I was on the Edgewater webinar yesterday where John Macario was presenting the Edgewater Hosted PBX/UC study data. Edgewater surveyed 1250 businesses about PBX, HPBX and UC. The data was good.
Metaswitch's Chris Carabello also presented.
I found it interested that mainstream businesses -- as we are passed the chasm of just early adopters in Hosted PBX and UC -- care about the service provider, according to the data. That means that Branding is kind of important. Branding builds trust.
Reminder: there are 3 sales going on at one time. The prospect has to buy the service offering, the sales rep and the company that will deliver it. If they don't trust any of the 3, the sale goes bad.
The business segment of 500+ employees is worth almost $10 billion. Not to poo-poo those chasing that segment but you better have an answer for why your service over all of the known competitors - but specifically why YOU and not Microsoft Lync, Cisco, BroadWorks and a PBX in the data center (Avaya, Intelligent Interactive).
On the low end, 10 seats is where the profit is. Getting down to 5 means that you have to be especially proficient and efficient in service delivery and turn-up. (I think they were talking about self-install, self-serve and online ordering.)
Carabello said that Churn was negligible. That isn't the my experience. In fact, there is a high number of churn in the first 60 days, especially for un-managed OTT. But if you only count churn after 60 days, then yeah it is very low.
Both speakers suggested that vertical offers weren't a good idea. I disagree. With software integration being a driving force in the buying process, vertical bundles would make a splash.
Google "hosted voip for dentists" and you will see case studies from Cisco, 8x8, Vonage and Broadview. For the cost of a domain name and some website work, you could own a vertical market. Case in point, Weave who is the number 1 result!
People under-estimate the power of a landing page or microsite.
If you are having trouble marketing your Hosted VoIP service, look for a series of webinars this summer from RAD-INFO INC or come out to CVX Expo/ ITEXPO in Anaheim in October for some live help. (Or call the my office.)
