Ahead of Daisy Wholesale’s big event at the BT Tower at the end of February Garry Growns, Sales Director at Daisy Whoelsale, sat down with David Dungay to talk about how they are attacking the market in 2018 and delivering partners something truly different.
Comms Business Magazine (CBM): You have been talking about convergence a lot recently, how are you communicating that message to your partners?
Garry Growns (GG): In the past the Channel has typically been focused on calls, lines and broadband. People have been after those big volumes and then move their bases around to maximise their profits. What we realised is we have got to help the partners get away from this product mind set to helping them understand what all of this convergence is really going to mean. It isn’t about going into customers and selling them a product, it is about understanding how these different elements coming together can give them all the flexibility, features and business benefits.
For us it is about continuing this growth, we will continue to do the calls and lines but if we want to maintain this growth, and for our partners to maintain their growth, they really need to look at the value they can give customers rather than just giving them something cheaper like broadband.
CBM: So what exactly are you going to deliver the Channel to enable this?
GG: We are expanding on our HVS (Hosted Voice Select) proposition which will come with a raft of new connectivity options which sit around it. Firstly, we are starting off with a new broadband product which has end-to-end QoS. It will address all those issues and concerns around call quality and is something unique for partners to offer customers.
Our new SIP product is going to blow the socks off the Channel, it will open up loads of opportunities. The way we derive the SIP products is essentially through our HVS platform. That means we have a core SIP product with all the inherent features that you get if you take our hosted voice platform. That means you get all the redirects, diverts, automatic load balancing, call recording, transfers to mobile etc… it’s just so sophisticated. It is also opening up opportunities for us to come up with new products which sit between hosted voice and SIP. We are also launching a free migration offer from any service into our hosted and SIP platform.
Then we have our FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) product. It’s an application we will launch shortly which sits with any mobile device, SIM, carrier or network. It addresses a couple of fundamental issues that have plagued the market like dropped calls when you are moving between calls and kind of thing. All the early adopter issues have been removed and it is now a seamless experience between TDM, SIP though to the systems and out into the mobile world.
We have also just developed an SD-WAN proposition under the one and only banner. It will replace MPLS in 95% of situations I think. The costs, the ordering, purchasing, deployment, flexibility will transform networking for the Channel.
CBM: So how are you going to get these propositions into the partner’s hands?
GG: We are so passionate about this journey we are taking with our partners on we are launching the Daisy Partner sales academy in the next few months. We are trying to give our partners something different rather than just a lower price. This will get us in front of partner’s sales and marketing people and educate them about the converged market. What is driving it, what has prevented it from happening before, what does it really mean, challenges and opportunities etc. Once they understand it they can speak confidently to their customers about it. We will also be combining that will sales skills training! When we speak to partners there is a bit of coaching going on but there isn’t a lot of formal training.
I always tell partners don’t miss this opportunity, the biggest opportunity there has ever been is now in my opinion. I often hear partners talk about missing the boat on mobile years ago, this is the same sort of scenario.
The market is changing, we want to bed with the resellers that are growing, and they don’t have to be the biggest either. We want the ones which buy into what we are trying to create and want that long term relationship. Oh… by the way, we don’t charge for this! It’s just added value for partners that work with us!