Reflecting a great launch of their latest campaign, “Not All BroadSofts Are Created Equal”, I caught up with Iain Sinnot, Sales and Marketing Director of VanillaIP. Before we dug into the finer details of the campaign success, we spoke about the continued combination of sales and marketing working together – unlike the archaic method of sales versus marketing. Iain mentioned this method has become part of the marketing training program at VanillaIP, The Class of 2019, as VanillaIP shares this highly effective process with their partners.
“Not All BroadSofts Are Created Equal”
Speaking about the “Not All BroadSofts Are Created Equal” campaign, Iain mentioned the underlying problem inspiring this campaign was the stigma that customers and partners have already seen BroadSoft and they are all the same. “We’ve all got servers and can buy licenses. But, we’ve gone about creating a cloud communications service in which BroadSoft is a key component. We have exploited a huge amount of functionality. However, the key is we don’t bundle it all together. We deliver it as a baseline product and offer other services which can either be taken in bundles or true on-demand services.
No single service
Iain said VanillaIP doesn’t create a single service for resellers to sell.
“We create examples and we create a base package with a full a la carte range of services. A reseller wanting to sell cloud can buy and sell 30-day licenses on every product”.
This allows resellers to offer a true cloud service.
Take the example of being a standard office user without a direct dial. That’s all you buy. If you change your role and need something as simple as voicemail or maybe you need call recording or to work from home. VanillaIP allows you to try the voicemail for 30 days, or take call recording for 30 days. If you don’t use it, you can simply turn it off.
Feature of the month
In a drive to introduce functionality that partners and end users may not know they need, VanillaIP runs a feature of the month. Introducing genuine part-time cloud consumption is crucial for small businesses to be exposed to otherwise unknown features. In the longer term, it’s not just a feature being turned on but a new way of working enabled. Iain referenced some customer examples that truly utilise cloud consumption.
“We’ve got a customer that turns on an extra 150 agents over Christmas. They scale up for a month from and a half in their peak period. We also have the university clearing house who turn on 50 licenses for a month then turns them off again. And that’s what it’s all about”.
VanillaIP recognises that changing work practices drive cloud consumption. If someone is suffering an illness, they can work from home for a month. Iain said “We turn services on and off according to customer requirements. But, equally, partners can go into account reviews and say you’re not using these 30 licenses so let’s turn them off”.
Consumption on demand is a huge part of the VanillaIP play. Mixed with the large number of applications available to extend the functionality of their BroadSoft platform, VanillaIP should expect further success through differentiation.
