Aria Technologies is a UC distributor, offering some of the world's most advanced and popular solutions in communications devices to customers across Australia. From Ericsson-LG services to Lifesize and Plantronics, Aria Technologies set themselves apart in the marketplace by giving clients a range of different options to choose from depending on the kind of experience they want to create for their end customer.
As the marketplace continues to change, I reached out to Peter "Willow" Williamson, the National Sales and Marketing Director of Aria Technologies, to discuss how the sales journey is changing for partners and resellers. Peter is responsible for managing the third-party partner channel including more than 200 companies across Australia.
How Is the World of The UC Reseller Changing?
There are countless changes happening in the UC environment today, from the shift to cloud, to the rise of disruptive technologies. As older PBX and hardware are increasingly replaced with new software services and hybrid setups, I was keen to hear Peter's opinion on how the reseller world is changing.
"From a business perspective, two-thirds of the buyer journey is over before the salesperson or consultant even engages with a customer. People are researching online, talking on social media, and reading up on blogs before they begin to talk about a sale."
Williamson told me that people simply don't trust the salespeople they encounter anymore. Statistics seem to constantly suggest that people avoid traditional agents at all costs, and when people approach the buyer journey with that negative perspective, selling becomes even harder for the people in the communications channel. When you add that to the fact that resellers simply aren't engaging in enough research to provide the right solutions to their customers, the problem grows more significant.
"In my opinion, the important thing to remember now is that resellers can't just wait for an event to occur that leads to a sale. They need to take the event to the customer."
Do You Think Customisation is Key?
For Aria Technologies and many other companies, things are fundamentally changing when it comes to the sale of UC.
"Around 80% of the sale is tailoring the solution to meet the needs of a customer that's better-educated and has much higher demands and expectations."
One of the biggest issues, according to Peter, is that many SMBs don't have the right environment in place to build on in the first place. "If you don't have a stable environment on which to build, then nothing is going to work for your company, regardless of what kind of systems you're deploying. This creates a fantastic opportunity for the reseller to go in and offer an experience that reveals potential problems to customers that they might not know about."
According to Aria, there's an opportunity for resellers to perform an auditing experience that uncovers issues that might need to be addressed in the UC environment. For instance, one of the biggest issues that people are facing today is the problem with security.
How Is the Focus on Security Affecting UC Resellers?
Peter told me that in Australia, the government has begun pressuring companies to have cybersecurity audits so that they can ensure their credit card details, intellectual property, and other data sources are safe.
