[asterisk-users] Marketing 101

[Robert Goodyear]

Agreed. Highly-considered purchases like telco infrastructure are not  
as much a push as a pull sale. It's about being in the right place at  
the right time with all the right answers. Almost like buying a home.  
Since the turnover is SO long with core business process equipment,  
it's almost a beauty contest when the time comes around.

A better analogy would probably be in luxury car buying. You need to  
look good, have a good feature set, be luxurious to drive, have all  
the right bells and whistles above and beyond basic requirements, and  
then of course have a track record of reliability and great service.

Just my $.02
-- 

-------------------------------------------
Robert Goodyear
Managing Partner
Brand Up LLC
Knight West

949.542.7001 DIRECT
949.542.7010 FAX
888.272.6387 x501

robg at brand-up.com
robg at knightllc.com
-------------------------------------------

On Apr 25, 2007, at 10:52 AM, SIP wrote:

> 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.
>>>
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>>>
>>
>> --
>> Building Strong Relationships w/ Intelligent Customer Service
>> --
>>
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>> 856-380-0894 x5000
>>
>>
>>
>>
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