Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Adoption rates of hosted telephony are increasing as SMEs look to reduce the costs and complexities of business telephony. Here are the top three reasons why you may see deals go from 90% on the forecast to 5% at the last minute.

They are still in contract

They have reviewed potential suppliers, had a demo and were pleased with the proposal, but realised that they are still in contract with their existing supplier. There were significant cancellation charges, which is why the sale was lost. This puts the existing supplier in a good position to negotiate a reduction in fees by upgrading the system themselves and takes you out of the running. When quoting a new opportunity, it is important, to check the existing supplier contract for penalties to save everyone time.

Decided to stay with the old platform

Customers are resistant to change and although the financials make sense, the team may not be completely on-board with the perceived hassle of moving phone systems. It is important at this stage to understand the resistance and where it is coming from. If it’s the Office Manager for example, sit with him/her and talk about their day to day concerns and see if you can allay fears. Demonstrate new functionality to encourage advocates rather than resistors. Ensure the new system meets all the requirements of the old system and involve the right people in the changeover process and the deal could be salvaged.

Choose your partnerships carefully

Crafting the right relationships with suppliers is very important, as it can have a significant impact on your business. Companies have been put off selling connectivity, hosted voice and mobile from bad experiences with suppliers in the past. It is important to do your research, review contract terms and contact references, to try to avoid engaging with the wrong suppliers.

Don’t try to do everything yourself

It is tempting as a business owner to do it all yourself. Negotiate the contract, participate in product and portal training, plan the marketing campaign and sell, as well as running the billing and taking all the support calls. By recruiting and training the right people, you will have more time to focus on helping the business grow. If you can outsource functions that are not core to your business then consider doing so. Some of your suppliers will offer white label installation, support and billing options you can use until it is more economical to bring it in-house. 

It’s continuous

Marketing, just like sales, is a continuous process. Whether you are a one-man band or a multi-million-pound organisation, you are always promoting your company with a view to winning new business.

Jola partners, looking for marketing support, are often thinking about a single campaign to promote a new product. Those that view marketing as part of their continuous sales strategy are often more successful. These partners update their website, add to their proposal templates and create new support documentation. Their sales teams are trained and sell new services alongside core services.

It helps to build relationships

Building relationships in marketing is just as important as in sales. Partners often approach Jola with a new database and are hoping for copy to instantly generate leads. Unless they first build the relationship, marketing is likely to have a similar hit rate as sales would cold calling. By researching the list to understand who you are talking to, what existing solutions they have, any issues and alternative solutions etc. you can tailor your messaging and improve your hit rate.

Marketing helps to build relationships by making an introduction, who you are, services you provide and how you can help to meet an existing requirement. Marketing campaigns need to grab attention, generate interest, desire and provoke an action for sales to follow up.

iPhone X

The iPhone X is coming soon with a price tag of around £999. The new model has an all-new 5.8-inch super retina screen, durable glass, wireless charging, Face ID, TrueDepth camera, A11 bionic chip and iOS 11.  It is widely anticipated and due to arrive in the UK in November.

Apple iPhone Upgrade Programme

As in the consumer world, the trend in small businesses is away from 24-month, handset and airtime contracts and towards buying your own phone and taking a monthly SIM-only deal. For users looking to trade in older iPhone models for the latest handset not wanting to spend £999 upfront, Apple has a solution.

The Apple iPhone Upgrade Programme. It’s a bit like an interest free loan for individuals. The cost of the iPhone and AppleCare Plus is spread over 24 months. At the end of the 24 months the user owns the phone. After 12 months, they have the option to upgrade so can have a new phone every year.

The latest iPhone will appeal to tech enthusiasts and switching is seamless with data stored in the cloud. Users then have a choice of SIM-only providers for their service. To provide more than one network, trusted providers turn to SIM-only wholesalers like Jola.

This is the question we get asked the most. If you have customers wanting to use 4G data to connect devices to the internet, how is the usage controlled, particularly when customers go beyond the alliance in their bundle?

You may have companies with Wi-Fi devices in taxis, buses and coaches or customers providing a Wi-Fi network in guest houses and coffee shops. Trusted partners supplying the 4G SIM cards want to know how they can manage the data and therefore the costs to combat monthly bill shock.

Jola partners use Mobile Manager. It is a complete end-to-end management portal for estates of mobile SIMs. You can activate SIMs, monitor usage, set-up alerts and add bolt-ons or bar SIMs as required to prevent bill shock in most cases. It is one portal, where SIMs from multiple networks and fixed IP SIMs can be managed directly by partners and their end users as required.

SMEs in rural areas without access to fast fibre broadband are turning to 4G as an alternative. 4G is the fourth generation of mobile communication technology and the successor to 3G. 

3 ways to connect

You can connect devices using a 4G router, mobile broadband hotspot device or by tethering from a smartphone.

Benefits

SIM-only contracts are available on 30 days, which is useful for temporary sites. 4G is fast allowing remote workers to easily access cloud-hosted applications. It is a portable solution which works anywhere with a good 4G signal in the UK. There is no need for a telephone line, broadband or a lengthy contract.

Things to note

There may be a limit set by some mobile providers on tethering. You need to keep an eye on usage as mobile data is not usually unlimited and out-of-bundle charges can be high. It is usually more expensive than fibre broadband, which is generally unlimited.

When choosing a new supplier there are few things that are expected, good quality products, excellent pricing, great portals and good support. Most suppliers advertise these elements, however few single out customer service as a differentiator. Companies like Rackspace tend to be the exception rather than the rule, advertising fanatical support as an ethos.

Does a track record for great customer service influence your decision?

When you are looking for a new supplier do you ask for references or service statistics? The companies I spoke to at a recent channel event don’t. The feedback I gathered was that decisions had been made on price. This was to ensure the end user had their requirements met at the right price with enough margin for the reseller. Companies were prepared to accept lower levels of service for the products at the price point they needed, until they felt their business was no longer valued and other suppliers could offer a competitive alternative. Companies that had been burnt by poor service delivery in the past, were much more interested in support available.

Research from Forrester’s

A recent report by Forrester’s stated that 71% of companies felt that valuing their time was the most important thing a supplier can do to provide them with a good service. This seems to work in the channel, with companies demanding high-quality, self-service portals to manage quoting, ordering and provisioning of services directly. End users are often on the phone demanding answers and partners don’t want to wait for third party answers.

73% of companies said that voice was the most important communications channel with web self-service, web chat, social media and email closely behind. Many channel suppliers have support portals, videos and guides, which often can be re-branded for partners to send to their end users to manage changes themselves. Most have ticketing systems they respond to within SLA and some suppliers are using social media to communicate with customers.

We are getting the emails about Mobile Manager, but we don’t do mobile as a rule, as it’s too competitive and too difficult to manage.

It’s too competitive

The mobile space is competitive. How can we compete? We don’t have the resource to manage handset queries, returns, upgrades etc. and don’t have a billing platform to manage overages.

Customers come to us with package requirements and price points we can’t buy at never mind sell for and we don’t have the resource to manage multiple suppliers.

Have you thought about going SIM-only?

Do your customers need to upgrade to the latest handsets? If you have customers working within the NHS, healthcare, charities etc. they are more likely to be focused on saving money than having the latest handset.

You may have low users, making very few calls and texts who hardly use their data package. Many business users want unlimited calls and texts but want to choose their data allowance to suit their requirement. There will be some customer types, financial services for example, where having the latest handsets and hardware funds is also attractive.

Partnering with companies such as Jola, gives you access to differentiated packages and competitive pricing. By partnering with one company you get access to the best deals from two networks, O2 and Vodafone, with EE in the pipeline. We create packages to suit every pocket and are unique in our ability to tailor packages with additional bolt-ons, available when required.

It’s too difficult to manage

Without a portal to pro-actively monitor usage, how do we protect customers from overages? We have had customers taking their devices abroad not realising how expensive it is to use their phone and download files in some countries.

There isn’t a single supplier in the UK voice and data industry that owns and operates 100% of the infrastructure on which their products and services depend. The emergence of the cloud has encouraged many centres of excellence to flourish and interconnect. This enables channel suppliers like Jola to knit best-of-breed suppliers together with software and service wraps to match the needs of our resellers and dealers. However, this approach brings with it unique challenges in support and incident management.

How quickly are you notified?

Should an incident occur, you need to know what the problem is and how long it will take to be fixed. You want to be on the front foot, pro-actively contacting your customers with detailed communications regarding the incident. If all suppliers in the chain do not have a well thought-through incident management process, a wave of dissatisfied end-user customers will quickly build, with the last reseller in the chain taking the brunt of the criticism. Organisations not used to dealing with the channel may not understand the imperative for fast, accurate information. Those that are not channel-only will often prioritise their direct customers over their channel partners.

How should it be done?

Ideally incidents are categorised by priority. We use the UTIL guidelines categorising incidents by impact and urgency, P1, P2 etc. Suppliers need to get the initial communication out to customers within the first 30 minutes (we aim for 15) explaining the issue. It is important to have clear communication between the engineers working on the problem and the support team managing calls and communications. Updates need to be at least hourly. Communication paths need to be established in advance between suppliers and departments for effective updates.

Jola recently exhibited at Channel Live at the NEC. It was a great opportunity for IT and Telecoms providers to compare suppliers side-by-side. For Jola, the event was a success as we achieved the targets we set. How do you measure the effectiveness of your sales and marketing?

Do you use these measures?

Key marketing metrics are leads generated, conversion rates and spend against budget. Brand awareness, product and messaging recall and customer satisfaction indexes are also useful. For sales, it is revenue and margin against target across the portfolio, as well as growing active partners. Effective sales and marketing teams will regularly achieve targets set in line with the business plan.

What are the must-haves?

When partners ask us about setting up new sales and marketing campaigns for our products, we start by looking at objectives and targets to measure success against. As a starting point partners need the right products at the right price to support their customers and want appropriate self-service portals and white label services. They want a reliable supplier, who will work with them to fix problems and help their customers improve productivity and save money.

Materials

Next they need materials to help generate new leads, information to populate their web site and customer newsletters. They want detailed sales proposals, explaining key benefits with more in-depth technical information available on request.