re: Selling asterisk-based solutions

[Jason Becker]

(Redirecting your post to *-biz)

From: "David Gurr" <david.gurr at congruity.co.uk>
To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 16:13:20 +0100
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Selling asterisk-based solutions
Reply-To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com

I'm curious as to folks experiences in selling asterisk-based solutions.

In sales-speak, what are the common "compelling reasons to buy"?

I can think of the following potential ones, but I'm keen to find out what
seems to work in practise:

-	Customer wants to cut cost of calls, implements * and signs up to a
VoIP/PSTN gateway
-	Customer wants a new PBX but doesn't want to pay typical PBX prices
-	Customer has a distributed user base across offices and homes, and wants
to cost effectively integrate them into one PBX
-	Customer wants flexibility in configuration - needs might change rapidly

Thanks

--
David Gurr
Congruity Ltd.
Hemel Hempstead, UK


***

In large part I think it depends what segment of the market you are targetting.

For small businesses that are used to maybe having 4 lines on a rotary system and "jumping" everytime the phone rings, giving them an IVR, Call groups (Sales, Technical Support) and Voicemail is a big improvement over what was there before. They can also avoid or reduce costs. e.g. Rather than giving everyone (e.g. 8 people) a phone line that has voicemail provided by the telco, drop in a PBX, reduce the number of lines to say 4 and give everyone voicemail on the telephony server (further reducing costs). For these businesses you basically compete on the low end with Key System Units (KSUs) and on the high end with traditonal PBXs.

For small to medium businesses (i.e. PRI/T1) displacing a system like say Artisoft's TeleVantage will save them thousands in licensing. But these types of organizations may have integrated apps that are non-trivial to integrate into *.

For organizations that have multiple office locations I think you'll compete with IP-Centrex (i.e. hosted) solutions.

Cheers

-- 
Jason Becker
Director & CEO
Coalescent Systems Inc.
403.244.8089
www.voxbox.ca