Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

One of the biggest frustrations for marketing is good, qualified leads that showed an interest but didn’t go anywhere. Not every lead you generate will convert, however when you have profiled your mailing list, crafted a campaign and generated some great opportunities, it is useful to know what went wrong.

Missed

The most common mistake when following up leads is leaving it too late to reply. With a prospect contacting you, there is a window of the same working day to respond. If you make contact in a timely manner, understand and meet the requirements, you will establish a relationship, which you can build from. By forgetting to respond and being reminded by the prospect, you are on the back foot and may have already given the competition a head start.

Misunderstanding

You have managed to hit the right person at the right time but you have misunderstood the requirement. He contacts you for pricing. If you can’t get hold of the prospect to fully understand his requirements, you may send the wrong information and miss the opportunity. The prospect may not have time to take sales calls, but without properly qualifying his requirement, the opportunity will be lost and the prospect challenging to re-engage with.

Large Corporates with voice and data SIMs

Corporates typically have a large estate of mobile phones. Many have relationships with the carriers directly and benefit from the latest handsets. Those coming out of contract are looking to compare deals. They don’t want to sign lengthy contracts and are looking to overcome overage charges and billing challenges. They often contract with more than one carrier.

The Solution

By analysing bill data, resellers can understand the mixture of high and low data users and create a compelling proposal. By creating an aggregated pool, resellers can build their pool size by assigning data SIMs to it. Pools and SIM packages are available on 30 day terms. There is a selection of packages and carrier networks to choose from and alerts can be set up to track usage. If usage exceeds pool allowance in any month, resellers can negate overage charges by drawing from their buffer pools, which offer a much more competitive per MB rate.

Multi-sited organisations with 4G back-up

Multi-sited organisations such as supermarkets, retailers, restaurants, gyms and hotels are using internet connectivity to run digital Point of Sale screens and door entry systems amongst other things. These customers want reliable internet connectivity and don’t want to pay huge overage charges when the 4G failover kicks in.

Pooled data is the ability to have 4G data, that can be shared across more than one associated SIM card. Pooled data plans are popular in both consumer and business markets, where unused data from low users is gifted to high users, to help negate overage charges.

What problems does pooled data solve?

Business customers find data usage difficult to predict, especially in phones and tablets, as so many factors can influence excess usage. If usage notifications from the carriers are late or not received, both customers and resellers are unaware of the data overage charge, until the bill is received. This has put many resellers off selling mobile data, as the bill shock caused by overages has upset their customers.

What types of pools are available?

Fixed pools are available for resellers who know how much data they need for their customer. Their monthly data usage is predictable, and the customer wants to pay for an amount of data each month, which can be shared across multiple users.

Aggregated pools are available for resellers whose customer’s SIM estates are growing or shrinking. The pool increases or decreases every time a data SIM is added or removed.

Buffer pools are available to help negate overage charges at an account and network level. You need to buy separate buffer pools for each carrier network, however you can use the buffer to negate any overage charge from that carrier in your estate. It reduces the data overage cost significantly.

When new partners sign up with Jola they visit the partner portal and download our white label materials to update their own. They often then get in touch to share their marketing experience, especially if they did not get the results they had anticipated.

Writing effective advertising copy can be tricky. We advise partners to start by outlining their key messages in a very clear and succinct way. What problem are you solving and how is your solution unique? Avoid exaggerated claims and unnecessary adjectives. How is your message compelling? How is your message engaging? You may have a list of unique products or features but this may not be engaging.

You need to attract attention, generate desire and provoke a reaction. Think carefully about who is reading your message to align the right message with the right audience at the right time. 

If you are targeting MDs, how will your product help to grow their business, cut costs or improve ARPU? How is this solution different from the competition? Where can they learn more? What do you want them to do if they are interested? MDs tend to be short on time, so asking them to read a long web page, white paper, guide or attend a webinar may not work, however offering a quick price comparison may pique their interest.

Coverage

EE is the UK's biggest mobile network, with 89% 4G coverage in the UK, 74% 3G and 85% 2G coverage. EE has the most phone masts, 18,500 sites, most of which are 4G. They are investing £2bn in network growth, with the objective of having 95% 4G coverage by 2020. 

Network

EE was named as the best mobile network, in terms of reliability and performance, by a number of independent sources. Ofcom’s report stated that consumers on the EE network were the most likely to connect to a 4G network.

EE M2M SIMs

Jola offers a range of EE M2M data-only solutions from 2GB to 200GB packages with 2GB to 100GB monthly bolt-ons. Fixed IP data-only SIMs are available on EE and Vodafone networks. EE products are available on 12 month contracts. Vodafone Fixed IP SIMs are available on monthly or 12 month contracts. EE SIMs are managed through APIs, so all controls are real-time. Vodafone guarantee execution within 2 hours during working hours. Pooled data options and buffers are available for partners looking to negate overage charges.

Demand

According to BT, 3.2 million ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines will be replaced over the next ten years with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Companies have the option of replacing their phone system with a cloud-based solution or retaining their phone system and replacing their ISDN lines with SIP. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a protocol used in VoIP communications. SIP trunking is a standards-based replacement for traditional ISDN. It connects the PBX (Private Branch Exchange) to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) via broadband or private circuit.

Save money

SIP is compatible with all the major PBX manufacturers. With SIP, physical trunks are replaced with virtual trunks called SIP trunks. When deciding how many SIP channels your customers need, ask how many simultaneous calls they need to make. Customers upgrading to SIP can save up to 40% on their phone bill.

Scalable solution

SIP is scalable, if you need more simultaneous calls, it is easy to add additional SIP channels. You can port existing numbers or choose new non-geographic numbers.

Reliable

By switching to SIP, platforms are hosted across multiple geographic locations, so if one data centre goes off line, the other will support the service. Support is available 24/7.

Demand from large corporates across Europe is increasing for simple 4G back-up solutions for primary circuits. Companies want fully operational, reliable solutions across multiple sites, which are cost-effective and easy to manage.

How much data do I need?

Predicting monthly usage per site is challenging in some industries, where usage patterns are erratic. Knowing how much data to order for each site can be challenging and also expensive, when you factor in overage charges.

Which network do I need in each site?

4G signal strength varies by location. Online checkers are available and engineers can be sent to site to measure signal strength, however if a mast fails, you are still vulnerable.

Shared data options

If you know how much extra data you need, you can order a pool of data for your SIM estate to share. If you have a growing estate, you can create an aggregated pool. Every time a new data SIM or bolt-on is added to the pool, the extra data can be shared with other assets assigned to the pool.

Multi-network SIMs

Multi-network EU roaming SIMs are designed to provide 24/7 internet access, even when one or more mobile networks fail. They have no preferred network, but always connect to the strongest 4G signal available. Jola’s multi-network SIMs operate in 42 countries in Europe and work on Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three in the UK. Pricing starts at £7 per month.

If you sell M2M SIMs to corporates for monitoring, or data SIMs for 4G back-up solutions, one of the first things you will want to know is, which network has the strongest signal in each location. Many partners use engineers to go to site to measure signal strength, to ensure the right network is deployed. Engineers charge on average £125 per visit. The second consideration is what happens if the primary network fails. With multi-network SIMs, you don’t need to worry about either problem, as they have no home and always connect to the strongest 4G signal. You may think that multi-network SIMs are expensive and still favour one network over another, but this is no longer the case.

Once you have a pool of candidates that have the desired skills and experience on paper, you will be filtering candidates for interviews. Many partners start by calling candidates and asking preliminary questions over the phone. If you do need to do this, be clear on your filtering criteria.

Telephone interviews

When conducting telephone interviews, it is useful for companies to go through employment history to understand why the candidate is looking to make a move. For candidates, telephone interviews are a good opportunity to ask questions to understand the role and remuneration on offer.

Face to face interviews

At Jola, we use a set of behavioural questions for face to face interviews. They generate real examples and allow us to probe further into the experience of each candidate. Can you tell me about a time when you…? How did you handle this? We look for evidence of each of our criteria and note down the positive, negative or no evidence presented. We avoid hypothetical questions and use probing questions to drill down further into answers given.

As a growing business, Jola recently advertised for a range of positions in sales, marketing, support and finance. We were lucky to have access to a pool of experienced staff, who share our values and have years of experience in the industry on our door step. Partners looking to grow their business by partnering with Jola, often recruit additional staff and sometimes struggle to find the right people. To help we have drafted a few blogs on recruitment, based on our own experiences.

Step 1 – get the job description just right

Writing a very specific job description, outlining key skills and experience, rather than copying a standard template is important. Think about your corporate culture, your company values, the role and how it fits into your organisational chart. What are your expectations in terms of performance? What skills and experience are essential? What can be learnt on the job?

Step 2 – decide on how to advertise the role

Do you invest in a recruitment agent or advertise the role yourself?

If you only advertise on your own website, your reach is limited. You can advertise on the top-ranking recruitment websites for as little as £55. It is worth researching how long your vacancy will be advertised for and analysing the web traffic.

LinkedIn recruitment offers a cost-effective way to post a job and receive filtered applicants based on your criteria. You can share the job and encourage others to share the job within your industry, with the aim of attracting a candidate with the skills and experience you require.

For some roles, specialised recruitment agencies are useful to headhunt on your behalf.

Advertising roles internally and offering refer-a-friend schemes are also very effective, low-cost ways of generating a pool of candidates to interview.