A New (Digital) Breed Mike Strand, founder and CEO of StrandVision LLC
In this current economy, every sale counts. Prospecting is tough, and everyone knows that cross-selling is more efficient than prospecting and cold calling. For networking and telephony VARs the challenge becomes: "How do I sell more equipment and services to my current customers?" One of the answers, inevitably, is to add new technologies that increase bandwidth needs, which in turn drive demand for additional hardware, software and services.
Clearly, the most logical extension - one that most every network VAR has already done - is to add VoIP. If you haven't done so already, you should definitely check out this up-and-coming technology that offers your customers many more options in this troubled economy.
You might also want to look at digital signage. These are the television screens that you often see in large retail stores, banks and grocery stores that carry specific information or marketing programming - a technology that can help your customers make money in this tight market.
Traditionally, many of these systems have been proprietary, and use specialized hardware, but there is a new breed of digital signage providers that delivers content over the Internet and then uses the same standard Ethernet wired networks and computers that you already sell and support to distribute the signage onsite. They may require some network upgrades and hardware, such as PC servers, hubs and routers and Plasma or LCD displays - hardware and services that you can profitably sell to them.
However, if you're like many resellers, you are stopped cold by the prospect of holding your customers' hands on the slide design and content end of things. Comments such as, "I'm not in the video business," or "I don't even know what graphic design is" are not uncommon. Yet, today there are options for that too, which let you get into the game.
Some new digital signage systems are offered as Software-as-a-Service models. Resellers don't have to get involved with designing slides, hosting servers or even delivering the service to the customer's premises. That's all handled in the cloud by the service provider. You still get the hardware and network services sales.
Digital signs are effective communications tools for a number of businesses, such as health-care providers, fitness centers, hotels, shopping outlets and large corporations. If you're thinking of adding this technology to your business model, here's a "laundry list" of just what it takes to start selling into this market:
Think about your customers and what they could do with digital signage.
Research online digital signage providers.
Become an authorized VAR for a digital signage company.
Work with the company to develop a pitch. (Custom digital signage demonstrations are often most effective and can be done in minutes with many software systems.)
Sell the customer.
Install the hardware and network.
Hand the customer off to the digital signage provider for training on how to manage the system and update the pages.
Check in to see how things are going and for up-sell opportunities.
Once a year (or so) reconnect with the customer to renew the license and see if either expansions or new equipment are required.
Typically, customers manage their own digital signs by logging on to a Web portal and selecting from a set of templates (time, news, weather, scrolling text and graphics, etc.). They can add background music, bring in a television channel and even mix in videos and Flash, schedule slides and take advantage of other features.
The beauty of this is that the end user can do as little (or as much) as they like, and they work directly with the digital signage company on all content delivery support issues. You only have to concern yourself with the customer's system from the high speed Internet connection to the display screens - much like the VoIP phone system.
If there's an easier way to make money, I haven't thought of it. So, instead, I encourage you to give digital signage a chance; it's a natural extension of your business, and it gives you something to talk about with your customers in these tight times.
Mike Strand is founder and CEO of StrandVision LLC, an Internet-based subscription digital signage service, which is distributed through resellers.
In this current economy, every sale counts. Prospecting is tough, and everyone knows that cross-selling is more efficient than prospecting and cold calling. For networking and telephony VARs the challenge becomes: "How do I sell more equipment and services to my current customers?" One of the answers, inevitably, is to add new technologies that increase bandwidth needs, which in turn drive demand for additional hardware, software and services.
