[asterisk-users] Marketing 101

[SIP]

Businesses RARELY are in a position to choose new Telco systems 
providers. Oftentimes, that sort of decision is made by whomever leases 
them the office space, or was made once back in the beginning, and 
they've had no real reason to re-evaluate their service/provider. There 
are, however, plenty of Telco events where the providers hawk their 
wares and the installers tout their expertise.

Cold Call/Networking/Word of Mouth are decent methods of getting your 
name out there as an alternative, but be prepared to run into a great 
many situations in which the system or provider they have 'works well 
enough' so they're not interested in changing.


shadowym wrote:
> Thanks for the advice.
>
> Maybe I should clarify what I was asking.  It's not so much the how but the
> what.  
>
> What are people doing to get PBX Sales/Support business.  I know how to get
> IT business but potential customers still see the Telco business as quite
> different and are used to using separate companies for that.
>
> What I was asking is how the traditional telco guys get new
> sales/support/consulting business.  With IT it's usually a combination of
> cold call/networking/word of mouth.  I'm hoping that Telco is the same but I
> never see any telco guys at networking events so I am thinking they cold
> call and advertise targeted at business owners.  I'm not sure though.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dave cantera [mailto:david.cantera at iacnet.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 9:12 PM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Marketing 101
>
> shadowym,
> best thing to do is talk to a lot of consultants, coaches, and marketing
> people...  take the approach you do with learning open source only reverse
> it...  instead of reading source (internal) ask people (external)... it is a
> big undertaking and the most important task you 
> have...   marketing is a bigger task than the technical (for a tech 
> anyway)   don't go it alone....
>
> nothing happens without marketing (and sales)...  marketing is *not*
> sales...
> daveC
>
> shadowym wrote:
>   
>>  
>> I have some general questions about marketing.  Lot's of technical 
>> info but I was wondering how people are getting the business to begin 
>> with.  I'm from the IT end of things but Telco is quite a bit 
>> different.  Is cold calling still the way to go or networking?  General
>>     
> stuff like that.
>   
>> Are there any resources on the web I can search for?  Any suggestions 
>> would be appreciated.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
>>
>> asterisk-users mailing list
>> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>>
>>
>>
>>   
>>     
>
> --
> Building Strong Relationships w/ Intelligent Customer Service
> --
>
> Interlocking Business Solutions, LLC
> 856-380-0894 x5000
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> --Bandwidth and Colocation provided by Easynews.com --
>
> asterisk-users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>    http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>