Studies show about 40% of people buy on price. The rest buy on other criteria. A salesperson’s job is to explain the value.
If price was all that mattered in VoIP, these players (pictured below) – Vocalocity, Broadvoice, Jive, OnSip, and VoIP Studio at $4 per seat – would have 500K seats. As we know there are only about 5 players with 500K – Vonage, Comcast, 8×8 to name 3. It wasn’t so much price as it was presentation and promotion. In other words, the marketing and getting in front of people. I will repeat myself but most people don’t know any telecom provider except the Duopoly. Everyone else is an unknown. You have to take every opportunity to get in front of people who can buy from you.
The pricing is all about saving money. That’s great because that is how telecom was built in 1996 after the Telecom Act passed. Which is why most of the CLEC investment went up in smoke. That isn’t selling, that isn’t value, that isn’t innovation — that is arbitrage.
Premise PBX versus Lync versus Cisco versus Hosted VoIP (cheap voice) versus Hosted PBX versus a Broadsoft version. There are enough differences to talk about. Now it is about unified comms and collaboration (UC&C) and is quickly becoming about Workflow. Price won’t matter as much as how the system can interact with the employees – virtual as well as on-prem; other software apps that are critical to business functions,like CRM, email, support, and practice management; and usability so that workers actually use the system to get work done productively, efficiently. That all has nothing to do with price, but if you sell on price, I can get it down to $4 per seat, can you?
SELLECOM: 101 Ideas for Marketing in the Telecom Jungle. 
