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How to Sell a VoIP Phone System – Part 2

KerryG — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:51:42 +0000

Part 2 – Designing the Call Flow

In our second part of this three-part series (part 1 covered the sales meeting) on improving your sales, we look at the process of designing your client’s call flow. For traditional IT or Data technicians getting into IP telephony, one of the things that you need to learn is that a phone system sale is a consultative process. Unlike selling a server or workstation, which is typically finding the best machine within a given budget, a phone system sale requires that you really understand the processes that are used within a company to determine how calls need to be routed. This level of consultation requires that you not only understand the features of a particular system, but also that you understand the limitations and weaknesses of the product you are selling. Having a firm grasp of the abilities and weaknesses will help you to be able to translate the customer’s desired result into a working call flow design.(...)
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Post tags: clients, marketing, sales, VoIP Education, VoIP Systems

How to Sell a VoIP Phone System

KerryG — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:00:34 +0000

Part 1 – Meeting with the Customer

As a reseller, you should always be trying to improve your sales processes and we thought we should start with the initial sales meeting and try to come up with some tips. We asked some of our top resellers for tips on handling the initial sales meeting and got some really good advice. Some of this may be common sense and hopefully some of it will be something new that will help you out. In this first part of a three-part series we look at some best practices for handling the sales meeting. Part 2 will discuss Designing the call flow, and part 3 will cover Preparing the quote. If you would like to participate in our current survey, please click here.(...)
Read the rest of How to Sell a VoIP Phone System (771 words)

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Post tags: clients, IP PBX, marketing, Resellers, sales, VoIP Education, VoIP Systems

Developing a support contract

KerryG — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:56:48 +0000

One of the things you will hear me talk about all the time is selling a support contract with every system that you sell. If you are not selling a support contract, you are walking away from every sale and leaving thousands of dollars on the table. A support contract isn’t meant to be a way of milking good customers out of more money, it is designed to be an affordable support agreement between you and your client that assures the client that their system will be taken care of over an extended period of time at essentially a fixed price.(...)
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Post tags: clients, contracts, sales, VoIP Education

Creating a Worksheet to Help Manage IP PBX Deployments

Mike Evanisko — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:00:53 +0000

When you are trying to manage the deployment a new IP PBX system, making sure you have all of the relevant information is critical to the success of that install. Back when I was selling PBX systems to clients I put together an Excel spreadsheet to help make sure we asked all the right questions so that during the configuration and deployment we had all of the right answers. In this article I will take you through the different sections of this worksheet so that you too can use one to make your installs go as smooth as possible.

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Post tags: Asterisk, clients, Configuration, IP PBX, sales, SIP, SIP Phone, softphone, trixbox, VoIP Education, VoIP Systems, Worksheet

Are You Being Effective in Selling IP PBX Systems?

Mike Evanisko — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:59:51 +0000

There is a lot that goes into selling an IP PBX system and you need to make sure that you are being as effective as possible. As most of us who have got into selling phone systems come from the data world and not the telephony world, we often don’t think about the sales process for a phone system the way we should. I am going to share some of the things that have really helped me over the years to improve my sales and help make sure my customers were happy when everything was finished.

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Read the rest of Are You Being Effective in Selling IP PBX Systems? (1,038 words)

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Post tags: clients, consulting, IP PBX, leasing, sales, site survey, VoIP Education

Can you Fax with VoIP?

Mike Evanisko — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:02:06 +0000

FAX was designed for analog networks, and does not travel well over a VOIP network. The reason for this is that FAX communication uses the signal in a different way to regular voice communication. When VOIP technologies digitize and compress analog voice communication it is optimized for VOICE and not for FAX. Subsequently, there are a number of things you need to take note of when you move to a VoIP Phone System.

If you want to continue using your old fax machine, and you want to connect to your VoIP phone system, its best to use a VoIP Gateway and an ATA that supports T38. T38 is a protocol designed to allow fax to ‘travel’ over a VoIP network.

It is also possible to convert to computer based fax and choose a VoIP phone system that supports fax. 3CX Phone System for Windows includes a full featured fax server that is able to receive faxes and forward them in PDF format to e-mail. Faxes can be sent from anywhere in the network using the Microsoft Fax client & fax server (which comes free with Windows Server 2003 and 2008)

Another way to deal with fax when you switch to voip are to connect the fax machine directly to the existing analog phone line and bypass your VOIP system.

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Post tags: clients, FAX, Networking, VoIP

What is an IP Phone?

KerryG — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:56:44 +0000

An IP phone uses Voice over IP technologies allowing telephone calls to be made over an IP network such as the internet instead of the ordinary PSTN system. Calls can traverse the Internet, or a private IP Network such as a that of a company. The phones use control protocols such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Skinny Client Control Protocol or one of various proprietary protocols such as that used by Skype. SIP is the defacto voip protocol standard now, since it has dominated the market over its predecessor H.323. IP Phones support audio coders such as G.711, G.729 ect. HDVoIP enabled IP Phones support wideband coders such as G.722, G.722.2 (AMR-WB) ect.. IP phones can be simple software-based Softphones or purpose-built hardware devices that appear much like an ordinary telephone or a cordless phone. There also exist the possibility to reuse ordinary PSTN phones as IP phones, with analog telephony adapters (ATA).

It may have many features an analog phone doesn’t support, such as e-mail-like IDs for contacts that may be easier to remember than names or phone numbers.

Hardware of a stand alone IP phone

The overall hardware may look like a telephone or mobile phone. An IP phone has the following hardware components.

Speaker/ear phone and microphone – special high quality speaker/handsets and microphones are needed for HDVoIP IP Phones
Key pad / touch pad to enter phone number and text (not used for ATAs).
Display hardware to feedback user input and show caller-id/messages (not used for ATAs).
General purpose processor (GPP) to process application messages.
A voice engine or a Digital signal processor to process RTP messages. Some IC manufacturers provides GPP and DSP in single chip.
ADC and DAC converters: To convert voice to digital data and vice versa.
Ethernet or wireless network hardware to send and receive messages on data network.
Power source might be a battery or DC source. Some IP phones receive electricity from Power over ethernet.

Common features of IP phones

Caller ID
Dialing using name/ID: This is different from dialing from your mobile call register as the user does not need to save a number to a sip phone.
Locally stored and network-based directories
Conference and multiparty call
Call park
Call transfer and call hold
Preserving user name/ number when choosing a different service provider (not widely supported).
Applications like weather report, Attendance in school and offices, Live news etc.

Disadvantages of IP phones

Requires internet access to make calls outside the Local area network unless a compatible local PBX is available to handle calls to and from outside lines.
IP Phones and the routers they connect through usually depend on mains electricity, unlike PSTN phones which are supplied with power from the telephone exchange.
IP networks, particularly residential internet connections are easily congested. This can cause poorer voice quality or the call to be dropped completely.
IP Phones, like other network devices can be subjected to Denial of service attacks as well as other attacks especially if the device is given a public IP address
Due to the latency induced by protocol overhead they do not work as well on satellite internet and other high-latency internet connections.

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Post tags: clients, ethernet, marketing, Networking, SIP, VoIP

What is SIP?

KerryG — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:55:48 +0000

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signalling protocol, widely used for setting up and tearing down multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over the Internet. Other feasible application examples include video conferencing, streaming multimedia distribution, instant messaging, presence information and online games. The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party (unicast) or multiparty (multicast) sessions consisting of one or several media streams. The modification can involve changing addresses or ports, inviting more participants, adding or deleting media streams, etc.

SIP clients typically use TCP or UDP (typically on port 5060 and/or 5061) to connect to SIP servers and other SIP endpoints. SIP is primarily used in setting up and tearing down voice or video calls. However, it can be used in any application where session initiation is a requirement. These include Event Subscription and Notification, Terminal mobility and so on. There are a large number of SIP-related RFCs that define behavior for such applications. All voice/video communications are done over separate session protocols, typically RTP.

A motivating goal for SIP was to provide a signaling and call setup protocol for IP-based communications that can support a superset of the call processing functions and features present in the public switched telephone network (PSTN). SIP by itself does not define these features; rather, its focus is call-setup and signaling. However, it was designed to enable the construction of functionalities of network elements designated Proxy Servers and User Agents. These are features that permit familiar telephone-like operations: dialing a number, causing a phone to ring, hearing ringback tones or a busy signal. Implementation and terminology are different in the SIP world but to the end-user, the behavior is similar.

How important is SIP?

SIP is extremly important in the world of VoIP. 888VoipStore sells mostly SIP products as its an open standard and can be adopted by any VoIP Product. The benefit of this is we have one universal standard in the community to work with. This will help streamline the evolution of VoIP for developers and in return create a better market and product for consumers.

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Post tags: clients, marketing, Networking, Ports, SIP, Video, VoIP

Using Leasing to Help Sell PBX Systems

Mike Evanisko — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:57:07 +0000

With today’s economy being what it is, many companies are being more and more cautious about spending capital on infrastructure upgrades. Any smart company should be careful about spending money and making sure they are spending properly. With a cost of equipment and licenses that can reach into tens of thousands of dollars, a new phone system can be a significant cost for a company.
One way of making a deal more attractive to a customer can be to offer a leasing program. Leasing equipment offers some significant benefits to your customers including:

Ease & Convenience
Applying for financing is quick and easy. For financing under $75,000, just fill out a simple one-page application. Once approved, we take care of the details for you.
Preserve Lines of Credit
Conserve your valuable bank lines of credit for day to day business needs.
Affordable 100% Financing
Leasing allows you to finance all of your equipment and in many cases can include soft costs such as freight, installation, and construction.
Low Down Payment
Lease financing requires minimal down payment or deposit versus traditional financing that sometimes requires up to 20% down.
Flexible Payment Options
Design a payment structure that meets your budgetary requirements or seasonal cash flow. Lease terms can range from 24 to 60 months with a variety of flexible end of lease options.
Tax Advantages
Compared to conventional financing, lease financing provides great opportunities for tax benefits. Depending on how you structure your lease, you may be able to fully expense the payments. Consult your tax professional to fully understand how you can benefit.

Those are some great advantages for your customers, but what can this really do for you? A typical lease contract goes beyond just paying for the equipment you are installing, you can also include a maintenance agreement for the term of the lease as well. This allows you to make sure you are maximizing your revenue on the job.

How does leasing work?

The leasing process is actually very fast and simple. Once you have all of the costs and quotes prepared for all of the items and services you want to put on the lease, you submit a simple form to the leasing company. Once the leasing company approves the lease, they release the funds to pay for everything up front. Once you get the funds, then you can buy all of the equipment and do all the work and nobody is out any money or putting anything on credit.
After the customer has signed off on the job, they start making affordable monthly payments and you have secured a customer for the next few years (and got paid up front).

How to get started

Getting started with a leasing company on your own can often be fairly difficult the first time. In order to help streamline this process 888VoipStore has partnered up with HLC Capital, a leading leasing company for the technology sector. HLC Capital is all setup to help 888VoipStore resellers get running as quickly and as smoothly as possible. To get started, simply go to their website (link) and fill out a quick payment calculator form.

To get any other questions answered or for more information about leasing, please call the 888VoipStore leasing representative at leasing@voipstore.com OR Bryan Mernaugh – HLC Toll Free 866-288-9957 Ext 5106

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Post tags: clients, leasing, marketing, sales