Beyond Price: Selling Telecom Environment Management

By Scott Levy

If you would like to open up bigger doors with bigger clients, your story has to address more than better, faster and cheaper service. Telecommunications have been commoditized to the point that end users dont care about your value proposition. They just have one question, Whats your price?”

So how do you get their attention? How do you create curiosity? How do you differentiate yourself? Engaging your prospect in discussions about their enterprise, about their environment and about their strategic initiatives broadens the scope and magnitude of your potential deal. When technical, financial and operational linkages between parts of an organization are created, so too is the business value of a high performing, efficient telecommunications environment and your telecom life cycle management services.

AOTMP has built a framework called the Efficiency First v2.0 Model that provides springboard to start this conversation. The model encompasses the business relationship between four stakeholder groups, seven management disciplines and 16 core activities. By understanding the model, you will have the tools to start discussing the entire business environment, not just a  department. 

For the purposes of this article, let’s take a look at the seven disciplines and related questions you can ask prospects when speaking about managing their telecom environment:

Imagine that Discipline 1, Resource Management, is the engine of a train and Discipline 7, Financial Management, is the caboose. Can you see how the first six disciplines drive the performance results in the seventh? If the first six disciplines are not aligned, measured and managed completely, then financial breakage and loss is the inevitable result.

With a better stable of questions like these you have greater potential for financially larger and more predictable outcomes. You also have a greater ability to engage all the stakeholders in a company. You’ll appreciate the importance of this if you’ve ever lost a deal because you didnt know one of the executives had a relationship with another vendor. This happens when you are speaking to a department about a product, not a company about a solution. 

Through solid discussions and questions with your prospects, you become the trusted advisor and subject matter expert. You may not rule the world or even become part of the million-dollar club, but  you will earn greater respect from your prospects and engage in fewer discussions with them about price.

Scott Levy is  vice president of enterprise development at AOTMP, which is a resource for enterprises on telecom management. Levy  is responsible for building and managing the enterprise client development team and is also actively involved in the development of new products and setting corporate strategy. Levy is a subject matter expert in telecom expense management (TEM), wireless mobility management (WMM) and fixed and mobile telecom environment management. His domain expertise in the TEM and WMM space extends more than 18 years which enables him to provide insight and business options to clients and prospects.

MORE INFORMATION

Hear more from AOTMP’s Scott Levy in the session, “Delivering Telecom Life Cycle Management,” at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo, March 26-29, in Las Vegas.