SC: There are two ways to go as a vendor - chop down enterprise products or build new ones. Vendors typically try to develop a new portfolio of products that offer a complete solution.
MSA: It is an uphill battle to sell complete solutions when customers have the simplicity of mobile phones and email. Customers don't understand and are worried they will need an IT person in case anything goes wrong.
SC: SMB customers want business benefits but it has to be simple because they don't have an IT department. They need an edge over their competitors and any advantage they can get is worth an awful lot to them.
MSA: That is easy for a vendor to say but what is my value proposition for VoIP when I pick up the phone and cold-call a potential customer? You can't sell business benefit on the first call.
SC: You need to understand the customer's business first and foremost so it comes down to good old-fashioned selling.
MSA: The reseller channel is interested in the great unwashed but we need vendors to provide the value proposition.
BB: If you go back 10 years, a company was competing against other companies but now networks of companies are competing against other networks - a network of Ford dealers is competing against Hyundai; 21st Century against Ray White. The biggest problem you have as an individual company is communicating with your partners. That is a business benefit of converged communications. Fancy stuff like presence means you can easily check if somebody 3000km away is at his desk rather than playing telephone tag.
AA: Vendors make a broad assumption that there is an SMB market they want to target but VoIP only has benefits for certain industries. The target is not horizontal so vendors need to come up with vertical solutions.
SC: We need to talk to end-users and create demand for you guys. Some of them don't even know what convergence is.
MSM: It isn't in any of our marketing material because it doesn't mean anything.
SC: We should be working together with you on marketing campaigns that are specific to your customers.
RB: The flipside to that is that sometimes I don't like taking vendors to meetings because I am selling a solution made up of multiple vendors and you guys say things you shouldn't. I can't control that. If it is my BDM that says something he gets a clip around the ear or loses his job.
SC: I guess it is offering the tools. One of the most important things SMB resellers want from a vendor is direct lines of communication. They will buy through distribution but want interaction with the vendor.
