Bon Mots from the UC Summit.

The UC Summit, a brain-child Jim Burton and his UC Strategies team, was created to assemble the business communications go-to-market value chain – vendors, VARs and independent consultants (those retained by enterprise to define requirements and recommend vendors) – under one roof for a few days a year. Because the gathering is reasonably small in size and does not include the customer, it offers a unique environment where relatively like-minds can congregate, network and work to improve their respective businesses.

While the message and nomenclature may be changing — they say UC, you may say CEBP, and others yet may suggest otherwise – this community is the same one that has brought us PBX’s, messaging and other integral business communications solutions for thirty-plus years. And still today, this group maintains a major say in what communications-related investments the enterprise and mid-market make.

I was at the inaugural UC Summit event two years, so spending a few, post-recession days with a gang of entrepreneurs who interact with real customers on a daily basis provided interesting take-aways:

It’s still about selling. Period.

On one of the days I sat with a industry veteran who ran a large VAR for 25 years. As he listened to panelists talk in big words about business process and the need to communications enable them – and about how VARs must transition away from  ’box-selling’ – he scribbled on the piece of paper below me: It’s about selling, stupid!

He’s right. For as long as I’ve been associated with the telecom VAR community, those in and around it have talked about morphing to ‘application’ or ‘consultative’ selling. Whether it was selling voice applications as adjuncts to PBX’s back when, or now about selling software and services from scratch to automate a process, it’s about sales skills. And if you don’t have the right ones on on-board, all the new product and brochure-ware a vendor can muster won’t matter. This is why we see vendors beefing up their ‘direct-touch’ sales teams, to insure their advanced applications get sold.

Telecom or otherwise, selling higher margin solutions to enterprise is not easy stuff. It takes sales people that can quickly recognize or better, uncover problems their offering can solve in a way the customer may not have otherwise perceived. It takes listening, a sensitivity for the pitfalls of business processes that are not optimized, and an appreciation for the role your products can play in fixing it. Yup – it’s hard! It’s a longer sales process, there are typically more influencers in the decision tree and there’s plenty of soft dollar talk. Trust me – it was much easier to count phones, analyze call volume and choose a carrier.

Don’t get me wrong. VARs are loaded with good sales people, not the least of the which are the owner/operators. But they’re being asked to do something very different than what they’re trained to do.

The PBX is not dead. Yet.

Call it what you want, but when a customer buys handsets, voice switching gear and some messaging features, they’re not buying UC as it is commonly defined. The term may be taboo, but plenty a VAR is paying their bills selling IP-PBX’s. And the VAR is not to be ashamed of this – the customer is still always right, and in many cases a solid, well priced PBX/Messaging solution is remains what they’re happy to buy. VARs have bills to pay, and their sales people have quotas to retire. Sometimes keeping it simple gets them there faster.

Video hot, but not in the channel.

I missed the kick-off evening, where some keynote speaker talked quite a bit of their respective video visions and it’s integration into broader UC offerings. But in the hallways and at the bar, few had stories of big video deals or even of video opportunities in the funnel. Video is hot, but remains something sold by the vendor directly. See above about selling, for why.

Forecast is Cloudy…

I had the good fortune to moderate a panel on the role the cloud will play in the channel or, perhaps more precisely, the other way around. The cloud (also commonly spoken of as: Hosted VoIP, CaaS, SaaS, Hosted UC, and others), was a hot topic at the bar. Unlike two years ago where people smiled at me, while wondering what the hell I was talking about, this time around many are already engaged in it – and almost all are at least considering at some level if the cloud has a place in their business.

The panel turned into an animated session on what it was, why customers wanted it (or didn’t) and if/how the VAR community can capitalize on what it is clearly more than a trend. Here are my straw poll results:

• Number of VARs that have competed with a hosted solution in the last quarter: About 75% (what I expected)
• Number of those that have been deals for more than 100 seats: About 50% (more than I expected)
• Number of those that have lost a deal to hosted in the last quarter: Less than 25% (nobody likes to admit to losing)
• Number of those that fielded a call from a hosted vendor looking for VARs: 100%…

And my favorite audience answer of the day: To my question….Why are you now carrying a hosted service? ‘Because my customers asked me to’!

Very worthy event

Congratulations to the UC Strategies team. In a sea of conferences and trade shows, they have conceived a formula that appears to be working. The content is good, but it’s the mix of attendees that makes this one tick.

And for a few more observations on the event, read this post by Joe Staples of Interactive Intelligence.