Benefits of IP PBX for end-users (how to sell?)

[justher]

Hi! I am currently employed by a telco company; my job is to cold-call (hell, I hope I should'n explain what I do for a living; it's embarassing, really... Or not...) I have to arrange a meeting w/ a potential client; I usually talk to a newbie in telcos, so I have to be as non-technical as possible about the benefits of switching from standard PBX to IP PBX (although it may seem that IP PBX becomes the "standard".) Whenever I delve into technical details, my "victim" loses interest b/c s/he doesn't understand a thing. The question is how should I outline basic advantages to... say, a company's CFO whose domain is finances, not IT?

 

[bill001g]

Your problem is there may be no advantage. Many companies just care can I pick up the phone and dial a number and talk to people. They could care less if your product has 50 million call center options that will let you track employee productivity. If they don't actually need more features than their current system provides they you have to show a cost savings.

As I am sure you have found out many companies are very cheap they run their PBX with no service contracts so their operational costs are very low. They are in older buildings that already have dedicated wire for phones and data and it is unlikely they have enough extra network ports or have switches have the ability to allow the phone and pc to share a single port. It is a huge change that affects far more than just their phone system. Of course I have seen this argued that you use soft phone clients on the PC but then a smaller company may just figure out if they are going to put up with the hassle of a soft phone they might as well use skype for close to free and not even keep a pbx.

You would have to find a way to quickly find a feature you offer that would save them money and the return on investment must be very short. This is pretty much the only topic a CFO cares about.

The only huge money saving things I have seen are related to integration of the cell phones into pbx so you can use a single phone device and have it switch from internal wireless to telco network using the same phone numbers and not dropping calls. This type of feature add functionality and saves money...win win. Still you have to be working for a large enough PBX vendor to have relationships with cell providers in order to offer this.

You could also try to sell the saving of replacing physical PRI circuits with a sip trunking solution. This again assumes your company pbx has the integrated gateways that let you connect to the telcos that are providing the SIP trunk.

 

[justher]

Bill001g, thanks so much! No one wants to delve into seemingly unnecessary details when actually there is a huge difference whether you use an out-dated PBX or new technologies that by default lower your costs... I have cold-called for a few days now, and I am pretty certain that there are only a few people who are actually interested in the way things work. As you have said, if it works, it's already fine; "we need nothing else." My telco has contracts w/ many providers, so integration w/ a cell phone is achieved in many ways (e.g., a cell phone app that runs on Android, iOS, Symbian.) My company uses great softswitch w/ many features. The problem is to convey the message. To my knowledge, there aren't many companies that are ready to change the well-established and on-going system. Whenever I mention new technologies, people are reluctant to listen b/c they imagine great changes that would somehow paralise business. I would like to find the right wording to persuade them that there is nothing drastic about implementation of IP PBX, since cloud PBX assumes that PBX itself is someplace outside of company's premises, and that whatever "traditional" PBX they are using now is too out-dated for efficient client support (all the businesses have clients, so my telco has to supposedly improve communication w/ clients.)

I think for CFOs the concept of sip-trunking per se is too "farfaraway;" indeed, the only thing they care is cost-saving, but the problem is that I am not allowed to mention actual costs b/c my company has a strict policy against mentioning anything related to $. Whenever they mention their current price, I can't offer any price for the sake of comparison. All the $ are discussed only during a meeting, but my job is to arrange it, so it is not the question of offering cheaper solution. I can tell you that if I manage to arrange at least 1 meeting per day (making 50 calls to any kind of businesses,) I am SO HAPPY.