Module 5: Sales Skills

1. Module 5: Sales Skills

2. Characteristics of an Ideal Customer Describing the Service (e.g., The Elevator Pitch) The Customer Demonstration Sales Tools Handling Customer Objections Outline

3. Telecommunications plays a significant role in the organization’s operations (e.g., service businesses) Examples: travel agencies, consulting, call centers (e.g., sales, tech support), technology/engineering organizations Geographically distributed organizations Dynamic organizations (i.e., growth, distribution and/or contraction) Mobile and/or high-value individual contributors (e.g., sales, subject matter experts, attorneys etc.) Facing an impending event (e.g., physical move, corporate acquisition, new office, PBX lease expiration etc.) Characteristics of an Ideal Customer

4. Cloud-based Unified Communications services uniquely solve the telecommunications needs of the most complex and demanding customers One of the important aspects of selling a Cloud-based Unified Communications service is helping the customer understand the architecture and benefits without losing them in the technology. The Elevator Pitch enables you to define the service and its benefits in a few short sentences to convince the customer to give you the time to make your sales pitch. The goal of the Elevator Pitch is to get the appointment. Describing the Service / Elevator Pitch

5. Elevator Pitch Guidelines Brief (e.g., a few sentences, 5 seconds etc.) Tell “Who”: Your company Your sales team You Tell “What”: Must be generally applicable. Makes a value statement: Saves time Increases efficiency Reduces demand on internal resources Tell “How”: The proof. What is it that delivers the value? by storing all your information in one place by giving you access from any location by monitoring your service for you Avoid superlatives and adjectives (e.g., best, great) Avoid technical jargon and acronyms Compels the prospect to ask more; opens the door to the prospect interview Describing the Service / Elevator Pitch (cont’d)

6. Examples: ________is an integrated business unified communications service that improves your communications capabilities while saving you money. As a cloud-based service it provides a fully managed solution for all of your employees regardless of their geographic location. __________provides advanced capabilities without the capital expense or technical complexity of legacy alternatives. ________is a feature-rich business communications service that puts you in control and saves you money. As a cloud-based service, it eliminates the cost and complexity of owning and maintaining a premise-based solution and allows you to focus on your business goals. ________is the one-stop integrated solution for all your company’s voice and data needs. Describing the Service / Elevator Pitch (cont’d)

7. Tailor your sales presentation to the specific audience (e.g., CEO, CFO, Director of IT, Office Manager etc.) Determine their “hot buttons” so you can tailor your sales pitch to address their needs. What do they like/dislike about their current telecommunications solution? What are they using for their current telephone solution? If your offer includes integrated access/converged access, what about their Internet access? Data VPN? Typical audience hot buttons: CEO: improve productivity, improve customer service, reduce risk CFO: save money, increase efficiency of internal resources Sales: be reachable, build customer relationships Marketing: facilitate collaboration, improve customer service Note: The above are general guidelines. As with any sales situation, pain points will vary by organization and by individual. Selling Cloud-based Unified Communications

8. Selling Cloud-based Unified Communications (cont’d) Use the benefits/values chart below to develop your own Elevator Pitch for Cloud-based UC. Note: Most benefits of Cloud-based Unified Communications contribute to many of the value propositions, but some are more directly tied to specific values. For instance, predictable monthly costs is, most importantly, a benefit that saves money.

9. You need to know your prospect to make the value proposition compelling. Answers to these questions will give you the information you need to determine if your prospect is a good fit for Cloud-based UC Probing Questions (General) What type of business? How do you sell your product or service?Note: The advanced features of Cloud-based Unified Communications offer the greatest productivity advantages to sales, marketing and customer service professionals. What keeps you up at night? Selling Cloud-based Unified Communications (cont’d)

10. Probing Questions (Telephony) Are you happy with your service?Note: this can be your “can of worms” question which is why it’s a good first question. It can be your opportunity to listen. How many employees? What types of employees/telephone users? How many locations and where are they? Including home offices? What are you using today for communications? For voice? For data? How many vendors provide your service? Access, equipment, management, customer support? Which internal resources are dedicated to communications? How many bills do you pay? What is your average monthly communications cost? Selling Cloud-based Unified Communications (cont’d)

11. Take a few minutes and develop an answer to this problem: The Company: Clothing Manufacturer Size: 500 - 3000 employees depending on season Locations: One corporate location, 3 remote sales locations, one manufacturing plant Problem: The CEO is never in one place; sales managers often need to reach the CEO to close deals. He never answers the phone because he doesn’t want to be bothered with non-critical issues. Sales managers take clients on plant visits and need to ensure that the plant is fully staffed and operational during these often-impromptu visits; the plant manager is rarely accessible. How can a Cloud-based Unified Communications solution help? Exercise 1

12. Prospect demo guidelines: Of the extensive list of features, determine which handful will have the biggest impact on this particular audience. Scope down the hands-on demonstration based upon these “high impact” capabilities Client demonstration: Use your own mobile or desktop client that you are familiar with Click through the various screens to give them a sense of the organization and feature richness Actually demonstrate a few of the “high impact” features for this particular audience and engage the prospect in the demonstration Have the customer call your office and use Find-Me to receive the call on your cell phone. Click-to-dial to return a call from your missed call log (use your client as a demo) Play a voice message from your email client (e.g., MS Outlook) One click to open a meet-me conference Let your prospect “drive” the client The Demonstration

13. Don’t forget the phone Remember that the phone is highly featured; learn how to demonstrate your phone features; Note that some audiences may never touch the clients. It’s great to demonstrate, but demonstrate the feature richness of the service for the phone user as well. Some impressive phone features include: Multiple line appearances / Shared Line Appearances Call Grabber as Speed Dial on Phone and move a call between phone & your mobile & back Speakerphone Video Calling Touch Screen The Demonstration

14. Know which features best demonstrate the value that is most important to your prospect: The Demonstration (cont’d)

15. Ability to draw (in real-time) and explain a high-level network diagram and how hosted IP telephony simplifies their network Creates dialog as you draw the before/after pictures…helps you understand their current situation Demonstrates reduction in connections via convergence of voice and data Demonstrates ease of adding new locations Demonstrates centralization of complex and expensive elements Demonstrates your knowledge Elevator Pitch Brief description of the product and its value Sales Presentation More detailed explanation of the features and benefits of the product Feature Listing Laundry list of features Listing/Comparison of Telephone Models Pictures and descriptions of the different IP Phones and/or terminal adapters Assists the customer in selecting their CPE Note that the phone is the most visible and tangible part of the service…and the easiest part to forget to describe Telephone Quick Reference Card Tangible collateral that can be left behind Demonstrates common features and ease-of-use Useful Sales Tools

16. Quote Generator Ability to generate a quote on-demand based upon # of stations, minutes of use etc. Return on Investment (ROI) Calculator/Model Tool that demonstrates the financial benefit of the service compared to alternatives (e.g., PBX etc.) Local Case Studies / Reference Accounts Descriptions of similar customers, the telecom situation that they were facing, why they chose the service and how it worked out Referential customers generate credibility Blank/Prefilled Contracts Can’t sell without these Plan for success Client Demonstration Demonstrates the “cool” stuff Ability to engage the customer hands-on Telephone Demonstration Demonstrates that the service works just like their old one Very cool to drop a phone on their LAN and have it register automatically over the Internet (use with caution) Demonstration/Trial Accounts Limited accounts that the customer can test-drive for 7 days etc. Get them hooked Could be web-only or web+phone (unmanaged) Guarantees next-appointment to pickup the equipment Useful Sales Tools (cont’d)

17. Customer objections are opportunities to reinforce the value propositions of Hosted IP Telephony In many cases, customer concerns are based upon misunderstandings, misinformation or missing information Address objections by acknowledging the customers concern and providing relevant information and facts Target your response to the individual Technical people may appreciate a technical explanation Non-technical people need it explained in non-technical layman’s terms Addressing Customer Objections

18. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) does not mean Voice Over the Internet Early adopters played with PC-based Voice Over IP applications using the unmanaged Internet for free long distance and international calling. The voice quality often suffered for the following reasons: The unmanaged Internet can’t guarantee throughput These applications mixed voice and data WITHOUT using any voice priority mechanisms Many users tried to use these applications over dial-up connections These applications used extremely low bit rate software-based codecs due to limited bandwidth In the early days, PCs didn’t have the horsepower for real-time voice processing Business-class Cloud-based UC leverages Voice Over IP to deliver toll-quality voice over managed networks In nearly all cases, the voice traffic never touches the unmanaged Internet. Service providers engineer, monitor and manage their networks to ensure voice quality. In deployments that mix voice and data, advanced technologies are used to ensure voice quality including packet prioritization, bandwidth reservation and packet segmentation. In layman's terms, voice always goes first. The codecs supported by the service (i.e., G.711 and G.729) were selected for their ability to deliver the best possible voice quality. In fact, G.711 uses the same coding algorithm used within the PSTN. New High Definition codecs G.722 are also used. Addressing Objections: “Voice Quality”

19. Voice over IP is not new technology 1964 – Packetized voice first demonstrated as an element of early Internet Multimedia experiments but was deemed not viable due to bandwidth limitations 1995 - First commercial implementation of VoIP when VocalTec released Internet Phone Software that enabled PC-to-PC communication. July, 1996 – Net2Phone launches the first commercial VOIP service 1998 – SIP Introduced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Late 90s – Widespread use of packet-based “tie-lines” for PBXs Late 90s/Early 00s – Widespread use of IP telephony for toll arbitrage March, 2002 – Vonage service launch August, 2003 Skype launched a peer-to-peer (P2P) VoIP telephony service 2004 – Callvantage begins service. 2005 – VoIP quality issues addressed and VoIP traffic prioritization ensured reliability 2006 – FCC imposes CALEA (wiretapping), Universal Service and 911 obligations on VoIP 2007 – FCC imposes Number Portability and CPNI (customer privacy) obligations on VoIP 2008 – projected forecast of VoIP equipment sales over $8.5 billion 2009 – FCC Requires VoIP Providers to Notify Consumers of Plans to Discontinue Service 2010 – Truth in Caller ID Act enacted in US regarding transmitting misleading or inaccurate caller ID info 2012 – FCC Mandates VoIP service providers report on service outages Addressing Objections: “New Technology”

20. Cloud-based Unified Communications Services are designed and engineered for reliability Core network elements are carrier-grade and designed for high-availability Core network elements are housed in hardened facilities with backup power capabilities Service provider networks are designed and engineered for survivability through redundancy Service provider networks are professionally monitored and managed A premise-based solution that met these standards would be financially out-of-reach Cloud-based Unified Communications reduces the risk of outages caused by access transport failures by making redundant access more acceptable by leveraging the cost of a single backup transport to protect both voice and data Cloud-based Unified Communications gets the customer up and running faster in the event of a disaster Inbound calls can be automatically and instantly rerouted to an alternate phone Phone numbers can be instantly “re-homed” to an alternate phone or location for inbound and outbound calls instantly through an IVR and/or web page. Customer’s provisioning and configuration information resides at the service provider and is “backed up” regularly, thus destruction of the customer location doesn’t require “rebuilding” the applications Addressing Objections: “Reliability”

21. Cloud-based Unified Communications provides the best Return on Investment (ROI) over a 3-year, 4-year or 5-year period when compared to a PBX Minimal capital investment…and the investment is in standards-based reusable equipment (i.e., a router and standards-based IP phones) Ability to dynamically “right-size” and redistribute resources avoids sunk capital waste and investment in additional systems Predictable monthly expenses enable better budgeting and cost savings No maintenance contract required No skilled telecom staff required on staff Note that market hype has generated the expectation of massive savings as a result of VoIP. Customers need to be focused on the total impact to their bottom line including: cost reductions, efficiency enhancements, improved customer service, better reliability etc. Addressing Objections: “Cost”

22. IT IS! That’s why the customer should outsource it to the experts rather than trying to run their own internal telephone company Outsourcing reduces the complexity and eliminates the need for trained telecom staff on the payroll. Let the business focus on their business. Cloud-based Unified Communications reduces the complexity of the network by combining voice and data Single vendor reduces vendor management issues and “finger pointing” 7x24x365 professional monitoring and management keep things running without customer intervention The service provider regularly upgrades the service…no software installs to upgrade their PBX The Web Portal & VoIP Clients are designed to be intuitive and easy-to-use For traditional users that aren’t interested in the Portals or Clients, they never have to use it… and the phone works the same way it always did before Addressing Objections: “Complexity”