Friday, March 28, 2014

Taking a Proactive Approach To Marketing Cloud Solutions




Taking a Proactive Approach to Marketing Cloud Solutions
by Cameron Bell
Article Link

Telecom agents, value added resellers (VARs), managed services providers, and other cloud technology stakeholders face a daunting marketing responsibility ahead. The confusing cloud environment and people’s disconcerted understanding of what the cloud is all about are the biggest challenges for cloud marketers. What can marketers do when potential cloud adopters don’t know the difference between genuine cloud solutions and pseudo-cloud adaptations? How can they approach a divergent market that is characterized by populations like these: consumers who don’t know what cloud is, customers who have an idea of what cloud is but don’t know what to do with it, and customers who know what cloud is and plan to adopt it? What follows are ideas about how to approach these divergent populations.

Show how cloud works 
Appealing to the sense of sight is especially helpful for IT-minded business people like CIOs. Video tutorials are compelling tools to demonstrate how the technology works, and they also easily can illustrate the cloud’s core benefits. The main goal of a video tutorial would be to educate–never to make a direct sales pitch. Viewers easily get irritated by bombastic overtures and often opt out of such presentations. Product tutorials, step-by-step guides, and how-to pieces are excellent video ideas that help tell the story of the cloud and how it can help their business.

Give proof 
Businesses want to ensure that when they shift to new technology like cloud services, they are not plunging into the unknown. They want proof of the technology’s success and of satisfied customer experience through factual case studies and testimonials. Documenting a true story of defining a problem, offering a solution, and achieving positive results will help a company establish itself as a thought leader in its niche. Testimonials by verifiable customers also are convincing and can lead to sales.

Use illustrations 
Text is an important part of your website, but images and graphics almost always get the viewer’s primary and initial attention. With the emergence of millions of camera-enabled mobile devices, the world has become a visual culture where images are the driving force for increased customer engagement. In a high speed business landscape where people have less and less time to read lengthy text, high-quality photos and readable graphics are the key to spurring conversion and sales.

Anticipate customers’ questions 
Customers need immediate answers to questions about new cloud services that they intend to adopt, but they may not know where to look for this information and who to ask. A frequently asked questions webpage holds a lot of value, and it serves as the first line of customer service. It becomes an even more effective online customer service center if it provides organized, accurate, relevant, transparent, and up-to-date questions and answers.

Offer value-based pricing 
Price is often the main consideration, but, as many know, cheapest is not always the best. Many customers are still hitched to the lowest price, but many are open to exploring price for value. They know that they may be saving long-term costs if they put a premium on the value of the product they are buying. A price sheet, therefore, is more than just a list of price levels. Value-based pricing highlights the features, functionalities, and benefits of a product, clearly indicating what price comes with what feature. Telecom agents are at the crossroads of their marketing careers as the cloud hovers over their heads. No matter what the game looks like years from now, the competition will continue. Technology integration through the cloud is paving the way to the integration of services by MSPs, telecom agents, VARs, and other marketing stakeholders. The best way to compete is to collaborate. -



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Contact me at Tduggan@Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.









Monday, March 17, 2014

Top 25 List of Successful Tools for Sales People To Use

My Top 25 List of Tools for Sales People
By Dario Priolo
Article

When you think of typical tools for sales people CRM software and services, such as Salesforce.com, likely come to mind. While CRM is certainly an important aspect of a salesperson’s job, it’s by no means the end-all-be-all. In order to effectively prospect and sell, sales people and managers can and should take advantage of a host of tools and applications to guide their activities and help their efforts. Here’s my list of 25 Tools for Sales People with brief descriptions and grouped by activity: Find Prospects Very few sales reps have an evergreen book of business. In addition to networking, how else can you look for new prospects?

LinkedIn — 200 million+ members. Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights, and opportunities by company, industry, geography and role. Leverage groups and discussions.

Twitter — Follow your clients and prospects, their colleagues, and their corporate accounts to stay on top of what’s important to them and their business. What are they saying, and who do they follow?

 Lead411 — Lead411 provides business e-mail lists, company addresses, executive e-mails, and phone numbers.

NetProspex — NetProspex, voted Best Lead Generation Solution, is the fastest-growing and most accurate B2B contact information solution, providing new, targeted prospects.

Google Maps — Find local businesses, view maps, and get driving directions in Google Maps. Stay Informed There’s no shortage of information out there, but you need to be able to sift through what’s most relevant to you and prioritize your time in reviewing it.

Evernote — The Evernote family of products help you remember and act upon ideas, projects, and experiences across all the computers, phones, and tablets you use.

Scoop.it — Easily curate engaging magazines. Effectively feed your web presence.

Pulse — Pulse takes your favorite websites and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Sign up to personalize your experience. Recently purchased by LinkedIn.

Flipboard — Flipboard is your personal magazine, filled with the things you care about. Catch up … Tap red ribbon, Accounts, select a network, and sign in.

Google Alerts — Google Alerts are e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries. Follow client or prospect organizations, and receive an e-mail when they’re in the news. Depending on the amount of news, you may need to refine your queries. Live Conversations Few sales reps are shy and likely prefer to have a live conversation. “If I could just get him on the phone so that I can have conversation instead of hoping he’ll read my e-mails.”

ConnectAndSell — ConnectAndSell offers an order-of-magnitude improvement in sales productivity.

Insidesales.com — Phone dialer software. InsideSales.com is the leading provider of inside sales software and solutions to respond immediately and persistently to leads. Make 350+ calls per day.

ooVoo — ooVoo is a FREE video chat and instant messaging app for desktop, mobile, tablets, and Facebook. ooVoo lets you chat with up to 12 people for FREE anytime.

Skype — Make internet calls for free with Skype. Sign up today and discover a whole new world of staying in touch. Not a tool for cold calling, but an effective one if you’re in that stage of not having met in person but want to enhance your relationship. More personal than a webinar. E-mail E-mail is still a prevalent mode of communication. These tools can help you leverage your e-mail efforts and know what’s getting through, opened, and clicked on. Don’t underestimate the power of a good subject line.

Rapportive — Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox. We combine what you know, what your organization knows, and what’s on the web.

Cirrus Insight — Rated #1 by Salesforce users. Create new leads and contacts. Save e-mails and attachments to Salesforce. Sync calendars.

Boomerang — Boomerang is a plugin for Firefox and Chrome that adds scheduled sending and integrated e-mail reminders to Gmail.

Yesware — An e-mail tool for salespeople. Track e-mails, create templates, sync with CRM, and more. Yesware helps you close more deals faster.

Bananatag — Track e-mails from all clients. Know when your e-mails are opened or clicked.

Streak — Streak is great for sales, but you can also use it for hiring candidates, handling e-mail support, organizing deal flow, fundraising, and organizing. Video and Presentations According to Domo, there are 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Videos and savvy presentations might be just what you need to get the attention of your targets. Keep them professional and not too long. Leverage your charismatic sales leaders in a way that e-mail can’t do justice.

YouTube — Share your videos with clients, prospects, and colleagues. Record brief tutorials, demos, or product descriptions to whet your prospects’ interest. Put your content experts on screen to help engage your targets.

SlideShare — Offers users the ability to upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and Adobe PDF Portfolios.

Brainshark — Create online video presentations and mobile video presentations from PowerPoint or your other static content. You can also create voice-enriched video presentations. Screenr — Instant screencasts — just click record.

Screenr’s web-based screen recorder makes it a breeze to create and share your screencasts around the web.

 Snagit — Snagit screen capture allows you to grab an image or video of what you see on your computer screen, add effects, and share with anyone.

Fiber Services, MPLS- Data protection, VOIP-SIP-Integra has a suite of offerings that nobody else can provide.

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Contact me at Tduggan@Cogentco.com at Cogent for more Info or to Network. Cogent delivers customers with Highly Reliable, Secure and Scalable Networks with over 190 markets throughout 38 countries in North America, Europe and Asia, with over 57,900 route miles of long-haul fiber and over 27,400 miles of metropolitan fiber.









Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Colorado Springs High Speed Internet-Ethernet Specials, VOIP-Cloud Firewall Data Network, Hosted Managed Services, Disaster Recovery, WAN LAN & Colorado Web Hosting



Colorado Springs Top Network Service Provider

Whether you have one location or are a multi-site organization, Integra has a variety of solutions to connect your business. We provide scalable data and Internet access solutions over a variety of technologies, customized for your unique requirements. At the core of these services is our fully redundant backbone that delivers secure, private network services across our network footprint. Integra’s carrier-class network allows us to deliver services ranging from Ethernet to ultra-high capacity Private Lines.

As always, no matter what type of capacity you need, Integra delivers the superior customer experience you deserve.

Dynamic, Integrated Service – Allocate bandwidth dynamically for data services when your network is not used for voice traffic with Integra’s SIP Trunking service. Our service integrates your voice and data traffic and eliminates the expense of separate networks, while providing a standard platform for current and future multimedia applications.

•Dependable and Secure Private Network — Integra’s high performance network connects all your locations over a private IP/MPLS network with 99.999% network availability. Voice, data and Internet traffic converge over a single network, providing rapid, reliable and secure access to all of your employees regardless of their location.

•Flexible Bandwidth and Access Options — Integra offers a variety of access technologies to provide just the right amount of bandwidth for your applications and traffic to all of your business locations.

•Converged Architecture — Integra offers the networking foundation for your business that allows you to grow, on-demand, with multiple service types: Internet, Voice and MPLS. This scalable platform supports your growing business and can be designed as a fully meshed network to support the needs of multi-location offices.

Contact me at tradd.duggan@integratelecom.com at Integra  for more Info 3o3-884-4294: Whether your company needs Managed Network Services, price shopping, Cloud Firewall Solutions, Ethernet or Fiber Services, MPLS- Data protection, VOIP-SIP-Integra has a suite of offerings that nobody else can provide.



Sunday, March 2, 2014

Denver's IT Summit April 2, 2014



There are some exciting new programs we are deploying for 2014. We’ve partnered with numerous IT associations, and are providing them with donations for encouraging their members to attend. In other words, we are paying technology associations to get their members to attend our events in 2014, and the results are already impressive. What does this mean for you? It means that we’ll have hundreds more IT executives at each of our conferences.

Leading associations like Society for Information Management (SIM) Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) and Project Management Institute (PMI) have already signed up. We’ve also reduced some of our prices, in our efforts to make our events bigger and better in 2014. On top of that, we’ll write you a check when your clients and prospects sign up to attend. Our top sponsors will receive tens of thousands of marketing impressions every single month.

Our goal is to become the must-attend event for the IT professionals in each region, and the must-sponsor event for you! We have made improvements to our 2014 sponsorships, and you can see them here. (For pricing, please respond to this email, or call 503-828-0294).

Here is our event calendar for 2014: 
 • Denver – April 2nd
 • Seattle – April 22nd • Houston – May 14th
• Los Angeles – October 22nd • San Francisco – November 5th
• San Diego – November 20th

You will see approximately 30 exhibit booths and 10 presentations. Each event is a single day. At most of our programs, the exhibits, presentations, luncheon, reception, and networking all occur in a single room so you are face to face with the executives all day. We encourage you to engage your partners to share marketing funds. We will feature you both, even when you share the cost. Up to five of your staff members are encouraged to attend at no extra cost to not only work your booth, but to work the entire room.

An unlimited number of your C-level IT-executive clients and prospects are invited to attend at no cost to you or to them, as your guests. The theme of each conference is intentionally general vs. vertically specific, in order to appeal to the most IT leaders possible. The IT Summit is; • Your unique occasion to speak directly with hundreds of IT executives in one place • Your opportunity to meet with regional technology leaders through hands-on exhibits • 84% are final decision makers or recommend solutions • 98% of the attendees at The IT Summit are directly involved in the purchasing chain.

IT Summit Link

Contact me at tradd.duggan@integratelecom.com at Integra  for more Info 3o3-884-4294: Whether your company needs Managed Network Services, price shopping, Cloud Firewall Solutions, Ethernet or Fiber Services, MPLS- Data protection, VOIP-SIP-Integra has a suite of offerings that nobody else can provide.

Top Colorado Sales Information: Selling Telecom Meetings, Cloud Managed Hosted Technology, Wireless, Job Openings