Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

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.

 1. Catch people doing things right 

Constructive criticism is a myth and an oxymoron. Nobody likes to be criticised and for self-preservation many will erect their esteem barrier as soon as they see it coming. Try this experiment for a week and see what happens. You are only allowed to catch people doing positive things, you must be precise and you cannot use the terms ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It doesn’t even have to be exceptional. For example, you walk past someone talking on the phone and when they have finished you make a point of taking them aside. You say something like “If I was the customer on the other end of that phone I would feel welcome, and comfortable that you have the skill and ability to resolve my issue”. Explain exactly why and leave it at that. Don’t finish with clichés like “keep it up” or “well done” and definitely don’t try and balance the feedback by commenting on a weakness (“yes…but”).

2. Focus on strengths 

If you spend all your time trying to improve your weakness then all you are likely to end up with is strong weaknesses. You are the boss and you decide what you are going to do. If you find spreadsheets tedious and time consuming then stop building your own business plans, forecasts and ROI models. There are potential employees coming out of university now that can use spreadsheets ten times quicker than you and at a fraction of your cost. Spend your time on activities for which you have a passion and that only you can do. Instil this in your managers and staff. If someone has a weakness that is core to their job then ‘zoom-out’ and find a way to focus them on their strengths. I once had a salesperson who knew the products backwards, he was smart and asked great questions. Customers loved him and he worked really hard. However, he had a real problem with rejection and when he failed to get an order or was knocked-back by a prospect he was miserable. Being in sales he was miserable a lot. I persuaded him to apply for a product managers job. He was reluctant because the salary was less than his OTE as a salesperson but he accepted the fact that he was unhappy and ended up taking the job. He now runs his own business. Obviously if you have a salesperson that has a problem with rejection and they also are lazy and disorganised, you don’t move them into product management just because they understand the products.

Consumerisation is affecting Terms and Conditions and unscrupulous business suppliers are taking advantage.

According to the government-backed Money Advice Centre, 84% of consumers do not read Terms and Conditions online, before they sign contracts. With some Terms and Conditions exceeding 30,000 words (the length of a novel) this is not surprising and Ombudsmen are starting to side with consumers when disputes arise.

However, there is little sympathy for company directors when they take their consumer behaviour into work. As a fiduciary officer of your company, a leader and captain of industry you have a legal and moral obligation to read contracts before you sign them. If you don’t have time then have somebody else read them. Small companies cannot afford to ask a solicitor to read every contract but most of the contractual traps used these days are obvious and a magnifying glass, not a corporate lawyer, is all that is needed.

If it relates to a technical subject, like telecommunications, ask your IT company to read it for you. If they know they are going to have to support whatever it is you’re buying they probably won’t mind and they are likely to be aware of the common traps.

Most frustrating is the company that starts a tender process, thinking they are out of contract with their current supplier, when they are not. If they have fallen-out with the supplier they may not even ask them to bid and they don’t find out until the end of the process. If they do ask them to bid the incumbent will hope they can win the deal and sign them up to another onerous contract without ever having to reveal the original terms.

Jola recently worked on a bid with a partner that lasted around 12 weeks. It involved meetings, demonstrations, proposals and references. We won the deal against three other suppliers, including the incumbent. When the customer gave the incumbent supplier the bad news they pointed out that breaking the contract would cost £40,000. The customer had to reluctantly re-sign with their existing supplier but before they did we were given the original contract to see if there was a loophole. The customer had signed to have their call charges fixed for seven years, in a market where the cost of telephone calls drops every few months.

Planning

Arguably the most important stage. Consider your objectives. Why are you exhibiting? What do you hope to achieve? How much do you have to spend? What is your expected return on investment? How does this break down into leads, conversions and predicted future revenues?

Take the time to read the exhibitors manual to understand what you can and can’t do, what’s included in your package and the early bird deadlines. It’s a good idea to start planning early.

Plan your stand for maximum impact. Are your competitors exhibiting? Have you considered your USPs and how you may compare? What do you want to promote? How are you planning to catch the attention of visitors? The answers to these questions will help you shape your key messaging.

Brand your stand to stand out for all the right reasons. Plan meeting areas and think about how visitor data will be collected. Are you bringing your own equipment or do you need to hire any? Do you have any storage on the stand and is it lockable?

Once you have designed your stand and ordered equipment and materials, book hotels.

1 – What marketing support is available?

Our marketing support is tailored to meet the specific needs of each partner. Some partners are happy to download content from the portal for their website, flyers, adverts, e-casts and newsletters. Other partners ask for help tailoring the content to meet the needs of their audience. Partners with specific objectives request more detailed advice. With these partners, we arrange conference calls to understand business objectives and discuss marketing plans.  We follow up with ideas and work with partners to generate and close first opportunities.

2 – Can you provide feedback on materials in production?

Yes, the Jola marketing department will review materials and send feedback to help customise content as required. We approve the use of all Jola branding and are happy to provide advice on partner branded materials, such as proposals and campaigns.

As the deadline for GDPR approaches, what do we need to know and what action should we be taking?

What is GDPR?

General Data Protection Regulations that come into force in the UK on 25^th May 2018. Currently, the UK relies on the Data Protection Act 1998, but this will be superseded by the new legislation. It introduces tougher fines for non-compliance and breaches and gives people more say over what companies can do with their data.

Who does GDPR apply to?

‘Controllers’ and ‘processors’. The controller says how and why personal data is processed and the processor acts on the controller’s behalf. Essentially any UK business that controls or processes personal data. Controllers must ensure personal data is processed lawfully, transparently and for a specific purpose. Once that purpose is fulfilled and the data is no longer required, it should be deleted.

How do I get consent under the GDPR?

Consent must be an active, affirmative action by the data subject, rather than the passive acceptance under some current models that allow for pre-ticked boxes or opt-outs.

Controllers must keep a record of how and when an individual gave consent and that individual may withdraw their consent whenever they want. If your current model for obtaining consent doesn't meet these new rules, you will have to bring it up to scratch or stop collecting data under that model when the GDPR applies in 2018.

Video is playing a bigger part in digital marketing strategies, so how can it be used effectively without breaking the bank?

Video doesn’t have to be expensive

There is software available you can rent, to create your own content from templates and there are companies who will help you to create short branded videos from their own content libraries, with voice over for as little as £100.

Equally marketers are filming and editing content on their iPhones, capturing key messages and creating step by step guides, which are being uploaded to YouTube channels and shared via social media.

What does video add to the mix?

Video is a great way to put a face to the company and reflect your brand values. If your brand is built on trust, expertise and personal service, video clips demonstrating problem solving can be highly effective.

Videos are great ways of attracting attention and drawing crowds especially at trade events. Facebook Live clips promoting product launches and offers can generate new leads.

Most articles that talk about customer service, concentrate on how well a company reacts when things go wrong. Of course this is important but has become a ‘given’ and tells only part of the story. Companies that focus on the optimal end-to-end customer experience, make it easy for customers to do business with them. Done properly this builds loyalty and, most importantly for rapid growth, means that variable costs do not need to increase at the same rate as customer acquisition and revenue. Recruiting people and upgrading infrastructure are expensive and difficult. These days the most successful rapid-growth organisations use the cloud whenever possible and avoid building their own infrastructure. They identify and invest in the points where human interaction is key and for all other aspects of their customers’ journey, they automate. This is especially important when customers need to interact with you very regularly, for example when you operate through a network of dealers and resellers.

Identify your most common customer types and put yourself in their shoes. If you are trying to develop a channel, consider all their decision points and think about how you can ‘in-fill’ with knowledge and resource. If an IT company wants to get into hosted telephony and mobile they will need sales support, contracts, training, collateral, billing, technical support and products that are easy to sell and manage. You need a formal process for collecting feedback and using it to improve your proposition. Consider setting up a User Group and involve them in the product development process. At the very least, if you solicit feedback from your customers, make sure you act upon it beyond a standard response email. Show how you have considered suggestions and if you have discarded them, explain why.

What do you measure as a business? What measures are important to you?

Most businesses will track revenue, profit, margin and cash in the bank and some go further and measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), linked to overall business objectives. These companies tend to measure company-wide, departmental and individual KPIs such as ticket response times, call answer times as well as order lead times. Each KPI paints a picture and together they provide a dashboard to quickly identify areas of success and often more importantly areas to be improved.

For example, in marketing, there is a lot to measure, monthly unique web visitors, Twitter followers, retweets, LinkedIn connections, likes and shares etc. which give us an indication of who has seen our content and how they responded. However, without more detailed analysis of how the engagement relates to leads, conversions, ARPU and ROI, we can’t really draw conclusions.

The same can be said for response rates. Tickets and calls may be answered quickly, but without linking this information to cost, customers, cases and suppliers we don’t see the full picture and may not be able to identify key underlying issues holding back the business. Conversely, companies that try and measure everything end up with a very busy dashboard making it hard for departments to understand their priorities.

According to a recent report by Megabuyte.com, BT, Talk Talk and Virgin Media are being outperformed by much smaller channel suppliers who are reporting healthy growth, with profits and share prices on the up.

Some of the larger providers were affected by accounting errrors and overseas pressures and the channel saw high levels of growth from hosted voice and mobile. Of course channel suppliers still buy from carrier wholesale divisions, but continue to win business from their direct sales teams by collaborating with their partners.

What are they doing differently?

Growing with partners

Channel-focussed suppliers are becoming smarter in helping their partners find and close business, growing average revenue per customer and building new margin streams. Resellers do not see them as a threat and so are relaxed about letting them help directly with customers and with lead generation campaigns.

Multi-carrier portals

Channel suppliers have built relationships with all the major networks and suppliers giving partners more choice for their customers. Partners can quote and order internet connectivity with hosted voice seats, handsets and extras as well as mobile SIMs within a single platform. Hosted voice and mobile services have their own management portals, so resellers can provision and make changes giving them the control they need to support their clients. SMEs are not restricted to just one carrier and benefit from the personalised service they are getting from their trusted supplier - supported by their channel supplier.

Competitive offerings

Channel suppliers have crafted competitive bundles, packaging market-leading hardware and software, designed to suit every pocket with clearly defined USPs. They have added service wraps such as training, white label pre-sales support, white label technical support, billing and collateral to enhance partner offerings.