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.
“This is an event that’s pushing an opportunity for resellers to come in and assess the customer environment. There’s always a point where customer information is going into the cloud, and the VoIP system needs to be secure there to protect against toll fraud and other common problems.”
Although Aria Technologies don’t believe that the full move to the cloud is coming anytime soon, they do believe that it’s important to be prepared. “Many people are looking at hybrid products, that could mean that general data goes into the cloud, but more crucial things stay on premise.”
Do You Think That the Approach to Sales Has to Change?
The move towards a more software-focused and cloud-based world has created a significant change in the way that UC resellers work. I asked Peter whether he believes that there’s going to be a fundamental shift in the way people approach the UC sale experience.
“I think it’s a product shift. The knowledge that people had around hardware in the past is going to diminish, and there’s going to be a greater focus on learning about the application stacks available today and how they fit together.”
“In the past, it was all about telephony, now we’re talking about things like data storage as a service, software as a service, and security as a service. It’s a transition.”
Peter also noted that there could be a shift in the way that people differentiate themselves. “In the past, a lot of resellers may have sold on personality, or in response to a compelling event. Now, we’re living in a world where people are part educated and part ignorant. This means that there’s a good opportunity to show customers the problems they may be missing and paint yourself as the solution to those problems.”
According to Williamson, the resellers who can’t keep up and move with the times are going to be the ones that fall into failure.
“However, if you can look at the market shift from a positive perspective, then you can adapt to the needs of the new world.”
Do You Think the New Millennial Buyer is an Important Consideration?
Finally, I asked Peter whether he thought that resellers should be preparing to sell to a different type of audience with the rise of the millennial buyer. He told me that this is the largest consumer group in human history and the group with the most buying power too. “They just don’t communicate in the manner that we considered to be acceptable twenty, or even ten years ago. If you don’t know how to engage this market, then you’re going to have a lot of trouble in the future.”
Both Peter and Aria Technologies believe that if you don’t know your buyer, you’re not going to get anywhere.
“It’s a different world, people want different things, and the more you know about your customer the stronger you’ll be. Ultimately, you can’t do things the old way anymore and expect the same results.”
