Monday, November 03, 2008

Selling Communications in a Recession

RingCentral is a VoIP Provider that Rich Tehrani at TMC talked to about selling in this economy.

In an economic slowdown, companies need to focus now, more than ever on their communications solutions. Today's technologies can make your company more efficient, save you money directly on communications costs as well as travel and even real estate.
What are the takeaways here? Small businesses are moving away from a centralized, physical office - working from home and on the road. They are also reacting rapidly to economic conditions as evidenced by the fact that almost three quarters are cutting overhead and a surprising 23% are cutting physical office space.
What is interesting is that in an environment where companies are looking to cut costs, they realize they can save money by being more productive and efficient. And the influx of new customers coming to RingCentral just show the world that today's communications services allow unprecedented levels of productivity and efficiency and ultimately pay for themselves quite rapidly. [TMC]

How are VoIP companies doing? Vonage is getting delisted. Cbeyond beat expectations. Packet8 is even. How are you doing?

As Rich says in another article, "We can without a doubt sell solutions to our customers which will make them more productive, save communications costs, save travel costs and in many cases save energy!" (See Cisco Energy Tax). Also, the President of Nortel's Enterprise Business says customers are now looking for ROI of a single year or even nine months! Focus on ways to boost efficiency, productivity and collaboration. If you can increase sales, that would help to (but without an actual case study, I don't know how you would prove that).

1 comment:

Peter Radizeski said...

Here's another way to look at selling today: If you really believe that your products, your service or your business is the best solution for someone, you have a moral obligation to stop them making a mistake! You have an professional obligation to ensure that this person gets to benefit from being one of your highly valued clients. [from Jim's Marketing Blog]